Amie Stockholm
Honors hr3
Personal Essay
3/27/01
When I was young, maybe four or five, I would sit with my mother in her garden. She would work busily, her hair clipped on top of her head, crowned by a large hat that shadowed her face, her feet bare, her knees dirty from kneeling in the soft wet topsoil, her hands rough and cracked despite their daily rubbing with clover salve, dirt permanently embedded under their fingernails. The slow murmur of her voice would float on the hot breeze, singing, laughing, and talking. We would talk of the size of the red, red raspberries clinging precariously to their bushes on the south side of the garden, of the busy beetles skittering away as mom turned up their soil, of the large, spiny caterpillars pried away from their perches on the tomato plants and thrown into the chicken pen.
"What are clouds made of?" I would ask on a day when the fresh breeze blew large clouds across the sky like ships on a bright blue sea.
"Water and dirt and a million other things that float up in the air and stick together," she would answer, never ceasing the pull, pull, pulling of the tiny two-leafed weeds that seemed to always spring up overnight.
We would sit, each in our own solitary thoughts, enjoying the hot, sweet breeze that never seemed to cease on this side of the mountains, listening to the twitter of the little birds, the almost nonexistent rush of the Columbia racing deep along its bed, and the rhythmic clackety-clackety-thump of the train running along its track on the other side of the river. When the Amtrak would go by, we would stand up and wave to the passengers, each staring out of their own little window at the world rushing by. Most of the time they would wave back.
And so it would be every day through the spring, summer, and fall. When the dandelions turned the lawn into spring sunshine we would crawl around in the grass picking them. The flowers we threw over the fence into the field, but the tough green leaves we threw in Mom?s many gathering baskets for her to once again try to make dandelion wine. Every day I would climb the huge old apricot tree in the backyard and inspect its fruit for the first sign of ripening. Many times I would climb back down with a sour, puckered face from being unable to keep from biting into the hard little green fruits, looking for the slightest tingle of the sweetness yet to come.
When the grapes ripened, about the time I would begin to climb down the tree with a smile on my face, we would gather Mom's baskets together again and fill them overflowing with clusters of the dusky fruits growing from the tangle of vines that clung from the fence lining our driveway from the road to the house. We would pick until we were sure there were no more hiding under their large leaves, then fill the old washtub full of grapes. We would pretend to gag with disgust as Mom would lower her clean feet into the mass of grapes, dancing and squishing and making faces to make us laugh. Later, with comically purple-stained feet, Mom would take the newly bottled wine into the basement and set it next to its aging dandelion cousins, near shelves housing jars of canned vegetables, stewed tomatoes, dried fruits, and bunches of fragrant herbs hung to dry.
When the salmon were running, Mom would take us a few miles up the river to Rocky Reach Dam, and we'd feed lettuce to the rabbits that lived in the hedges there. With the lettuce on the ground near us to entice the braver of the rabbits to come to us, we would sit there and survey the scene before us. It always amazed me, the power of this huge man-made block of stone and metal. On one side of the dam, there was a deep body of water, too deep to be thought of as a real river. On the other side, the towering wall of stone dominated the scene, and merely a tiny trickle of water escaped out of the many doors to run along the banks toward the sea. It was this side of the dam that interested me the most, for here is where the life-and-death struggle was going on. On either side of the dam were a series of steps, water rushing down them, leading to the level of the water on the other side. Looking at these steps, every few seconds there could be seen a flash of silver, leaping into the air, flashing, twisting, and falling back. The salmon were running, forcing their tired bodies to swim up the river against the current. They would come from the sea, where the Columbia emptied its water, and swim toward the spawning beds high in the mountains where they had been born. Here they would reach the dam, and face their greatest challenge. Here they would throw their battered bodies, mangled and discolored, again and again at the steps, trying time and time again to gain one step up.
During this time of year, when the river teamed with salmon, came my favorite outing with my dad. We would take out old Toyota Landcruiser, baby blue, battered from too many treks up dry streambeds and abandoned logging roads, and head up the Entiat River. The river, like the road, wound round and round, having carved its meandering path deep into the mountain over years and years of the snow in the mountains melting and rushing down its path, creating a deep canyon that echoed with the sound of the icy water pounding against the banks. We would stop many times along the road, walking to the edge of the rushing water and peering into the still places along the banks. We would walk out on the old plank bridges and peer down into the shadowy places under the bridge.
"Do you see anything?" Dad would ask.
"No," I would reply.
"Look again," he would urge. Sure enough, on a second inspecting of the places among the bank I would spot it, shining and silvery in the moving water. Dad would take out his long handled net and sneak up behind the salmon, careful not to let his shadow fall over the resting fish. He would slip his net slowly into the water behind it and, with one powerful swing of his arm, bring the net around the fish and raise it, thrashing and struggling, out of the water. Placing his foot on the wriggling fish?s neck, Dad would use his long fishing knife to cut the net, and then place it into the waiting cooler in the Landcruiser.
