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

by Cea Sunrise Person

  “Yeah. And they had a baby, I guess I forgot to tell you. That must be it right there. Looks like they had a girl.”

  Married? A baby girl? I felt a sharp stab of jealousy. “Should . . . should we say hi?” I asked.

  Mom shook her head. “I don’t think so. I don’t think he wants anything to do with his past. Last I heard, he even changed his name.”

  As I stood staring at him, Karl suddenly looked up and saw us. He lifted his chin a little bit, and then his face broke into a smile.

  Mom nudged me from behind. “Let’s go,” she said, her voice a whisper.

  AFTER OUR FERRY DOCKED in Vancouver, Mom and I walked out to the highway to begin the sixteen-hundred-mile journey to Carcross. Mom figured it would take two days, three tops, as there weren’t many people who could pass by the sight of a mother and daughter standing at the side of the road.

  The first half of the trip went without a hitch. As Mom had predicted, we caught rides easily with nice people who made small talk and shared their lunches with us. Other hitchhikers were kind. Competition for rides was sometimes fierce, but the other travelers were either backpack-laden young singles or couples, so they would happily wave us over in the direction of a braking car. At night, after snacking on our supply of fruit and granola, we would unroll our sleeping bags and sleep in the trees by the side of the road.

  One time, on a particularly scorching day after we were dropped off, Mom decided to head to the town center in search of water. We trudged past gas stations and fast-food joints, but she still didn’t stop.

  “Mom, where are we going?” I asked, dragging my feet in the heat.

  “Just follow me. You’ll see.” Several minutes later, she stopped in front of a tiny bookstore. I gazed in the window longingly at the display of children’s books. “It’s been a while since you’ve had a new book,” she said, “and I know how you love to read.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.” She smiled, taking my hand and pulling me inside. “Pick one out. Whatever you want.”

  I took forever, hemming and hawing as I flipped through each book and read the back covers, finally settling on a thick chapter book about a girl who travels to Alaska with her family. We walked back to the highway, and I sat down on the gravel shoulder to read while we waited for a ride. Mom rummaged through her knapsack and finally pulled out an apple and a plastic bag with a handful of crumbly granola in one corner.

  “I’m hungry,” I said offhandedly.

  She blinked, and then held the food out to me. “Here you go, sweetie.”

  “Thanks.” I took it and settled back on my pack. Beside me, my mother was still.

  I understood then that she had spent her very last dollar on that book for me. I ate half the apple and then pretended to be full, handing it back to her along with the granola. Mom and I were in this together.

  In the end, I didn’t even like the book I picked out, but I forced myself to read it and tell her how much I loved it so she would know it had been worth the sacrifice.

  ON THE THIRD DAY, our luck changed. Our ride dropped us off on a lonely strip of highway between Prince George and Dease Lake, where the evergreen-speckled landscape rolled out flat from the road to distant hills. Only two vehicles passed within an hour, each of their drivers shrugging apologetically as they gestured at their full back seats. Mom and I sat on our packs, reading our books and batting at tiny black flies as we waited.

  I was the first to see the car coming. It was long and blue with a busted-out headlight, and it looked empty other than its driver. I grabbed Mom’s arm and pointed.

  “Let’s hope for the best,” she said, and stood up. She stuck out her thumb, but the car didn’t stop.

  I saw the driver’s face turn toward us as he passed by, and I was suddenly glad he hadn’t. He was very thin, with a receding hairline and a hooked nose. He looked like a vulture. I turned to say something to Mom about him, and then I saw his brake lights go on.

  “He’s stopping!” Mom said, grabbing her pack. “Let’s go!”

  I picked up my bag and followed her. Mom pulled open the passenger door and said something, then chucked her pack onto the back seat. “He’s going our way,” she said to me happily over her shoulder. “Come on, get in.”

  Mom slid in and waved at the back seat, but I squeezed in beside her instead. The man pulled back onto the highway and snapped the stereo on. Loud heavy metal music filled the car. “Do you mind?” Mom said to him with a smile, reaching out to adjust the volume. “Just a little.”

