Beyond the Bear (22 page)

At Office Max, I bought an office chair and one of those build-it-yourself computer desks. We spent hours wrestling that thing, with me holding the parts in place while Amber screwed them together, alternating between laughing and swearing and laughing and teetering on the verge of winging the pile of “easy to assemble” body parts out the window. Only after it was fully assembled did we realize we’d built a ship in a bottle, that there was no way we’d ever get that beast out of the room without undoing all we’d just done. After that, there was nothing to do but pay my mattress a visit.

My game plan for the coming months was to take some time to adapt to this new life of mine and to work on my grad school application. I needed to get dialed into services offered by the Alaska Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired and the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation. I needed to get used to coming home to nobody but Maya. There was no end to all I needed to do. With Amber working all day, I had a lot of time to devote to such things. I didn’t even have my guitar for the first couple of weeks, until my stepdad showed up with my truck.

After learning my way around my new place, I started learning my way around Anchorage using public transportation. Regular bus service would cover the basics, but there would be times I’d need to use AnchorRIDES, a shared, door-to-door van service for seniors and people with disabilities. First, I needed to be assessed to see if I qualified. AnchorRIDES picked me up and took me to headquarters, where I provided the required doctor’s note verifying that I was blind, demonstrated I was capable of walking up all of three steps, and that I could handle going up and down a ramp. I had arranged to use the service as my ride home, as well. After passing my assessment, I caned my way to a bench at the Anchorage Transit Center to wait for my departure. I waited and waited and waited. After about an hour, I caned my way back to the office to ask, “Did you guys forget about me?” Assured they hadn’t, I caned my way back to my bench and waited some more. All told, I waited an hour and a half for my ride to show. It took another half hour after that to get home. How was this going to work for graduate school, I wondered. In California, public transportation was so well wired, I rarely waited more than ten minutes. Getting myself around Anchorage was going to be even harder than I’d thought.

Once I was more or less settled into my new place, I had some rounds to make. By then, Dr. Kallman had become a partner in Dr. Ellerbe’s practice, and they invited me in for lunch with some of the staff I’d gotten to know during my outpatient days living in the hotel. Kallman greeted me with the kind of hug you’d expect of an old friend.

“You’re the kind of guy who makes being a doctor worth it,” he told me. “I feel blessed that I was the one on call that night.”

I got a lump in my throat thinking of all the two of us had been through together and the impact we’d had on each other’s lives. Ours, I knew, would be a lifelong bond and friendship.

I also returned to the intensive and progressive care units at Providence hospital. Everyone had been so good to me, from those who held my hand during painful procedures to the nurse who played guitar and sang at my bedside when I was still barely able to move. Amber and I were in the building for an appointment to address some stomach issues I’d developed, and decided on a whim to drop by to see if anyone was around who’d taken care of me.

At the security doors at the ICU, I explained who I was and why I was there, as my brother had on the worst day of his life nearly two years before. The doors clicked and swung open. We walked in.

“Why don’t you wait here a moment and let me go see if I can find anyone who was around back then,” the nurse said.

As word got around the unit, a few who remembered me gathered around near the nurses’ station. I held tight to Amber’s hand and tried not to choke up. I rocked back on my heels and started in.

“It’s hard to know exactly what to say when thanking someone for helping save your life. ‘Thank you’ doesn’t seem powerful enough.” I paused a moment and lifted my chin, distracted by sounds that were way too familiar. I refocused and continued. “It’s all because of your efforts that I’m even standing here. I just want you to know how much I appreciate everything you did for me, and for my family.”

No one said a word for a moment. Then one of them spoke up.

“Thank you, Dan. So often we never hear from people once they leave here.”

“We never know what happened to them,” another said. “It’s rare for a patient to come back to thank us. It really means a lot to us. So thank you for taking the time.”

