North of Normal- A memoir of my wilderness childhood, my unusual family, and how I survived both

by Cea Sunrise Person

  And then the bear came.

  ONE MORNING, MY FAMILY walked outside the tipi to be greeted by a chewed plastic cooler, a mess of ripped wax paper and a huge pile of bear poop. Of all the people who might forget to put our food back in the tree platform, my grandfather was the least likely culprit. But even he wasn’t perfect. Wiping tears from her eyes, Grandma Jeanne assembled everything we had left while her husband and daughters gathered around: a few dried mushrooms, some nuts, a little pemmican, basic baking supplies. For the first time that year, our situation was dire.

  “It’s okay,” Papa Dick assured us, lifting his hunting rifle down from its antler rack. “I’ll go hunting.” And he did, but returned later that afternoon empty-handed.

  “We could ask the Indians . . .” Mom ventured, but Papa Dick shook his head.

  “They just gave us a tipi. We can’t go to them again. Anyway,” he said, pulling out a large zip-lock bag from beneath his bed, “I have these. An excellent source of protein. I collected them last summer, exactly for an emergency like this.”

  My family gazed at the bag in horror.

  That evening there was stew for dinner. Ravenous, I ate mine without hesitation, but the women dawdled over their bowls. “Just eat it,” Papa Dick kept saying. “It’s delicious. You won’t know unless you try.” He finished his bowl and started another, but still no one followed suit. “Oh, for cripe’s sake,” he said finally, setting his spoon down. “What’s wrong with you people?”

  The next day, my grandfather shouldered his rifle and vowed not to return until he had meat to bring home. The women settled in to wait, knowing this could mean anywhere from a few hours to a week or more. But despite their grumbling tummies, not one of them would touch Papa Dick’s stew. They happily gave it all to me, and I, just as gladly, cleaned my bowl night after night.

  With little to do while we waited, my mother and aunts busied themselves with trapping mice and skinning their hides to make polishing rags. And my Aunt Jan, always the funny one in the family, thought it would be hilarious to teach me to say the name of my favorite new food.

  “Bug stew,” I said obediently, smacking my lips. “Yummy-yum. Bug stew.”

  BY LATE SPRING, MY mother had had about enough of being single to last her a lifetime. The problem, of course, was that the pickings around our camp were rather slim. Other than Randall, there was no one she was interested in, and Randall was already attached to a woman in his own camp. But one evening, Jessie knocked over a kerosene lamp and caught our tipi on fire, and everything changed.

  Our floor was made from packed dirt overlain with fir boughs. The boughs had to be changed every few weeks, or the dried brown needles would crumble and cling to everything we owned. “Changing the floor” was a job that no one enjoyed much, so as a result, it hadn’t been done since we’d moved into our new tipi. Jessie was washing dishes when she knocked a lantern sideways with her elbow. Within seconds the flames spread across the floor, the dried needles perfect as kindling, sending a trail of fire toward the tipi shell before anyone even had time to react. Grandma Jeanne grabbed the water pail and doused the flames, then sat on the floor and cried. It wasn’t the three-foot hole in the canvas that had moved her to tears; her swan chair was ruined, and she had loved that chair more than any piece of furniture she could remember owning.

  That night, we slept in the Indians’ cooking tent. I went to bed with my mother beside me, and woke up alone. She bounded in as I was eating my breakfast, sweeping me into a giant hug. I stuck close to her all day, as if sensing a change in her. And indeed there was. She had spent the night with the Indian chief, and she had already told her sisters that she was madly in love.

  WHEN MOM FELL FOR a man, she did so like someone jumping from a cliff without first checking the terrain below. No matter what the consequences, it was the giddy feeling of attracting a man’s attention that she lived for. I remember almost nothing about Mom’s affair with Randall, except looking at him and hating him because he had stolen my mother from me. She began spending her nights at the Indian camp, leaving my care to the rest of my family. I would chase her across the meadow and try to cross the log bridge after her, sobbing inconsolably until one of my aunts came to lead me home.

