Fireflies, Mukluks and a Grizzly Angel
Christy Doherty
50plus Magazine
The scope of a camera lens can limit our view, and filters can shade the image. Maybe life does that too: familiarity defining our sense of those we love most while eclipsing the rest of their story.
My sweet, aging mom lived in white Keds but prized her snowshoes and Mukluks. Her wild-child Virginia years of hounds, horses, fireflies and hummingbirds never hinted at the great Kodiak Grizzly awaiting her in Alaska. And her teenage dreams of marriage likely didn’t include an Army surplus Jeep packed with modest belongings, sandwiches and a bag of coins.
With shining eyes they drove west.
Odd jobs kept the tank filled until they rendezvoused with friends in sweltering Oklahoma City. One quipped, “I bet it’s not this hot in Alaska.” And the Jeep pointed north.
The woman who loved fine, dainty things wintered in Alaska in a surplus tent with a plywood floor. Twice. Expecting guests one Thanksgiving, she packed in water to mop the floor. It froze.
While her husband Mark worked as a bush pilot, mom honed her legendary shooting skills. Together they packed game out of the beautiful backcountry.
Out there alone one day she froze at the sound of soft sighing. Suddenly a massive Kodiak Grizzly raised up in front of her. Impossibly huge, he held her gaze. Then, as suddenly as he’d appeared, he dropped to all fours and melted into the woods.
Forever after, mom’s nickname was Mama Grizz.
They worked to build out their cabin piecemeal, typical for the ramshackle settlement. Sitting with her years later I asked about another snow-covered cabin.
“Oh, that house burned — I saved their two kids.”
Okay, WHAT? This was news to me — this is a story for Ellen, for Oprah!
This is how she told it to me, reliving every moment:
“Mark shrugged into his worn flight jacket, off to meet clients at his ski plane, the airport a frozen lake. Nobody turned scars into an asset the way he did; everyone — women especially — loved him. He was water to my desert, a magic carpet out of my hometown into the
wildness of life.”
She wondered if she wasn’t the only one who would’ve tried to return to the life she’d been so anxious to escape. If anyone in her family would help her come back home.
In Anchorage, hard people became harder to endure the unforgiving Territory of Alaska. Pondering her options, she decided to stay.
Then she heard the screams.
Blinded by snow-bright sun, her head snapped toward the noise, her feet followed; smoke and flames rose.
The neighbor shrieked, “My babies, my babies!!”
“Where ARE they?” My mom, who wasn’t yet a mom, learned they were inside.
She ran straight into the smoke and flames. The stairs had no handrail. Pressing against the wall she hunched below the smoke. She found the toddler, then the infant. Clutching a little life in each arm, she inched back down the wall, knowing a mistake could send them tumbling.
Bursting from the heat and smoke into the clean, brilliant air, she handed the babes to their mother. Returning home, choking on smoke and emotionally drained, she cried.
The little surviving family left that night with no thank-you or goodbye — just tire tracks in the snow.
I sat stunned. To me, Mom was an 80-something June Cleaver with attitude. How many other experiences — unknown to me — had shaped her?
She loved hummingbirds, puppies and grizzlies; doilies and her Winchester, baking sweet-potato biscuits and shooting 48 out of 50 skeet and trap. She adored the security of home, but had often left it behind.
Through this and so much more, including life as a military wife, she viewed each day with hope and kindness. Decades after enduring the horror of Mark’s death from liver cancer, she faced her own from metastatic breast cancer.
It was during her final days the dreams began. Night after night, a grizzly visited her, curling up on her front porch. The dream visits continued until the morning she didn’t awake; perhaps her grizzly had guided her into eternity.
While unpacking the past with mom, I realized what forged her character, courage and kindness. I’m sure she took untold stories with her. I wish I had asked many more questions — learning all the magic that made her so much more than I realized.
Christy writes from her home office, a few deer trails off the beaten path,
writing about companion animals and extraordinarily kind people.