Diamond Willow by Helen Frost

AUTHOR’S NOTE

    Diamond Willow takes place in Old Fork, a fictional town of about six hundred people, located on a river in interior Alaska.
    There are no paved roads in and out of town; people travel by airplane, boat, snowmachine, and dogsled. They drive around Old Fork in cars, pickups, and four-wheelers, which are brought into town on a barge during the summer months when the river is not frozen.
    Willow, the main character, is part Athabascan. Through her mother, she is descended from people who have lived in Alaska for many centuries. Her ancestors on her father’s side came from Europe and migrated across Canada and the United States for about 160 years before her father settled in Old Fork.
    Most of the story is told in diamond-shaped poems, with a hidden message printed in darker ink at the center of each one. I got this idea from a lamp and a walking stick, both made of diamond willow. The lamp was made by Dr. Irving Preine as a wedding gift for my parents; I remember it from my childhood. As an adult, I lived in Telida, a small Athabascan community in interior Alaska, on the Kuskokwim River, near Mount McKinley. I taught all the students in Telida School, five to ten students in kindergarten through sixth grade. When I left, Deaphon Eluska, the grandfather of two of my students, gave me a diamond willow walking stick that he found near Telida and peeled, sanded, and polished to a beautiful finish. That stick hung in my study as I thought about this story and composed the poems.
    Diamond willow grows in northern climates. It has rough gray bark, often crusted with gray-green lichen. Removing the bark and sanding and polishing the stick reveals reddish-brown diamonds, each with a small dark center.
    Some people think that diamond willow is a specific type of willow, like weeping willow or pussy willow, but it is not. The diamonds form on several different kinds of shrub willows when a branch is injured and falls away. The dark center of each diamond is the scar of the missing branch.
    The scars, and the diamonds that form around them, give diamond willow its beauty, and gave me the idea for my story.

 
    Â 
    7
    a.m.
    Twenty
    below zero,
    ribbons of white
    and green and purple
    dancing in the blue-black sky.
    I’m up with Dad as usual, feeding
    our six dogs. I climb the ladder to the cache,
    toss four dried salmon out to Dad. He watches
    me as I back down: Be careful on that broken rung.
    I pack snow into the dog pot; Dad gets a good fire going
    in the oil-drum stove. He loves these dogs like I do. We’re
    both out here on weekends, as much as we can be, and every
    day before and after school. He loves Roxy most. Willow, go
    get the pliers, he says, showing me a quill in Roxy’s foot.
    (It’s surprising that a porcupine is out this time of year.)
    I bring the pliers; Dad pulls out the quill, rubs in salve;
    then we go from dog to dog, spreading fresh straw.
    Hey, Magoo. Hey, Samson. Roxy, you stay off
    that foot today . Dad pats Prince on the head.
    Lucky sniffs my hand—she smells salmon.
    I find a bur in Cora’s ear and get it out.
    The snow melts into water, simmers
    in the cooking pot. I drop in the
    salmon, add some cornmeal.
    The dogs love that smell.
    They start to howl
    and I howl
    back.
    Â 
    I
    was
    named
    after a stick.
    The way Mom tells it,
    she couldn’t get Dad to agree
    on any names: Ellen, after Grandma?
    Sally, after Dad’s great-aunt in Michigan?
    No, he wanted something modern, something
    meaningful. It will come to us, Dad kept saying.
    Let’s hope it comes before the baby learns to walk,
    said Mom . Always does, said Dad. That’s how they
    argue, each knows what they want, but neither seems
    to think it matters much who wins. Since Mom gives
    in before Dad most of the time, Dad gets his way a lot.
    He told me that just before I was born, he found a small
    stand of diamond willow and brought home one stick.
    That’s it! Let’s name our