I am walking on an old logging trail which branches off Lower Cache Road, a tributary to Alaska Highway in British Columbia. Thin strands of morning fog soften scraggly black spruce and float among white aspen trunks. A long time ago, during his trek to the South Pole, Roald Amundsen used to order his men to get up before sunrise, get out of their tent, and breathe in polar air and the morning light in to make the rest of the day meaningful. I am doing my Amundsen thing now, and this is August 18, my birthday. I am 70 years old. When did it happen, and how?
The question is unnecessary because I know the answer: I lived that long. And possibly much longer, cramming life in, at times heedlessly: take much, climb that, try what beckons. The family legend has it that ever since I could walk, I refused to hold anyone's hand and just bolted off to find what would surely remain out of reach if I just walked nicely next to some protective grownup.
Even after many years, Marynia, my old nanny who died recently just short of her 100th birthday, remembered with dread her chases after the disappearing child who never looked back, just ran. Eventually Pecia -- my father -- refused to take me anywhere, because he could never relax and just enjoy a stroll with his little daughter, the way many parents in Warsaw walked with their small but already mannerly children. He hated to imagine I would get run over by a streetcar, and deeply feared my mother's wrath should he allow that to happen.
My mother --called Mek by me and my brother -- was probably somewhat concerned but must have pretended to be upset when Marynia and Pecia reported my escapades. For her, I was a small chip of her own large spirit. Raised in Russia, she came to Poland at 14, after her father, a white general, was murdered in the turmoil of the Revolution, and her mother, who lost everything and melted into the countryside like many other landed gentry at that time, kept her two young daughters alive by running a small orphanage full of starving children and digging out potatoes left behind by farmers who already finished their harvest.
They eventually came to Poland on a cattle train, which took 6 weeks to reach the border. My mother was wearing old rags, her head was shaved to prevent lice, and she did not speak any Polish. Twelve years later, she was a young lawyer with two degrees, one from Warsaw University and another from Sorbonne, which used to have its extension program in Poland. She was well versed in several foreign languages, married, living and working in Warsaw, and helping to support her mother and her older sister, who "lost her way," never finished high school, and became a cabaret dancer and a mother of two sons out of wedlock whose fathers disappeared. Then the war came, and before six million Poles and Polish Jews died and the war ended, Mek went ahead and had her two children, first me, and then my brother Jeremi. When I asked her later why she decided to have kids right in the middle of these terrifying and deadly times, she told me it was her affirmation of life.
Was my mother a survivalist by nature, or the events of her early life left her no other choice? I do not know. But I know she was an ardent feminist -- even though she did not know the term -- and did not want me to be still, which later translated into her well articulated life lessons designed to prevent me from getting hooked on any womanly activity which may, in her understanding of freedom, clip my stride: an excessive attention to my appearance ("good looks don't need any artificial help") an early marriage ("first, get your university degree, then travel, and then, and only if you really want to, get married") and even cooking ("I hope you never have to do it.")
We fought throughout all our lives together. She was a severe critic, a relentless judge, and she needed more overt and cozy love than I, busy to escape her guiding hand, had time or inclination to deliver. As she grew older, she became less of the crazy and flamboyant Russian I loved, and more of the demanding, angry and disappointed German Frau I feared. I knew I did not want to be like her, but I did get my university degree, traveled, married late, avoided cooking as much as I could, and had my first pedicure ever -- courtesy of our daughter Tara, one of her birthday gifts -- last week in Colorado.
And today the sunlight licks the trees on the logging road and a grouse rises noisily from the ditch, flapping madly away. I gather wild raspberries, tasty but small and misshapen: not enough rain? and see that John is already awake. I return to the camper and he asks me what I want for my birthday. Animals, I say, many animals. He reminds me I already had two pre-birthday moose crossing the road last night, and a family of deer in a ravine, and many ravens soaring over the forest. I want more.
Over the course of its nearly 1,600 miles from Dawson Creek to Fairbanks, Alaska Highway parallels some of the largest and most rugged tracts of land in North America, scarred by mineral exploration and logging but also unfenced, heavily forested, and largely devoid of human presence, with large rivers, Peace, Liard,Teslin, Hyland, Rancheria and Yukon, creating abundant animal corridors full of nutrients. As the day unfolds and we drive North, I get the following:
-- an immature Golden eagle, flying low
-- a squirrel crossing the road suddenly right in front of us and surviving
-- a Snowshoe hare, whose round eyes remind me of my father Pecia who I am sure reincarnated into a hare
-- ravens and more ravens
-- a young coyote, loping toward us for a while
-- Stone sheep -- bighorns' cousins -- licking dry mineral deposits along the highway in the Northern Rockies
-- a young caribou bull with very dark fur and loudly clicking leg tendons
-- large groups of bison, also feeding in a ditch and resting
And then it rains black bears. A mother bear bending small trees to browse on their leaves. Her cub, suddenly startled, climbing a tall aspen trunk with determination and speed, and perching there for a while only to descend just as fast. Another velvety cub with brown cheeks and big round ears following his mother. Another bear grazing steadily not far away.
