Black spruce
A solstice story
There’s a spot about three hours north of Anchorage where the Parks Highway crosses the Chulitna River. Pull off the highway to the west and you’ll find a gravel embankment dotted with alders and fire pits. The beach extends into the river at a gentle slope before hitting the rapids.
I camped there six years ago, at the end of June. It was the first night of a road trip I took with two friends, one of whom I was semi-secretly dating. The three of us left Anchorage after work.
I remember sitting in the backseat next to a pile of gear as my friends chatted up front. We had a view of Denali the whole drive. I remember rolling down my window and taking a video as the sun passed behind rows of black spruce. The trees were dark, cartoonish silhouettes against the sky’s orange, pink, and blue.
We were looking for a place to spend the night and one of my friends said he heard that a group from Fairbanks was camped at the gravel beach before starting a multi-day river float. They invited us to join.
We rolled off the highway to find the Fairbanks crew cooking and eating around fires. Soon we were among them, drinking beers and making small talk as our faces glowed orange.
I don’t know how to write about this party except to say that it happened. I was there, camping and chatting with the graduate students and geologists. I looked around at their shiny, fire-lit faces: adventurers about to jump onto rafts and propel themselves for several days down a river. I thought about how good my life was in that moment. How maybe one day, I would float that river too. How I had never felt so free.
This past weekend, I camped there again with a friend visiting from New York. The first thing I noticed on the drive were all the dead spruce. Beetles killed them. What before were stands of bent and bowing stalks are rigid, petrified shells, their green now a dull reddish-brown.
One of the women who’d organized the Fairbanks float trip is also gone. I don’t remember her name but I remember her face. I remember where I was when I heard she had taken her own life.
*
My friend and I drove off of the highway and onto the gravel beach like before. This time it was empty. No party, just cardboard and wads of paper left beside the fire pit. We set up our tent under a light rain.
Six years ago, I’d been at the end of my rope. Flirting with a person is great but, have you ever tried it with an entire existence?
I’d been playing in a world that wasn’t mine. Dating a person who wasn’t mine. I was only supposed to be in Alaska for a year before returning to my given life. My actions had minimal consequences.
Despite it all feeling real, the connections to people and the sense of home, it wasn’t. It couldn’t be, because I put nothing at stake.
When my attachments pulled me back it was like I’d never been there. The only evidence was whiplash: rope burns and vertigo.
*
I didn’t sleep well that night. In the morning I left my tent and walked to where I’d lain in someone else’s six years prior. As I write this story I realize it would have sounded nice if I said that I picked up a rock and brought it home as a physical talisman. A container for my former self.
But I didn’t. The beach looked worse than I remembered. Matted paper scattered over the pebbles. There wasn’t anything I thought to touch.
This story isn’t about the guy. (It was never going to be about the guy.)
By the time I returned to our camp, I felt new. My friend was awake. Remind me to research the spruce beetles,1 I asked her.
It was raining again. We packed up and said goodbye. Leave no trace: so I did.
This is a piece of writing, not a scientific paper. Forgive me, naturalists, for any errors in describing the cause of spruce death.