River Journal part 3: the conclusion
(Our travels to Alaska had presented a new dimension of leaving the grid and creating self-sustaining lifestyles in more remote locations than what we had ever imagined. After the three of us returned to our comfortable retreat in the Washington Cascades, conversations regarding the investment of time, funding and the amount of labor began to reveal a widening divide in our sentiments of the challenges of life in the Alaskan bush.) Fall There was a woman standing across the river from our side. Just standing there being wet on a typically dripping late fall day. I was helping Pete split the last rounds of a tree he had fallen near the landing. Pete determined she was not looking for us, since we had not heard a horn. I hesitated quite a while after he had turned and hiked back up the hill. She seemed to be looking at me but there was no wave or confirmation of her desire to interact. Her profile did not resemble anyone I knew, so I assumed she was merely looking at the oddity of the cable and was checking out the recreational cabins on that side of the river. I was to learn later that she was the granddaughter of the family that had originally homesteaded our parcel and constructed the cable crossing. By mere chance, I made the acquaintance of the person who revealed this to me in the nearby small town of Index. She was, shall I say, possessed by hundreds of photos of the early development of the area between 1909 and 1936. The collection depicted, among other things, the logging of giant Douglas fir trees with springboards and crosscut saws, and the railcars used to transport them down to the lumber mill circa 1910.