My birthday animals. All of them.
©Yva Momatiuk
The question is unnecessary because I know the answer: I lived that long. And possibly much longer, cramming life in, at times heedlessly: take much, climb that, try what beckons. The family legend has it that ever since I could walk, I refused to hold anyone's hand and just bolted off to find what would surely remain out of reach if I just walked nicely next to some protective grownup.
Even after many years, Marynia, my old nanny who died recently just short of her 100th birthday, remembered with dread her chases after the disappearing child who never looked back, just ran. Eventually Pecia -- my father -- refused to take me anywhere, because he could never relax and just enjoy a stroll with his little daughter, the way many parents in Warsaw walked with their small but already mannerly children. He hated to imagine I would get run over by a streetcar, and deeply feared my mother's wrath should he allow that to happen.
My mother --called Mek by me and my brother -- was probably somewhat concerned but must have pretended to be upset when Marynia and Pecia reported my escapades. For her, I was a small chip of her own large spirit. Raised in Russia, she came to Poland at 14, after her father, a white general, was murdered in the turmoil of the Revolution, and her mother, who lost everything and melted into the countryside like many other landed gentry at that time, kept her two young daughters alive by running a small orphanage full of starving children and digging out potatoes left behind by farmers who already finished their harvest.
They eventually came to Poland on a cattle train, which took 6 weeks to reach the border. My mother was wearing old rags, her head was shaved to prevent lice, and she did not speak any Polish. Twelve years later, she was a young lawyer with two degrees, one from Warsaw University and another from Sorbonne, which used to have its extension program in Poland. She was well versed in several foreign languages, married, living and working in Warsaw, and helping to support her mother and her older sister, who "lost her way," never finished high school, and became a cabaret dancer and a mother of two sons out of wedlock whose fathers disappeared. Then the war came, and before six million Poles and Polish Jews died and the war ended, Mek went ahead and had her two children, first me, and then my brother Jeremi. When I asked her later why she decided to have kids right in the middle of these terrifying and deadly times, she told me it was her affirmation of life.
Was my mother a survivalist by nature, or the events of her early life left her no other choice? I do not know. But I know she was an ardent feminist -- even though she did not know the term -- and did not want me to be still, which later translated into her well articulated life lessons designed to prevent me from getting hooked on any womanly activity which may, in her understanding of freedom, clip my stride: an excessive attention to my appearance ("good looks don't need any artificial help") an early marriage ("first, get your university degree, then travel, and then, and only if you really want to, get married") and even cooking ("I hope you never have to do it.")
We fought throughout all our lives together. She was a severe critic, a relentless judge, and she needed more overt and cozy love than I, busy to escape her guiding hand, had time or inclination to deliver. As she grew older, she became less of the crazy and flamboyant Russian I loved, and more of the demanding, angry and disappointed German Frau I feared. I knew I did not want to be like her, but I did get my university degree, traveled, married late, avoided cooking as much as I could, and had my first pedicure ever -- courtesy of our daughter Tara, one of her birthday gifts -- last week in Colorado.
And today the sunlight licks the trees on the logging road and a grouse rises noisily from the ditch, flapping madly away. I gather wild raspberries, tasty but small and misshapen: not enough rain? and see that John is already awake. I return to the camper and he asks me what I want for my birthday. Animals, I say, many animals. He reminds me I already had two pre-birthday moose crossing the road last night, and a family of deer in a ravine, and many ravens soaring over the forest. I want more.
Over the course of its nearly 1,600 miles from Dawson Creek to Fairbanks, Alaska Highway parallels some of the largest and most rugged tracts of land in North America, scarred by mineral exploration and logging but also unfenced, heavily forested, and largely devoid of human presence, with large rivers, Peace, Liard,Teslin, Hyland, Rancheria and Yukon, creating abundant animal corridors full of nutrients. As the day unfolds and we drive North, I get the following:
-- an immature Golden eagle, flying low
-- a squirrel crossing the road suddenly right in front of us and surviving
-- a Snowshoe hare, whose round eyes remind me of my father Pecia who I am sure reincarnated into a hare
-- ravens and more ravens
-- a young coyote, loping toward us for a while
-- Stone sheep -- bighorns' cousins -- licking dry mineral deposits along the highway in the Northern Rockies
-- a young caribou bull with very dark fur and loudly clicking leg tendons
-- large groups of bison, also feeding in a ditch and resting
And then it rains black bears. A mother bear bending small trees to browse on their leaves. Her cub, suddenly startled, climbing a tall aspen trunk with determination and speed, and perching there for a while only to descend just as fast. Another velvety cub with brown cheeks and big round ears following his mother. Another bear grazing steadily not far away.
My birthday animals. All of them.
©Yva Momatiuk