I wasn’t done. I had to return to the Russian River to try to make peace with the place where I came so close to dying. Amber had three girlfriends visiting from Minnesota that summer who wanted to go fishing, so that’s where we decided to take them. I wasn’t looking forward to it, but if I wanted to move on it had to be done. I steeled myself, and made sure I brought my prayer beads along.

I’d spent so much time coming and going from Cooper Landing, I knew the way by heart. I knew exactly where we were at every major curve along the Sterling Highway. I knew we were approaching the turnoff to the Russian River Campground before the car started to slow. After winding through the campground, we pulled into the Grayling parking lot and I dug my fingernails into my knees. I sat quietly a moment before climbing out of the car. It was the same kind of bluebird day that one had been—T-shirt warm with just enough breeze to keep mosquitoes grounded. A riptide of memories started dragging me under. I shook them from my head. Amber’s friends were there to have a good time, not to get caught up in my post-traumatic drama. As everyone geared up, I stood leaning against the car, facing the treetops, soaking up the sounds of fishing preparations—the swish of neoprene waders, the rattle of fishing poles, the pop of the cooler lid.

For once I wasn’t interested in fishing. It was more important for me to speak with the land since obviously we hadn’t parted on good terms. I loved the Russian too much to spend the rest of my life avoiding it. This would be a solo mission, not something I needed to share with any of the others. Not even Amber.

“You sure you’re okay going down there?”

“I’m as sure as I’m ever going to be. I have to do this, you know.”

“Okay, but if it gets to be too much, just say the word and we’re out of here.”

“I appreciate that, but I am ready for this.”

“Well, if you change your mind . . .”

“I won’t.”

I suggested a hole upriver from the parking lot where she and her friends could avoid the hordes at The Sanctuary. As we clomped down the same set of stairs I’d been hauled up on a backboard two summers before, I struggled to find the balance between thinking too much and thinking too little. Walking toward the junction with Angler Trail, I could feel the thick brush closing in on me. A bear could pop out at any moment, but fear wasn’t going to help me if that happened, and fear wasn’t going to help me move forward in life. Besides, the statistical chances of being mauled twice in the same place had to be overwhelmingly in my favor. That’s what I told myself, anyway.

We turned left at the junction, then headed upriver, as John and I had when we first backed away from the bear. My hands clenched
into fists as we approached the spot where the bear came at me like a rocket.
Keep going, keep going, keep going
. A little farther, in the vicinity of where the bear had dragged me, my shoulders stiffened, my fingernails dug into my palms, and my heart took off in a sprint.
Don’t think, just keep walking. Just walk on by.
I redirected my attention toward the chatter of the river. Just a few more steps, and ground zero was behind me.

When we reached the hole I had in mind, I found a spot to sit along the riverbank while Amber and her friends got after the reds. I rolled up my pant legs, unlatched my sandals, kicked them off, and baptized my feet in the current. I sat down, leaned against my pack, and kneaded the riverbank gravel with both hands, letting the sand and pebbles flow between my fingers. I felt around for some stones and plunked them one by one into the water.

Ker-plunk.

Ker-plunk.

Ker-plunk.

I pushed aside my pack and lay down flat on my back. With the sun warming my face and the Russian washing my feet, I listened to the river rush by and the rustle of leaves in the breeze. I lay there the rest of the afternoon feeling the earth alive and ancient beneath me, fingering my prayer beads.

I doubted I could ever make peace with that haunted patch of ground down the trail; what happened there was too horrific. What was important was to try. The more I walked by it, the less power it would have over me. I hoped someday to return to the exact spot with John and Jaha, to say a prayer and place flowers on my grave. That, I hoped, would be the moment all three of us could cast the bear out of our lives once and for all.