  The man shrugged and flipped his visor down, then took a joint out from behind an elastic band. “You up for a j?” he asked Mom, pushing the lighter into the dashboard.

  I stared at the air freshener swinging from the rearview mirror, praying she would say no.

  “Not just now,” she said, smiling again. “But thanks. So do you . . . live around here?”

  The man laughed, showing us a mouthful of yellow teeth. “Not exactly,” he replied.

  “Ah.” Mom joined me in gazing at the air freshener.

  The man lit his joint and inhaled.

  “So. What’s the likes of a gal like you doing out here on a lonely road?” he asked finally.

  “Going to see my parents. They live in the Yukon.”

  “Is that so. Leaving your man, then, are you?” He laughed again, and Mom blushed.

  “No, I just . . . I wanted to take my daughter to see them,” she replied, waving a hand at me.

  The man reached out and turned the music off. Telephone poles snapped by in a blur. I glanced sideways at him. He had a grin on his face but it didn’t look the least bit friendly. Worse than that, I noticed something that made my stomach drop: around his right calf was a leather strap with a knife handle sticking out of it.

  The man let his right hand drop down to the seat, and then he slid it up Mom’s thigh. Mom reached down and carefully removed it. He put it back on her leg again. She stared straight ahead. I swallowed hard.

  “Gas ain’t cheap, you know,” the man said. “How about a little payback?”

  “I, uh, that’s not—”

  “Come on, lady,” he said forcefully. He was grabbing at her crotch now, rubbing it through her jeans. She looked scared.

  “Look, my daughter is here, can’t we just—”

  “Get a room or something? No, I don’t think so. Look around, lady, there’s nothing around here for miles.”

  My stomach went liquid with fear. He was right. We hadn’t even seen a gas station since long before our last ride had dropped us off, and that driver had told us we wouldn’t for quite some time yet.

  “Well no, just—”

  “Mommy,” I cut in loudly, “I have to go to the bathroom. Really bad. Number two.”

  “Listen,” Mom said to the man. “Can we just . . . she can go in the bushes, okay? She’s just a kid. I’m sure you don’t want her to have an accident on your seat.”

  “Goddamn it,” he said, hitting the brakes. “Make it fast.”

  “I will,” I replied quickly, my tummy already settling a bit as the passing scenery began to slow down.

  He pulled over to the side of the road, and I opened the door before the car had even stopped. “Be right back,” I yelled. As I made a run for the bushes, I heard a noise behind me. I turned to look.

  Mom was standing outside the car with the back door open, trying to haul our packs out. The man yelled something and hit the gas just as she pulled them clear. The car weaved away from us with the back door still hanging open. Mom slumped down by the side of the road, watching as it drove away.

  I zipped up my pants and ran over to join her.

  “Holy shit,” she said breathlessly. “Holy shit. That was close.”

  “Why was that man so weird?” I looked down the highway, suddenly scared again. “He’s not going to come back, is he?”

  “No, honey, I don’t think so.” She put her head down on her arms and took a few deep breaths. “Thank God
you had to go to the bathroom.”

  “Yeah. I had to go really bad.”

  Mom smiled up at me. “Your grandfather is going to love this story. He always did say how important poop was.”

  “Yeah,” I chimed in boldly. “Saved from the asshole by the shit!”

  Mom started to giggle and I joined in, and we didn’t stop laughing until our stomachs hurt and tears were streaming down our faces.

  My mother and I never knew how close we might have come to our end that day. Years later, this road would become known as the Highway of Tears, named for eighteen women who went missing from the area around the time we hitchhiked it.

  Chapter Twenty

  After years of longing for the sight of my grandparents and wondering where they might be, strangely enough I have no recollection of my reunion with them, other than walking up the trail to their tipi with a fluttery feeling in my chest.

  My mother and me on the shore of Lake Tagish in the Yukon Territory, the location of my grandparents’ third tipi camp.

  Their new campsite was nothing like the ones in the Kootenay Plains or Morley. In the past we had lived peacefully side by side with the natives, but here my grandparents were squatting on Indian land and could only hope they wouldn’t be discovered. Papa Dick had tried to meet with the tribe to obtain their blessing, but the chief told him that if they ever found a white man living on their territory, they’d torch his home to the ground with no questions asked. Papa Dick nodded understandingly and decided to say nothing about his intentions.