That night, the house would fill with people; everyone showed up when there was a rumor Mom was cooking. The tantalizing aroma of the salmon baking in the deep fire pit outside would waft through the window and contrast with the spicy scent of Mom's special chili renos baking in the oven. Outside, as Dad reigned over the fire in the yard, his musician friends would encircle it and delight the partygoers with their impromptu playing of guitars and drums. Tyler, our drunken neighbor, would wander over with his whiskey bottle and join the festivities. I would sit on the outskirts of the firelight, proud to have been a part of the catching of the salmon and being able to stay up late with the adults, would watch the fruit bats fly through the smoke overhead.
Throughout the year, we went in pace with the seasons. When the fruit ripened, Mom would get crates of apples, peaches, nectarines, pears, and cherries from our orchard-dwelling friends, and crates of apricots from our own backyard. We would sit in the kitchen for hours, slicing, pitting, and juicing. By the time fall came, and the leaves were turning shades of brown, the basement and the cupboards would be full of jars of dried fruit, and bottled fruit juices. Before school each morning in the winter, I would eat a bowl of oatmeal with dried fruit in it. When the first snow fell, we would sit in Tyler's outdoor hot tub, laughing as we watched the snowflakes melt in the steam wafting up from the bubbling water. In the quiet evenings, Mom would sit and sew, crochet, make jewelry, or weave baskets. It was peaceful.
When I was eight, and my sisters were five and two, we moved to Minnesota. My parents split up, and Mom started working. The days seemed to be shorter than they had been before. We rushed to get ready in the morning, getting dropped off at daycare as Mom would rush work, going to school, and coming home to do homework, eat, and go to sleep. Only occasionally would there be the chance for a walk in the fields, or to sit and watch the deer come down to the pond to drink. The summers were our only times to really be, it seemed, but even then it was not the same. Dad would take us to the places we wished to see. We would stare out the windows of the RV at the beautiful scenery passing by. We would go to the mountains to camp, walk the well-groomed trails during the day, and watch our generator-run TV in the night, eating microwave popcorn. We would go to the seashores where once as a child I had run wholeheartedly into the water, trusting someone to save me if I went too deep. The water never seemed quite as warm, quite as exciting, and I jumped back quickly if the waves reached above my knees. When we would fly home, I would claim the window-seat and watch the landscape passing beneath me. We would pass over the Wenatchee Valley, where we used to live, and I would recognize it only by spotting the change in the river at Rocky Reach Dam. It seemed I was always watching out the window.
Now I'm in my senior year of high school, and am taking classes at college. It's odd to look back on my childhood. There doesn't seem like there could be any wider a gap between my life then and my life now. We live in town now, and the only time I am outside is to walk to and from my car, to and from my classes, or to and from the store. Even on a beautiful spring day, my only concession to the sunlight is to put on my sunglasses to block the glare. When I walk to and from class at college, I take care to step over and around puddles I might have once happily stepped in, only to save my shoes. On a plane ride to Costa Rica last summer, I gave up my window seat to someone more interested. The earth all looks the same after a while. The only thing that marks the change of the seasons in my life is the change in what I wear, and it seems that I've become completely unaware of the beauty of my surroundings.
We still go to the mountains and the ocean in the summer, and that is perhaps the only time I find myself moved by nature. It is awe-inspiring to sit on the rocky coast and watch the power of the sea pounding upon the rocks. The mountains still make me feel like a tiny child in their shadow. Sometimes I think of times when I was younger, and it saddens me to think that I am now one of those people in the Amtrak windows, watching the world go by. I do what I am expected to do, go to school, go to work, go out with friends, but at times I am moved to just be alone. When visiting a college campus over the summer, I amused my friends by saying, "If I lived here, I would spend all my time sitting in that tree." It wasn't a joke to me though, because truthfully, a crook in a tree seemed much more attractive than the library or study areas. Squirrels sometimes make much better company than humans.
It saddens me to think of how much society is like those salmon from my childhood. We live our lives, beating ourselves against the current, only to reach the top and die. It might be worth it to sit back and see what exactly we're striving for. Is this life, urbanized and pollution filled, really better for all its advances? What have cars, planes, and railroads really gained us? Just a life of looking through windows at the world. Perhaps it is unrealistic to think of returning to a simpler time of life, but by making our lives so much easier, it seems that we have taken much of the simple enjoyment out of them. Perhaps it is harder to dry the fruit for my oatmeal in the morning, as opposed to just buying it from the store, but it is the drying of the fruit that I remember fondly from my childhood. How much satisfaction is there to get out of the usual morning cup of coffee and pop-tart? Driving to the top of a mountain, to survey a beautiful scene, is not nearly as satisfying as collapsing, bone-tired, at the top after a long day of backpacking up that same mountain. The tallest skyscraper will never hold the beauty of the mountains. I dread the time in the future when society's quest for the easier life has taken all the enjoyment out of working hard for something, when the few places not covered with roads and houses have been bulldozed. I have no answers to this circumstance, merely regrets. As society gets more advanced, the members of it get more depressed, more suicidal, more violent. It is hard to find simple satisfaction in living life anymore. Perhaps it is irrevocable, but in our lives of rushing from child, to student, to spouse, to parent, to death, shouldn't there be time to enjoy life? Shouldn't that fit in to our busy schedule somewhere?
