My Asolos are waiting to be oiled and my legs are still sore from the hike up and back from Sperry Chalet in Glacier National Park. A trip I only recently considered making, even though the trailhead is only three and a half hours from home.

It takes diligence to get there. First, patience and persistence are required to score a reservation. Thankfully, my friends were on top of that. Then, the training of aging muscles and joints for weeks. Finally, the hike. Six and a half miles up, 3,400 feet of elevation gain reaching an altitude of 6,550 feet at the Chalet. In grizzly country.

My hiking partners and I all worked for the Forest Service at one time. Randy with the long legs is always prepared. His pack is the heaviest. Janet knows the plants and the trees by name. My husband Rich has the shortest legs but is the fastest hiker.

The day before the hike, we loaded our packs, electrolytes, and bear spray in the Jeep and headed to Apgar, close enough to the trailhead for an early start ahead of the heat.

I was ready.

Or so I thought. In the middle of the night, my body told me otherwise. I woke up with anxiety running through my guts instead of my subconscious. Not unfamiliar, yet I needed my body to work hard when morning came.

I doubted I could do it.

Still dark, the alarm went off. I was awake anyway. I spoke my fears, and hated them.

“One foot in front of the other,” I told myself. “Get up, eat a bit, pack gear, and go.”

At the trailhead it is starting to get light. Dark, pungent cedars line the beginning of the trail. A light is on in the horse corral. Good. More company.

The cedars switch places with pines and firs. The well-used trail is soft at first, and smattered with horse manure. Sprague Creek tumbles down the bottom of a deep ravine to our right. Occasional gray landslides have wiped away the forest on the far side. The terrain is steep in all directions.

One foot in front of the other.

The forest canopy disappears, burned in the Sprague Wildfire of 2017. The ground answers with fireweed flowers of the deepest pink I think I’ve seen.

Randy’s wry humor, plenty of water, and snacks keep us going.

After several miles of up, the chalet comes into view, perched on a rock outcrop in a glacial cirque. Sperry Chalet burned in 2017 too. But people have refused to let the rock structure, built by Italian stone masons in 1912–1913, disappear. In 1918, it closed due to the impacts of World War I. In the 1930s it was the Great Depression. World War II impacted visitor numbers from 1942 to 1944. Then in the 1950s, the Great Northern Railway transferred ownership to the National Park Service. Deferred maintenance closed the chalet from 1993 to 1998. In 2017, the Sprague Wildfire gutted the building. But it’s still there.

A couple miles yet to go. I’ve pounded my fear into the ground with my feet. I turn to check on everyone and see a young grizzly cross the trail behind Janet. Too close. I grab my airhorn and feel for my pepper spray without thinking and step in her direction. But the bear doesn’t seem to care about us. Good thing.

Finally, the chalet. We check in at the lodge, navigate past the mountain goats and the bathroom to the chalet where our room is. Our host gives us a brief history of the site, showing us the GNRy mosaic on the gable end, the rock in the wall that looks like a pistol, and the etching of a horsehead in concrete reputed to have been drawn by Charlie Russell. At last, we flop on our single beds to rest before a four-course dinner.

Outside, Sprague Valley winds to Lake McDonald far below. Cliffs and ridges contain the cirque. I see the bear again as he navigates rock outcrops in the bottom of the basin. He disappears in a small grove of trees, in the direction of where we plan to hike tomorrow.

A visit to the bathroom at night requires shoes and a jacket. Rich wakes me when he is heading there to give me the opportunity for an escort. I take him up on the offer. The moon is near full and the only critters we encounter on the way to and from the bathroom are mountain goats. We have to wait for them to move off the stairs and the deck so we can get back to our room.

The next morning, after a breakfast of eggs, bacon, pancakes, coffee, orange juice, and water, we set out on tired legs in the direction of Sperry Glacier, about three and a half miles away, uphill. Soon we’re above tree line, no longer hiking through burned forest, but in alpine. The plants grow close to the ground, expending only enough energy needed to survive. Lichens paint the rocks yellow, ochre, and green. Pink and purple penstemon anchor in the crevices between boulders, tiny ferns cling to the moist cracks.

No sign of the bear.

