Beyond the Bear Read Free

she lay sleeping beneath a patchwork quilt. She’d later rise to public radio and shuffle into the kitchen. She’d pour water into her coffeemaker, add freshly ground French roast to the filter, and push the “brew now” button. She’d make herself Cream of Wheat. She’d go about the rest of her day afloat in thoughts of our night together, but wondering, too, why I never called after fishing like I said I would.
    The timing was exceptionally cruel. Over the previous six months, one thing after another had fallen into place in my life, beginning when I landed the most challenging and rewarding job I’d ever had—working with severely emotionally disturbed kids.Then just the week before, I’d become the new owner of a cabin in Bear Valley, high above Anchorage in the Chugach Mountains with a view that went on forever. After signing closing papers and shaking hands with the seller, I’d celebrated back at my rental place by pouring a Crown Royal on the rocks, sitting alone on my deck in the evening light, feet propped up on the railing, thinking about how phenomenal it was going to be living up there. The universe, it seemed, was looking after me.
    Just when I thought it couldn’t get any better, after a year of being attracted to one Amber Takavitz, the planets had finally aligned, and we woke up that morning tangled in each other’s arms. Had that bear not come barreling down the trail, its eyes locked on mine, July 14, 2003, would have been a day I looked back upon as one of the best I’d ever known.
    Until that day, I lived in the small, bohemian ski town of Girdwood, a huddle of condos, log chateaus, hippie hovels, and crash pads with names like the Mushroom House, the Hobbit Hole, and Animal House, about forty miles southeast of Anchorage. Wedged between the Chugach Mountains and the silty, swirling waters of Turnagain Arm, the town was founded at the turn of the century as a gold mining supply camp, originally called Glacier City for the seven glaciers clinging to the mountains above. Girdwood was my kind of town, a place of artists and woods people and free-range dogs, worldly enough to have Bon Appétit noticing its restaurants, wild enough to have bears leaving nose prints on cabin windows.
    In Girdwood, I found a community of kindred spirits, the kind who gathered regularly for potlucks and jam sessions, who lived to ski, kayak, hike, climb, and fish. The kind who launched paragliders off mountaintops at midnight on summer solstice, then soared, banked, and did pirouettes in the sky before landing in the backyard of my favorite watering hole in time for last call.
    A college buddy and I had scored a sweet deal on a rental within walking distance of the Alyeska ski lifts. It was a funky (some would say derelict), rectangular, cedar-shake house that sagged like a hammock atop twelve-foot pilings. We joked how the floor was so bad in the kitchen, a minor earthquake, or even a passing gravel truck, might topple the refrigerator over like a drunk, sending it into a face-plant upon the patchworklinoleum floor. The carpet was a Pepto-Bismol pink muted by a series of previous tenants who apparently had an aversion to vacuum cleaners. On the upside, the place was cheap for a ski-resort town, and had a glacier view and a wraparound deck overlooking a creek. I could lie in bed in the morning, listen to howitzers being launched at avalanche chutes, and know without looking out my window a powder day was out there waiting for me. At the end of those powder days, I could ski past the lodge, across the road, down the street, and right up to my front steps.
    After a series of miscellaneous jobs, from pounding nails to driving a shuttle for a whitewater rafting company, I’d finally landed one that gave my degree and sensibilities a workout. As an activity therapist for Alaska Children’s Services, I was working with kids who’d been abused, addicted, abandoned, tossed out, and otherwise run through the wringer, kids