  But by the time the last of the snow had melted, Randall and my mother were finished. Crocuses sprouted in our meadow and the river began to flow freely, but Mom hardly noticed. She stayed in the tipi day and night, nursing her heartache. I would lay beside her, stroking her arm while she cried and wanting nothing more than for her to come back to me. When she didn’t, I finally left her and went back to my play.

  I don’t remember falling into the river, but I do recall the feel of the current as it pulled me downstream. I flailed for something to grasp, but the rocks and branches in my path all slipped away. I must have screamed, because I can still see my Aunt Jan’s face as she appeared at the shore beside me, her eyes wild with terror. She lunged into the water and made a grab for my ankle. Dragging me onto the rocky shore, she turned me on my side and let me cough until my lungs cleared. Then she scooped me up and brought me to my mother.

  “There!” Jan yelled at her, dropping me unceremoniously onto the bed. “Are you satisfied? Your daughter just damn near drowned. Now will you please pull your head out of Randall’s sorry ass and start being a mother again?”

  Mom looked back at her sister with wide eyes, then ran to my side and crushed my soaked body into hers, sobbing.

  Over the mountains, the sun was high. Summer had arrived, and we had survived our first year in the wilderness.

  Chapter Five

  How great my sorrow

  And light my joy

  That such a one as she should even be

  A child of nature, love, goodness

  Belonging and shared

  To many, by many

  Tomorrow is an endless trail

  And would that on it

  We should meet someday—

  Then will be our time

  Wow. Isn’t that lovely?” Mom asked me, wiping away a tear. “It’s all about you.”

  I kept my eyes on the ground, focused on the wall of pebbles I was building around a yellow caterpillar. She’d been reading a letter, and it wasn’t the first time she had tried to interest me in the topic of my father, but I wasn’t biting. Anyway, I already knew everything about him: his name was Greg, he lived in California and he sent Mom a hundred dollars each month to help support me.

  Mom refolded the letter and tucked it carefully back into the envelope. “Sometimes I wonder if . . .” Her voice trailed off as she gazed into the distance. “You know, sweetheart, your dad said he’d really dig a new picture of you, but I think we can do even better than that. Hey . . .” She placed her finger under my chin and tipped my face up to hers. “You’re two and a half years old now, and it’s about time you met your father. We’re going to California, honey. What do you think about that?”

  I continued stacking my rocks, nonplussed, but Mom wasn’t concerned. Everything would change, she was certain, when father and daughter saw each other in the flesh. Although her heart was still bruised from Randall, deep down she knew she would go back to my father in a second if he asked.

  Arrangements were made. Papa Dick agreed to drive us as far as the highway, and my mother sent Greg a note saying we would be arriving in Sunnyvale within a couple of weeks—it was hard to say exactly when, since we would be hitchhiking—along with a copy of my astrological chart. Sag sun, Sag ascendant, and Leo moon. His daughter was a triple ball of fire, Mom enthused, and she just knew he was going to love me. He wrote back saying he would take some time off his new teaching job to see us, but his bachelor apartment was too small for guests so he had arranged for us to stay with his parents. He also said he was certain he’d love me on sight.

  TEN DAYS AFTER MY mother and I left our tipi camp, I sat at my new grandparents’ dining table staring at an untouched glass of milk. I had never seen milk before, and although I w
as impressed by its pure whiteness, the smell of it was making me feel a little sick. Across the table, my new grandparents grinned at me gamely. My grandfather had a ring of gray hair around his head, and my grandmother kept asking me if I wanted to learn how to play cards. I slid off my chair and climbed into my mother’s lap, refusing to talk.

  I had no idea what to make of these people, but their house was a different matter. When I was finally set free to explore, I tore through the rooms, picking up and dropping everything in sight. When I discovered the bathroom, I flushed the toilet so many times that Mom finally had to come in and drag me away from it, causing me to throw myself on the floor in a screaming fit. To calm me down, my grandparents led me into the backyard and showed me their aboveground swimming pool. After an hour of splashing me playfully while I floated, my grandmother smiled broadly when I let her lift me from the water. “Glamma,” I said to her, shaking my wet hair over my face. “Glamma and Gampa have a nice pool.”