The narrow pathway chiseled into the cliffs is only one person wide in places. The thin air makes me light headed.

I don’t belong here.

I declare I’m done walking on the top of cliffs. I go a bit further, then stop.

Rich and Randy go on, yelling back about a mountain goat in the path ahead of us. We don’t go onward. Janet and I stay below the bench the goat has claimed.

Tired and torn between going and staying, I sit near the base of a cliff with glacial meltwater running down its face. I chickened out. I want to see Sperry Glacier and the view from the top of the stairs at Comeau Pass. I don’t know when, or if, I will be back here. Maybe I should go on. Maybe that’s where my awe is.

Disgusted with myself, I go check out the goat. As I reach that little higher spot, my phone gets the scrap of a signal and a text comes through. I dig my phone out of my pants pocket, read the text, and learn my great-nephew was just born, 1500 miles away. I look up and the goat looks back.

My little great-nephew arrived early. It sounds like he’s doing okay. There’s a picture of him with his mom and dad and an oxygen tube in his nose. Another is the monitor showing his weight: 3 lb 8 oz.

I try to text back but the signal won’t go through.

The goat decides he’s hungry for the plants near the base of the cliff. I give him space and go back to join Janet. He goes up and over rock outcrops and boulders, stumbles, catches himself, and sticks the landing near the meltwater stream. He’s close, ten feet maybe, but that’s his limit.

The eep of a pika gives away her location. She’s sitting on a light green rock in a boulder field of purple. She’s tiny. Her body, ears, and head are soft curves covered in tawny brown fur. At home in mountains so bare each ancient fold of the rock is exposed.

The goat grazes. The pika sits in her spot. I watch.

About half an hour later, Rich and Randy join us. They didn’t make it to Comeau Pass either. Somehow, going down to the chalet is easier, less scary. I hardly notice the cliffs. Just the flowers and the ferns and the pikas.

We wake the next morning to 39 degrees and rain. We pack, bundle up for the descent, say goodbye to Sperry Chalet, and set off. Rain pelts us until we reach the cedars and can’t feel it anymore.

The pavement of the road feels rude underfoot on the way to the car.

My awe wasn’t up at Sperry Chalet, or at the glacier I didn’t see. It caught up to me at home as I set my boots by the door.

I wonder which type of oil to use on my Asolos, mink or pitch blend?

I took the picture above last month while in Watersmeet, Michigan, for an all-class high school reunion. The old rock bridge once carried trains over the creek with no name that flows into the Middle Branch of the Ontonagon River. The same river flows past my grandparents’ home just downstream. The bridge is probably special only to me, but it captures my sense of that place — the history and my entanglement with it.

That spot. I’ve walked to it more times than I can count. It’s not far from the house I grew up in, the ranch-style my parents built with their own hands, and where my mom and her Golden Retriever, Ginger, still live. Ticks in the spring; light-blue summer forget-me-nots painting the banks; deep red maple leaves of fall; low-angle winter sunlight glancing off ice.

Watersmeet is a small town with big junctions. Tannic rivers converge and flow in and out of many lakes. Railroads once crisscrossed the landscape following the rivers, going around the lakes, and coming together at a long-gone roundhouse where engines were serviced. The intersection of US Highways 2 and 45 creates the center of town, linking the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, and Lake Superior in one dot on the map. A rare triple divide underlies this landscape, where three hydrologic basins meet and the waters part — to Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, and the Mississippi River.

Grandma Etta planted forget-me-nots in front of her little house. My nephew and his growing family live there now. At the creek last month, the forget-me-nots were in full bloom. More than I’ve ever remembered.

Once someone set traps along the edge of the water. My classmate Sandy and I were probably in sixth grade when we found a mink in one. It watched us as we tried to set it free. We couldn’t. We walked home and told mom.

Another time, otters the color of dark chocolate played, chattering as they made their way downstream, and I watched from the road above. I almost never see another person when I walk to the creek.

A little further down the road, toward town, is the site of the original ranger station for the Watersmeet Ranger District, at the center of the Ottawa National Forest. The traditional white with green trim office, ranger’s house, and warehouse were built by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in the mid-1930s. There’s a loading ramp in the back where wild strawberries grow. The old ranger station is in private hands now. The district office moved twice — first next door to my grandparents and then to where it is today. I had a hand in the last move.

