My favorite time to come, though, is the fall, just before they close the summit for the winter, when the bushes are tinged with burnt red leaves and the peaks are coated with crisp white snow, and there isn’t a soul in sight for miles.
Our adventurous treks were put on hold about five years ago when I brought home a silver husky named Aspen. She was thirteen, and while she loved the hikes, she couldn’t manage the climb. So we kept to easy trails, circling Summit Lake, collecting blueberries and fireweed, and looking for marmots and ptarmigan.
But then Aspen passed, and my father didn’t push to resume our more adventuresome hikes. He’d find excuses to avoid climbing to the ridge. “Next time,” he’d say. Or, “I can’t shake this leg cramp.”
The truth was my father had aged. It’d happened unbeknownst to me, somewhere in the seams of my busy life while I was so focused on what lay ahead for me in five, fifteen, twenty years. Sure, the birthdays passed and the years accumulated. I wasn’t blind to that. But my father was still here, as he had always been—a constant. The reality that he wouldn’t always be lingered in the recesses of my mind, but it was somewhere in the distant future.
And then Wren Fletcher died—too young and too quickly—and I came home from Western Alaska after that funeral, after watching Calla bury a father she’d only just reconnected with, and Jonah say goodbye to a man who’d treated him like a son, and for the first time, I truly noticed how white Dad’s hair had gotten, how wrinkled his hands were, how his gait was no longer that of a sturdy man but of a man who feels every step in his joints.
That’s when I started looking at the future in smaller increments. How much longer will I be able to bend my father’s ear for advice? Five years? Ten?
Will I be standing in this spot in a year’s time, talking out loud to myself, wishing he were around to tell a terrible joke?
“Looks like messy weather moving this way.” He nods toward a thick band of dark clouds moving in over the far ridge. Turning on his heels, he whistles to the dogs once again and begins heading back toward the road and parking lot.
But his pace is meandering, slow. Always a sign that something weighs on his mind. “Marie, you know how proud we are of you. Keeping the clinic going the way you have … Well, it’s made me so happy to be able to look out our kitchen window and see patients coming and going still, after all these years.”
“That’s why I took it over.” Even when I was doing my surgical residency with Wade Phillips in Anchorage, I saw myself coming back to work with my father. When his health problems kicked in, and he started talking about retirement, we struck a deal over apple pie and Coors Light, sitting at their kitchen table. I’d take over and pay my parents rent to cover their bills so they could stay in their home, my childhood home. It was a win-win for all.
“And I know Jim has been riding you a lot about the accounting side of things, but he does mean well. And money is something he understands.”
“Believe me, if there is something Jim is good at, I know that it’s counting every penny.” That and shifting all responsibility for his children to his wife. “But I don’t tell him how to run his accounting business, and I don’t need him telling me how to run my veterinarian business.” Sometimes I wonder if he’s sizing up the clinic’s earnings for my sister’s inheritance.
“See, that’s the thing. There’s always been two sides to this business. The animal care part, which no one’s suggesting Jim knows anything about, but then there’s the other side. You know, all the money stuff. And maybe it couldn’t hurt to have someone who knows that side well step in.”
“We’re doing fine. I have Cory.”
Dad gives me a guarded look. “Marie, you’re a brilliant veterinarian, but I’ve seen the numbers.”
I shrug. “I’m getting by!” Sure, the chunk that goes to my parents and to my student loans is considerable, but I don’t have much else in the way of expenses. “I live rent-free, and my debts could be worse but aren’t, thanks to you guys. I’m doing okay.”
“You could be doing more than okay if you weren’t such a bleeding heart. Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled that you give so much of your time to helping, even when there isn’t a price tag attached to it. Liz could stand to have a bit of that rub off on her.” He says that last part more to himself. “But getting paid for your hard work doesn’t mean you don’t care about these animals. You care too much sometimes. Why else would you be wasting your talents here? You could be working with Wade down in Anchorage. He’d still hire you on—”