  IF I WARMED TO my grandparents rather quickly, the same cannot be said of how I reacted to my father. The day after my mother and I arrived, I was sitting on my grandparents’ back step with a bottle of Dr Pepper in my hand. My grandparents seemed to be an endless source of new things to drink, and this was the most interesting so far. My mother, craving a toke, watched me from across the yard while she contemplated taking a walk to the park to get a fix. From inside the house, a door opened and shut. I took a sip from the bottle, and my mouth flooded with my first heavenly taste of refined sugar.

  “Cea,” a man’s voice said softly above me. “Hi. I’m Greg. I’m your father.”

  Mom smiled at me encouragingly, but instead of looking up, I picked up my bottle again and drained it.

  My father waited until I was finished, then sat down beside me on the stoop.

  “I . . . I’ve waited so long to meet you. Can I just look at you?” I turned to him briefly, and he broke into a smile. “You’re beautiful. Just like your pictures.”

  He touched me lightly on the shoulder. I didn’t pull away, so he tried to put his arm around me. I jumped up.

  “No!” I yelled, running into the house.

  This was not how my father had planned our meeting. But then he had an idea. Dropping down on all fours, he followed behind me and began to chant. “Oh, little gir-r-1-1! I’m going to get you! I’m going to g-e-e-e-t you!”

  That did it. I turned on him, holding my hand like a stop sign in front of his face. “No, no, no!” I said furiously. “Now stop it, asshole!”

  MOM SAID THAT UNTIL our trip to California, she hadn’t ever realized what a potty-mouth I had. After this memorable moment, my father stood up and brushed his knees off, saying to no one in particular that perhaps he’d try again later. But things didn’t improve much. The following day I ignored him except for the one time I ran past him shrieking “Quick, get my boots, I gotta shit!” at the top of my lungs. I was so used to living in a tipi that despite my fascination with my grandparents’ bathroom, I really didn’t understand its purpose. Everyone had a laugh, but my grandparents worried at my behavior. They had already witnessed me tearing around their yard yelling “Fuckin’ ant! Get this fuckin’ ant off me!” after I found one crawling on my leg, and calling out “Mom, come wipe my twat!” while squatting beside their pool to take a pee. If this was how I acted in the city, they could only wonder at what my life must be like in the wilderness.

  On our last evening in Sunnyvale, my grandparents waited until I had gone to bed, and then sat down to have a chat with my mother. Mom said later that she didn’t remember much of what was said, but she would never forget their last few sentences. “It must be terribly difficult for you,” my grandmother said. “Being out in the bush like that, no running water and such. Anyway, we’ve talked about it, and Greg . . . well, we all know he’s just not ready to take on a responsibility like this right now, but . . . we’d like to take Cea. To raise her. She’d have a good life, better than . . . I mean, you’re just . . . so young. Have you thought about school for her?”

  Mom shook her head, trying to absorb their words. “No,” she said finally. “No.”

  My grandparents exchanged glances and waited, unsure if she was referring to their offer or their question about schooling, but my mother said nothing further. Finally, she wiped her eyes and wordlessly rose from her seat.

  Just before we left the next morning, my father tried to pick me up one last time while my mother snapped a photo. In the picture, I’m arching away from him and crying while he looks at me with a soldiering smile. Mom said that when she looked at that photo, she finally knew it was over between them.

  As for me, I’m not sure if this meeting really counts. Mom said that when she mentioned it to me a few months later back at the tipi camp, I had no idea what she was talking about.

  This is the photo my mom took of my dad, Greg, and me at the end of that first ill-fated visit.

  Chapter Six

  This,” said my grandfather in a loud voice, waving a piece of paper in the air as he paced in front of the fire, “is the ultimate irony. Can all of you see what I have here?”

  His audience gazed at the object in his hand. “A check. It looks like a check,” someone said, and Papa Dick nodded.