I’m related to so many people in the area I don’t know them all. A few years ago, I was visiting mom and dad when an older man came to the door with loose papers in his hand. I answered it. He asked for my dad. I hesitated, standing in the doorway, wondering what he was soliciting. In the middle of his explanation that he was my dad’s cousin, mom stepped in and invited him for coffee, yelling to pa that he had a visitor. They sat around the table, swapping stories, and noting who was where and who was left. I listened, hearing some familiar names, some not.

Watersmeet is home, yet I don’t live here. I often wonder why not. Alaska took me away and I was instantly smitten with it. Montana came next. It was a much slower burn into love. I’m torn into three pieces.

I saw more relatives than classmates at the reunion. We had thirteen in my graduating class. The same as my mom’s class twenty years earlier. In mine, there were two Toms, two Jims, and two Sandys. Only one Tom is left. My dad would jokingly say how proud he was of me for graduating in the top ten.

I miss his dry humor.

I called or texted as many classmates as I had contact information for and asked them to come to the reunion. I had not seen David since the day we graduated, and I didn’t know how to get ahold of him. I called the school, but they didn’t know either. I put a request on Facebook, and a relative connected with his father and got his number. David drove up from South Carolina to be there.

I wanted to see everyone, so I asked. Six of us from the Class of 1981 toured the old brick school together. We dared to go up the girls’ stairs, then down the boys’ stairs, watching for Mr. B lest we get caught and assigned 50 words from the dictionary, his perennial punishment for such offenses.

I felt honored that my classmates showed up. The girl who walked those halls in 1981 would not have dared ask.

302 lakes. Rivers the color of root beer. Eight feet of snow a year, forest on every side, next to wilderness. Settled by hardy, self-sufficient people. That country made thirteen of us.

At the top of the divide, we were in the same place. Then we flowed in different directions and landed in different basins. Forty-five years later we still recognize each other. Not because we kept in touch. Because we grew from the same ground.

Bob knew Watersmeet. He worked there on a temporary Forest Service assignment long after I knew him in Alaska. He used to say to me, “Everything is equal where the waters meet,” not because of its pithy wisdom, but because he knew the name of my town.

I wonder if he ever noticed the creek with all the forget-me-nots.

Somewhere in my stash of photos is a picture of Bob I wish I could find. He’s sitting behind the kitchen table at our Forest Service field camp in Coffman Cove, one hand on his hip, a forearm on the table, and three steelhead we had caught after work splayed out in front of him. A goofy bandana covers his bald head. He’s trying to look grouchy because his fish were much smaller than mine, but his smile is winning.

Southeast Alaska brought us together like that. A place defined by water, an archipelago of islands on the edge of the ocean that both isolate and bond. It’s wet there. Ketchikan, headquarters for the Tongass National Forest, averages 150 inches of rain a year – nearly 13 feet. The only way to get to where we lived and worked was by plane or boat.

We came from all parts of the country. Some of us misfits, some of us running away from something, and some of us just there for the job. It didn’t matter. We were all accepted as belonging there. The number of us swelled and ebbed as people moved about. During my years in the late 1980s our core group was maybe a dozen. On a typical Friday afternoon in the summer, a few of us would convene at the 49’er, the bar closest to the dock where Temsco floatplanes delivered us from our field camps on Prince of Wales Island.

The only communication device we had in field camp back then was a Forest Service radio, for official use only. Besides, all conversations were broadcast across the islands. So the 49’er gave us the chance to catch up on the week, or maybe it was two, behind us. Sometimes the festivities continued to the next bar, and there were plenty to choose from. The Arctic across the street with its deck on spindly log pilings over the ocean was a favorite on rare sunny days. Seeing water below the floorboards in the bathroom made me queasy. Closer to downtown, the historic Foc’sle, notorious for its rowdy, fight-prone clientele of loggers and fishermen, was a drive by. Actually, a walk by as we were on foot. I liked the Frontier or Sally’s 108 for the music and dancing.

Summer days are long in Alaska and back then bars could be open 23 hours a day. One night I lost track of time in Sally’s 108 and walked out to see the first light of dawn. I judged myself harshly, then realized it was only 2:30 am.