Lee Hagmeier had done a similar closing ceremony, only not until some forty years after his bear. He and Doug Dobyns, the childhood friend who was with him that day, had been bonded for life by what they’d been through together, one at the threshold of death, the other shouldering the burden of trying to keep his friend from passing through it. They were in Juneau at the same time for the first time since their “bear misadventure,” as Lee calls it, and decided to return to the site together to confront what had happened and to carve their initials in a tree.
I’m still moving forward, thank you very much
, Lee thought as they approached the area. Ten years later, he would hold a reception in Juneau commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of his attack, to thank the people of his hometown for all their support through the years.

After my own bear misadventure, forty-four years after his, Lee started a ritual of calling me every year on the anniversary of my mauling to check in with me, to wish me well, and to remind me how lucky we both are to be alive.

While on this roll of tending to unfinished business, another issue I faced that summer was the need to deal with my cabin in Bear Valley. Since I’d never be able to live there it was time to let it go. With a heavy heart, I put a two-line, for-sale-by-owner ad in the classifieds. It wasn’t going to be easy parting with the place, so it was important that it go to the kind of people who’d love it as much as I did. TJ and Audrey (Cotter) Miller were the ones. TJ was working on his master’s degree in adult education at UAA and would later teach outdoor leadership there, and Audrey was in nursing school. They had exactly the same vision for the place that I’d had, to turn it into a real house and raise a family up there someday. They wouldn’t just admire the view, they’d play in the mountains out the front door. Even though some guy offered to pay cash on the spot, I wanted those two to have it enough to do owner financing.

Heading home from the title company after closing, feeling a little low, Amber and I were wishing we’d suggested having a beer together when we pulled up behind them at a stop light. TJ got out of his truck and jogged back to our car. Amber rolled down her window.

“You guys want to go have a beer or something?” he asked.

We laughed. “We were just thinking the same thing.”

They followed us back to my place, we cracked some beers, and that was the beginning of what would become a deep friendship. As it’s turned out, I’ve never had to say goodbye to my cabin. Amber and I have been up there countless times for dinners and jam sessions and walks with the dogs. And New Year’s Eve at the Millers’ has become a tradition. Once again, I felt the universe was looking after me.

I felt it even more strongly as Amber started spending more and more time at my place. It surprised us both how quickly we grew closer in ways that transcended my blindness and the disarray beneath my glasses. She’d show up with her pajamas, toothbrush, and a change of clothes. Then she’d show up with all that plus Hobbit. It got to where she wouldn’t go back to her own house for several days at a time. When she did go home, it was just to do laundry or grab some more clothes. Then she started doing laundry at my house. Then she started stockpiling her clothes.

“Would you mind if I brought some things over to keep here in your closet?” she asked.

I just grinned at her. “We could probably save a bunch of money if you’d just move in down here.”

Practically speaking, she already had. But she was ready to make it official, and gave notice up the hill. The more mornings we woke up together, the more love had trumped her doubts, until it drowned out the noise in her head.

“There’s no way of knowing what’s going to happen down the road,” she said of her decision, as if I, of all people, didn’t profoundly know that. “So why not go with what feels right?”

“I hear ya.”

“Whatever happens between us, at least we can say we gave it our best shot, don’t you think?”

“No question. That’s all anyone can do. Even after what happened, I can’t see going through life never taking risks. There’s more than one way not to be alive.”

Having Amber off during summer break, from early June until school started in September, was exactly what we needed to cinch it. We crammed as much fun as we could into that summer, hitting all the fairs, music festivals, and bonfires we could manage. We danced around our living room. We danced around the living rooms of others. We danced in the rain and danced under the midnight sun. And somehow, when Michael Franti & Spearhead came to town, I ended up dancing with Franti—if you could call it that.

Before Franti’s Bear Tooth show, he’d performed for the kids and staff of my pre-bear employer, Alaska Children’s Services. Jim Maley, head of the organization, a Deadhead from way back and a jam-band fan like me, must have told him my story because Franti recognized me up front by the stage. During his encore song, “Sometimes,” he started tweaking the lyrics while bopping my way.

Sometimes, I feel like I could do anything,

Sometimes, I’m so alive, so alive.

Sometimes . . .