  With the chief’s warning in mind, my grandparents had picked a small, protected cove five miles by foot or canoe from the nearest road. Papa Dick continued to host the same courses as in the Kootenay Plains, kept the canoes out in plain sight, and even built a twenty-foot pier off their shore. Mom and I arrived in mid-August, so counting two of my grandfather’s pupils, there were just six of us. When the pupils left, I assumed I would have my mother almost all to myself for an entire winter. It was a thought that filled me with both happiness and dread.

  AS IT TURNED OUT, less than two weeks after we arrived at my grandparents’ camp, Mom announced she would be leaving me. We were in the tipi, eating stewed prunes and yogurt beside the morning fire. My grandparents, forever busy with preparations for the upcoming winter, were outside chopping wood.

  “I have to tell you something,” she said, looking down at her bowl. “I, um . . . I have to go away for a while.”

  I dropped my spoon on the floor. When I bent to pick it up, it was covered in dried fir needles. “But . . . why? Where?”

  “I’m going to the city. To Calgary,” she said, finally meeting my eyes. “Mom and Dad have some friends there who’ve offered to put me up. I’ll have a place to stay, and well . . . there’s just no future for me in the wilderness, sweetheart. I love it here, but . . . hey, don’t cry.” She put her arm around me and pulled my head to her chest. “It’s only for a little while. I’ve already talked to Mom and Dad about it, and they’re going to drive you down to meet me when I’m ready. By then I’ll have a job, and a place for us to live . . .”

  “But why can’t I just go with you now?”

  “Because, honey, I just . . . I need to do this on my own. I don’t have any money, and you would be miserable living in a new place with a broke mother, and no one to look after you while I work. You’ll be safe here. Papa Dick and Grandma Jeanne . . . they’ll take care of you.”

  “What about school?”

  “I’ve already looked into it. You can do home schooling. Dad goes into town once a month anyway, so he can mail your assignments in.” She shook her head, gazing into the distance. “It’s just . . . you’ll understand this when you’re older, but there’s no way for me to ever meet a man out here. And I’m the kind of woman who, I don’t know, doesn’t seem to do very well on her own.”

  I took a deep breath. “When will I see you again?”

  “Next spring,” she said quietly. “Less than a year.”

  I nodded resignedly. As much as I wanted to be enough for my mother, I knew I never would be.

  IN THE BEGINNING, THINGS between my grandparents were as I remembered. They laughed together, dragged me along to folksy towns like Faro and Juneau for music festivals, and Papa Dick sometimes fondled his wife’s naked breast as she sat washing dishes. Their familiar togetherness made my return to the wilderness feel effortless and comforting, much like the handmade moccasins Grandma Jeanne slipped onto my feet when I arrived. Here, I was confident. I slept alone in a pup tent a hundred feet from my grandparents’ tipi, and though I often heard animals thrashing nearby at night, I never ran to Papa Dick for help. I spotted bears regularly and was once rushed by a porcupine, but even they couldn’t frighten me. My days were filled with the familiar routine of camp tasks. With my third-grade school lessons usually wrapped up before noon, I had plenty of time to fish with Papa Dick, work on target practice with his .22 rifle, shoot my bow and arrow at small game, haul water or ice and help Grandma Jeanne with the baking or cleaning.

  But in the fall, I began to see a change between my grandparents. Their easy banter turned to long stretches of silence. Grandma Jeanne complained of migraines and spent hours lying inside the tipi. When she was up and about, she did her chores with deep frown lines between her eyes and avoided Papa Dick’s gaze.

  One weekend, she took me to a festival without him. I set up my own stand and sold earrings I’d made out of porcupine quills and beads, and used the money to buy molasses candies, my first taste of sugar in months. On our second night there, we sat on a sleeping bag listening to Valdy under the stars. Grandma Jeanne reached into her knapsack, pulled out a hard apple cider, took a swig and then handed it to me. I took a small sip and was surprised by its fizzy sweetness. I had never seen either of my grandparents drink alcohol before, because Papa Dick didn’t approve of its high sugar content. But tonight, Grandma Jeanne didn’t seem to care. While Valdy strummed “The Simple Life” on stage, she handed me her half-empty bottle and opened a new one. I tipped mine back and felt the liquid hit my belly, spreading warmly out to my limbs. Pot smoke wafted through the air. Long-haired, tie-dyed couples laughed in the darkness around me.

