Four Quarters of Light by Brian Keenan Page B

could well understand how a reflection on a life lived, loneliness, and finding renewal and redemption in a new, unexpected relationship were themes that seemed somehow synonymous with the expanding emptiness outside the townships and the cities.
    But in another way they also seemed close to Mary’s own personal experience. I suppose all writers consciously write out of their own life as a way of fixing it or loosening the hold of the past to renew and secure the future. I was sure it was so with Mary. But the thought caused me to ask of myself what I might be writing had I lived here as long as Mary. I was sensing the smallness of the huge place. In winter, especially, it physically forces you to live a confined life. Eight months of darkness must take its toll on one’s emotional growth. People are forced together as a survival strategy, but if they had no well-developed cultural code and relationship with the living environment as the indigenous peoples had, then existing here could be precarious indeed.
    I took the moment to ask Mary, ‘If it was possible, how would you sum up Alaska?’
    She turned to me, paused for a moment, then said, ‘Everything survives and exists here on a very thin foundation.’ Her eloquence was profound, yet I knew it wasn’t a phrase learned from some book. There was a ring of quiet authenticity about it.
    That night, with the kids in bed and our cabin humming with heat from the great log fire, Audrey and I discussed my trip down the Chena. Audrey had been spending much of her time playing fetch and carry back and forth to the town with the boys while I was off on my excursions. We had not had a lot of time to talk until now, but I wanted to keep her filled in. I spoke about the trip and my companions, explaining what a pleasantly odd couple they were, the scientist and the writer. Inevitably we moved on to discuss the bush, particularly my feeling that something other than the trees existed there and that you could feel its presence.Surprisingly, Audrey concurred with me. ‘Sometimes I hate this place,’ she said. ‘It’s those black spruce. They’re creepy. There’s something very deathly about them. They remind me of that horrible part of
Sleeping Beauty
where the castle is surrounded by an impenetrable wall of vicious black thorns. But it’s not just that you don’t know what’s out there watching you – a bear, a wolf, a bull moose, anything. It’s like you’re always looking over your shoulder. It gives me the heebie-jeebies.’
    Without mentioning it, I picked up on her sense of being watched. ‘Do you think it’s only animals that might be watching you?’ I asked.
    Audrey returned my question with one of her own. ‘What else are you thinking of, weirdo ghosts?’
    I wasn’t sure how to answer. I didn’t mean a ghost, but I did mean something else, beyond empirical definition. Audrey was curious and pushed me on the subject. As I wasn’t sure of the ground I was standing on I began by explaining how the native peoples believed that the natural world and the supernatural world were one, and that they had a set of beliefs and concepts for explaining the supernatural world and even manipulating it. Men could form a partnership with these spiritual forces.
    â€˜What are you trying to say, Brian?’
    I confessed again that I wasn’t sure, but emphasized that these same beliefs were logical, consistent and powerful. ‘Maybe I mean it’s that power our cultural upbringing denies that we sense out there,’ I said. ‘And we are apprehensive because we don’t know how to respond to it.’ I knew I wasn’t unearthing the answers we were both looking for. For a moment I related how Pat had talked to me full of facts, figures, scientific data and logical projections. Pat’s world was explained through rationalist and scientific means. He had been paddling