had been such a long climb was nothing to an eighteen-year-old.
I looked up what childhood friends remained, or their parents. I was struck with how much I liked the place and the people.
I remembered that when I was a little girl in Ironwood, there was one family that had a son, Bobby, who was older than me. My memories of him were not good. He would bully me again and again. He liked to trick me into getting on the bench swings of the old metal swing sets. He’d swing the entire thing so hard and high that it seemed the entire swing set would topple over. I would scream and cry in fear.
Bobby was the boy who wouldn’t let me take refuge in his house as a thunderstorm approached one day. In Ironwood, you could see storms approaching on the horizon, all dark, low clouds and menace. I hated thunderstorms and was always fearful my grandmother’s house would be struck by lightning.
That day at Bobby’s, he had given me no choice but to run all out for my grandmother’s house across a large field. I may never forget that day, out in the open in a full-on thunderstorm, getting soaked in the downpour. Terrified.
Now that I was all grown up, I looked forward to confronting that little SOB Bobby.
Bobby’s mom was named Stella. She, like the rest of the families that lived in Jessieville just outside Ironwood, had been a friend to my mom and to me.
When I arrived, Stella and Bobby’s younger brother greeted me warmly. Then we waited for Bobby to arrive.
“Bobby loved you so much,” Stella said. “He still talks about you and always wondered what happened to you.”
Huh? Are we talking about the same Bobby here? I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Should I tell her what he had done to me? What my memories were?
I decided against it. Then Bobby walked in the door. He practically had tears in his eyes when we hugged. He was handsome, polite, and soft-spoken.
I don’t know if I ever told him of my memories of growing up with him. I might have been too shocked to think of what to say. What would be the use of dragging up bad memories? I just let it go.
During that trip, I visited my mother’s gravesite for the first time. She was buried in a downtown plot with her parents, my grandparents Marietta and Paulo Chiaravalle. I suppose that was the right place for her, and I took some comfort in that. But her headstone gave Chiaravalle as her last name, with no mention of Rich.
I thought that someday I would go back and buy a new headstone and include her married name. I have yet to do that.
AFTER MICHIGAN, I headed east to Rhode Island to meet up with the friends I had met in Alaska. My bass-playing boyfriend and I had parted ways, so I continued on alone.
In Rhode Island, I experienced another first. My friend and I took a day trip to Block Island, a popular vacation area. At one point, I stood in the surf for a photo. My friend yelled at me to turn around, and just as I did, I was overcome by a wave of water. For the first time ever, I tasted saltwater.
I had made my way across the entire continent. It was time to go home.
THAT FALL, MANY of my classmates from Steller headed for Ivy League or other storied private colleges in New England. Others chose schools that specialized in arts and crafts, or unique trade school programs, such as a wooden-boat-building school in England.
Initially, I wanted something akin to my experience at Steller, so I found an alternative music program at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington. However, my life took another turn.
Someone wrangled me into volunteering at the State Democratic Party headquarters.
It was 1976, the bicentennial of the nation’s birth. Jimmy Carter was running for the presidency. Young people were energized by his campaign. I’d been accepted to college, but I deferred my admission as I got swept up in my first and last foray into politics. What I got for my volunteer time was the promise of a job in Juneau as a page in the Alaska House of Representatives.
After Carter’s win in November of that year, I packed my bags and moved to Juneau with little money and little idea just how hard such a move would be.
It was the middle of winter. I arrived in a small town that was cut off from the rest of the world except by plane or boat.
I have needed knee-high rubber boots two times in my adult life: in Juneau and in New York City. Both have bitter rain and snow storms. Of all the places I have been, both have the most expensive housing, and people are willing to live in the most God-awful places. And despite the massive size difference between the two—Juneau had about twenty-five thousand residents in the late 1970s, and New York City over seventy million—both seemed to be the center of the universe.
CHAPTER 4
Living Back to Nature Can Be Hazardous to Your Health
To this day, I have dreams about being in Juneau. And nightmares. Few towns or cities exist in such a spectacular setting. Juneau lies between mountain peaks of the Alaska Coast Range to the east and a handful of channels, bays, and inlets to the west. From Downtown Juneau, one has to walk only a few streets to find the side of a mountain or a wilderness trail along the beach.
Alaska is a land of extremes, and this is certainly true for Juneau. On a sunny day, there is no place more beautiful on earth; during a winter storm, there are few places more miserable. Southeast Alaska is so different in climate and popular culture from the rest of the state that my moving there was in many ways like moving to Arizona. I found myself in a place radically different from any I had known before.
In Arizona and again in Juneau, I fell in love with the place and people. I found a niche and discovered more about myself—even if I had to do it the hard way.
A historic gold mining town with an ancient and rich Native history, the city is located in Alaska’s Inside Passage, the lengthy archipelago of islands and waterways along the northern Pacific Coast adjacent to Canada. It’s where you or someone you know has been on an Alaska cruise. Alaska is now one of the most popular cruise destinations in the world, but when I moved there, the cruise industry was virtually nonexistent. The town was a mix of isolationism and worldliness, and residents tended to identify more with Seattle and the Pacific Northwest than with Anchorage. In fact, many Juneau residents then and now despise Anchorage. Hate it. It’s a feeling not uncommon all across the state toward Alaska’s largest city, ostensibly the biggest recipient of state financial resources and attention. With Juneau, it gets personal.
The day I arrived, even my cab driver ranted about hating Anchorage. When I asked if he’d ever been there, he replied, “The airport.”
His response was so common that I began telling people I was from Eagle River, a suburb just north of Anchorage.
“Ah, Eagle River,” someone might say. “That sounds nice.”
Juneauites hate Anchorage because for years legislators from the northern parts of Alaska have tried in vain to move the state capital to the Anchorage area, or at least somewhere on the state’s limited highway system. That’s where most of the state’s population lives—more than half in Anchorage alone. This is because no highway or even rail service connects Juneau to the rest of the state. None. Zero. The only way to get to Juneau is by air or sea—when everything isn’t shut down due to a severe storm.
Juneau