  “Wow. Isn’t this great?” Grandma Jeanne sighed to me happily. It was the most relaxed I had seen her in ages.

  I emptied my bottle and put it on the ground beside me. My tummy felt funny, but not as funny as my head. My thoughts seemed to be coming in slow motion.

  “Yeah,” I said carefully around the fuzz in my brain. “But it would be even greater if Papa Dick were here. Right?”

  Grandma Jeanne didn’t respond, so I looked over at her. Her head was thrown back and her eyes were closed. I realized then that I didn’t want her to answer.

  Me in the Yukon in 1978, skinning a grouse I’d killed with my bow and arrow.

  Shortly afterward, I fell asleep. When I woke up, Grandma Jeanne was snoozing at my side. Bleary-eyed, I stumbled a few feet away from the sleeping bag and threw up. I cursed the burning in my throat, but as I lay back down, I couldn’t help thinking about that pleasant, loose feeling I had had in my head.

  DESPITE MY GRANDFATHER’S OUTSPOKEN condemnation of all things material and/or consumerist, he actually took his career very seriously. As he and Grandma Jeanne’s relationship continued to deteriorate, he began going into town more and more often to promote his business. One time, he even came home with a small box of printed business cards: Dick Person’s Wild and Woolly Wilderness Thrival Courses, it said above his P.O. Box address. Word about his enterprise was spreading, and he was even starting to get invitations from around North America to give lectures on his lifestyle. And the visitors, of course, kept coming. Papa Dick always told them in advance to get ready for their very first taste of the real world, and to leave their modesty at home along with their city shoes. For the most part, the visitors adhered to his wishes. Anyone who expected privacy at the shit pit, sugar in their morning coffee or to wear a sw
imsuit in the lake got over their illusions pretty quickly after a few days at our camp.

  We had one visitor, a young man named Mark, who fascinated me simply because he came from New York City. He had long, shaggy hair and wore a hunting knife on his belt just like the other male visitors, but his banker’s hands were clean and unscarred. I would tag after him relentlessly, peppering him with questions about his hometown, which might explain why one day he threw rocks into the bushes to try to convince me a bear was nearby. I knew better than to be afraid, but as the thrashing behind me increased and Mark screamed out that we were being chased, I gave in to my terror and tore down the mountainside into camp, screaming at the top of my lungs. When Papa Dick discovered what had happened, he nearly sent Mark packing on the spot. I had never seen my grandfather so angry. Such practical jokes might be funny in the big city, he said to Mark harshly, but allowing fear to overcome you out here in the wilderness could be your undoing.

  “MUSH!” I YELLED, AND the dogs pulled. The husky in the rear nipped at his mate’s heels, and the sled gained speed. The wind pulled at my parka and snowflakes stung my face. I could barely hear above the snow being crushed under the sled rails, but for this, my eyes were more important than my ears. Two hundred feet ahead of me, Papa Dick was breaking the trail with his snowshoes across the frozen lake. This was usually my job, but occasionally my grandfather let me run the sled, as he had on this trip into town today.

  We rounded the point and headed toward the middle of the lake, which was basically a straight five-mile shot to Carcross.

  I pulled my hood around my face and hunkered down behind the sled, trying to escape the wind. It was minus forty Celsius, and God only knew how much colder with the wind chill. I had three pairs of long underwear on under my ski pants, and four layers under my parka.

  Up ahead, Papa Dick halted in his tracks, looking off to the shore on our right. “Stop!” he yelled, holding up a hand, and I hit the brake. He jogged over to the shore in his snowshoes, something I hadn’t yet mastered, then motioned for me to follow with the sled. When I reached the treeline, I saw what had caught his attention. There, still alive but lying bleeding in the snow, was a female moose.