On the art-covered walls of Bob’s tiny apartment, carefully matted and framed, was a collection of half a dozen checks he’d attempted to write one night in a bar. Not one was legible. He had gotten so tanked-up the bartender refused to serve him unless he could properly fill out a check. He couldn’t do it. When Bob found the checks the next day or so, he had them framed and hung them on his wall.

Southeast gave us more than good stories. It gave us each other.

Thanksgiving meant gathering at Mike and Kimberly’s. It was their house that could fit everyone who had nowhere else to be or those waiting for Christmas to travel home. Dinner spread out on the long table included the famous Sam’s Yams, smoked salmon from last summer’s catch, and Bob’s home-made bread or pies. After-dinner Pictionary turned into cheating or loud complaints from the guys when a drawing of a stick shift triggered the right answer of a clutch by us. They cried foul because even though the answer was right, the mechanical part drawn was wrong.

Those nights didn’t happen by accident. I think the place, Southeast Alaska, claimed us. Tongass Narrows, the Sitka Spruce around Ward Lake, Deer Mountain, the wolf howling from Kosciusko Island across from El Capitan field camp, and the whales in Sea Otter Sound called us to come. We answered, each in our own way and time. Yes, our bond had practical side – the wild remoteness of Southeast meant help came from those you were with – but it was so much more than that. We were connected to something together. We were connected to Southeast.

I’ve been looking for that photograph since I heard. The one with the bandana and the steelhead and the smile he’s trying to hide. I found a different one instead. Bob sitting on stone steps wearing an Arctic Bar T-shirt in front of a dark doorway of carved stone. It looks like an ancient temple. On the back someone wrote “Indonesia Jan 1991”. Maybe that’s Bob’s handwriting.

When I heard Bob died a few days ago, I grieved him. And then I grieved Southeast. And then I couldn’t tell which was which. Most of us scattered eventually, the way people do. Bob stayed until he couldn’t.

We were claimed by the same place at the same time. The Tongass is still there – the narrows, the spruce, the wolves, the whales. But the people who loved it together the way we did, in that particular time and in that particular way, are mostly scattered. And one fewer as of last week.

Wild places need people. People need wild places. And sometimes, if you’re lucky, a place gives you both. The land and the people who love it with you.

I’m still looking for that photograph.

Why do you feel most alive in nature?

Wild places do something to people. Our life force wakes up. We see beauty and honesty in the world and we want more of it.

This Substack grew out of my debut novel, Broadside Before Dusk — a story drawn from my own life about discovering that belonging to yourself and the protection of wild places are not separate. Through the process of creating my book, I got clear on my purpose — nature writing.

The seed for my journey was planted on a cold, rainy day in southeast Alaska, thirty-something years ago. I was driving a Forest Service pickup to the north end of Prince of Wales and the field camp at El Capitan. I would live there for the next week or two, hours from the nearest grocery store. The rough gravel road made for slow going. Deeply alone with my thoughts, no other cars for miles, the weight of the rain bending Sitka spruce boughs. I glanced to the right and coming out of the forest was a wolf. We locked eyes as I drove by. Those golden eyes held an intelligence I had no words for. My thoughts vanished.

Entangled is about wild places, the people who’ve been there, and the surprising inner work of actually belonging to the natural world. The personal is the portal to understanding this because we are nature. Wild places need people. People who can show up for something larger. That’s what we’re here to explore together.

What Entangled is

Personal essays from the field. Insights gained from direct encounters with wild places: fishing, hiking, hunting, paddling, being. The history and meaning of public lands, told through what those places mean to the people who love them. Worthiness and belonging, and why it matters to advocate for nature. And the stories of people who have found their belonging and are working to keep it.

One essay at a time.

What you’re joining

A community of people who care about wild places and public lands with a depth they rarely put into words. People who feel most alive and at home on a river, in the backcountry, or standing at the edge of something vast. People who feel deeply and pay attention.

Free vs Paid

Free subscribers get every essay. Nothing is locked away. Paid subscribers get to feel good about supporting my work.

Either way, you’re in. And I’m glad. You are nature worth loving.

Walk with me awhile.