  “Indeed. A tax-return check, from the U.S. government.”

  “Hey, wait a minute,” a man heckled from a fireside log. “You mean you paid taxes?”

  Papa Dick smiled broadly, not missing a beat. “Sure I did, once upon a time. Like all good Americans, I watched more than a third of my paycheck get stuffed into some corrupt government official’s pocket. That’s when I decided I needed to quit forestry, stop paying The Man. So I start my climbing instructor business, and what do they do? Continue to rob me blind. So finally I say, hey, man, this is bullshit, and decide to switch things up a bit—”

  “Switch things up how?” the heckler interjected, but Papa Dick just grinned and shook a finger at him.

  “Find your own way, man, find your way. There’s more than one way to skin a politician.” Then my grandfather stood up straight, pausing for effect. “So there you have it, folks. The U.S. government, an institution I once fled from, will now fund my antigovernment lifestyle.” Everyone laughed and clapped, but even then he wasn’t finished. He adjusted his cowboy hat and held the piece of paper over the fire, not quite close enough for the flames to touch it. “The number on this check isn’t small,” he went on. “In fact, it would probably support my family for a couple of years. That’s right—a couple of years. So the question is, what’s more important? Sticking with your principles, or”—he snatched his hand back and stuffed the check in his shirt pocket—“sticking it to the government? I’ll take choice number two, anytime I can!” His audience broke into cheers, and Papa Dick finally bowed and took a seat by the fire.

  It was our second summer in the Kootenay Plains, and much had changed for my family. Our camp now included three tipis, each with its own woodstove, a summer lean-to kitchen, and a generous sprinkling of nylon tents, all of them occupied. My grandfather had achieved his dream, but even more important to him, he was now spreading his philosophy to others. It had all begun with a few letters to friends. He had started writing them during our first winter, telling of our lifestyle and inviting visitation. My grandfather’s mission was not to recruit cohabitants for our camp as one would for a commune, but to teach others our way of life and then send them out to create their own. With a little education and inspiration, Papa Dick determined, anyone could—and should—live as we did.

  It seemed that his friends agreed with him. A trickle of them had arrived after my mother and I returned from California, but it was nothing compared to the flood that would descend on us a year later. They came from everywhere—deserters and draft dodgers we had met during our time in Hills, free-love-and-marijuana-saturated folks from Minnesota, Missouri and Chicago in search of a more concrete movement than the loose promise of change that had yet to fully materialize in Am
erica. And my grandfather was a practical man. The visitors ate his food, smoked his home-grown weed and benefited from his knowledge, so he began to request a small fee. Before long, his unstructured daily teachings had become more formalized. He would round up his charges in the mornings and teach them how to fish and gut trout, how to skin and cook a porcupine, how to build a lean-to with a fire under it in the pouring rain, and how to fit enough survival items into a small knapsack to keep them thriving for a month. After a nightly game dinner provided by Grandma Jeanne, there would be parties around the outdoor fire pit complete with rock ’n’ roll music and wild strawberry punch, occasionally spiked with LSD by one of the visitors. No one seemed to mind parting ways with their cash for such an experience.

  By the middle of that second summer, our camp was overflowing with long-haired strangers, all in various degrees of undress as they clenched joints between their smiling lips. My grandfather encouraged nudity, casting dark glances at those fully clothed, but he did not insist upon it. Most often it was the women who shed their clothing first, lounging topless against their bell-bottomed men while inhaling pot smoke from their lovers’ mouths. Boisterous laughter and deep discussions infused our camp, but most of the visitors knew better than to talk about war or politics within earshot of my grandfather. Such topics returned the speaker’s energy to the woes of society, Papa Dick cautioned, which defeated the whole purpose of escaping it. “Talk the life you want to live,” he would say, “and block the one you don’t.” The visitors nodded and murmured “Right on, man,” as my grandfather spoke, beholden to his courageous choices. And it was during this time that the legendary government check came, acting as the perfect punctuation mark to my grandfather’s successful new venture and high place among his pupils.