This shack, so familiar, built by my husband’s strong hands with the help of our children, now all grown…every morning I come here, the little coffee pot moaning, sending out morning smells, mixing with the scent of wood walls and the steam off my mug, a steel, fancy, YETI- stamped vessel, brought home by kids who work hard at jobs that give little gifts like that…coffee mugs, hoodies, the occasional hat.

This little place welcomes me each day. This desk, hewn by hands unknown, was given to us years back, used for picnics and holding all the leftover items that didn’t make it inside before snowfall, left outside to blacken over years of Alaska’s hard winters. Sawn in two by that husband, again so capable, placed lovingly across two edges of this 8×12 space, sanded to butter by my son and brought back to life with bees wax and the patina of my hands at work, sometimes I rub it and think about how many people have sat around it and what a gift it has been to our family, and I imagine and pray for years ahead of writing books at this honey-pine slab of desktop that was once a beautiful thick tree growing in some forest in the Rocky Mountains far away.

It’s too cold to sit outside; Alaska knows how to play with our minds, here in August when it should be warm, but I see my breath as I scamper across the dewy lawn in my flip flops and muumuu, a carton of heavy cream in hand for the coffee that will awaken me. My desk waits patiently for another day of work and writing and phone calls and emails. I imagine when I am very old, there will be worn round divots where my elbows have rested for all that I do here.  

When I put on morning eyes to look for something different, something that shouldn’t be growing here, I squint past my every day scene outside the big picture window that overlooks the field behind our big house and I see how the fireweed has gone straight to red and the tops are fuzzy already, and I realize this familiar little field out back never saw the magenta glow of acres of fireweed in high August bloom this summer. That Alaska, she was mean this year, giving us a season of unpredictability and ho-hum mediocrity, seventy degree days of high sun and ahhh, summer is finally here…followed by four straight bleak days of rain and dark, and here we all waited so patiently.

It’ll snow soon and we’ll all gripe all winter long how summer gypped us of that midnight sun thaw we all rely on to get us through the months that have us wondering why we ever chose this place to put down roots. 

At the end of my desk though, back to my new-seeing eyes, dialing in to find something new and not normally growing where it was planted, —which really, could be my shack, sprouted here in the middle of the woods out of a need for me to have a quiet place to work in this new season of life called hustle and bustle and ever-changing shifts and adult kids who come and go to classes and the city and the north slope, and all the cars, in and out the driveway…or it could even be the desk, this mighty tree grown in another region, given to us by friends who paid thousands for it long ago. In their rush to leave this Alaska, they said take it, and it didn’t grow here, but it is growing here, growing old and changing, sturdy and solid, wearing a proud patina of age and usefulness…or I guess it could even be me, growing old now too in this land that has nurtured me for near on thirty years. A transplant, sprouted far away but thriving in the soil of this Alaska, my roots go deep now, and silvered, I too am growing a patina of years.

But what really catches my eye is the terra cotta pot on the corner of my buttery desk top. Just a little tree reaching for the sun, one of twenty seeds I planted back in the winter of 2022, those seeds so carefully preserved by my mama and I from the lemons my kids harvested at the sprawling house we all stayed in that beautiful, bittersweet winter in which my husband almost died, coming out on the other side to say, Our kids are almost grown and we’ve never had an actual vacation. Let’s take them somewhere. We used all the extra money we had, flying us all off to the tropics to spend a glorious week in the ocean warming our bones near the equator, and we made lemonade in the mornings, my mama and I, and we brought home to this cold place memories and lemon seeds which I nurtured and babied and now, four of them are big and strong like my kids and this little one in my shack is like me, soaking up the warm sun from the big window my husband carefully installed to face south so his Alaska woman could absorb every ray of sun this place will give.

We’ve seen four more trips to that place we love since I transplanted those seeds from their home to this Alaska, but that trip, and these lemons, hold a special place in my heart. My mama and I cared for those little sprouts so tenderly, and she watered them on Saturdays, and she left us for Heaven just over a year ago, and I think of her every time I look at our lemons. This little one here in my shack, we probably even had a name for it, she leans now toward what light is left before the cold of winter comes on. 

A month or so back, I noticed new growth at the base of my little shack lemon, and there in the clay pot a little clump of green grew, and this morning my eyes find four flowers standing proudly next to their lemon tree pot-mate, a tiny garden of violas. My great-grandmother called them Johnny Jump Ups, and they grew wild across her midwest yard when I was a little girl, and now, here they are in Alaska, growing alongside a tree that really shouldn’t grow here either. 

I don’t know how they found their way to my lemon pot here in my shack, but the quad of them sure do look pretty, their little white and purple faces spread out to the sun this morning. 

It is sunny today and a chainsaw buzzes in the distance, the world waking up and getting ready for the season ahead. 

The plow is ready. 

Today is Saturday so I’ll water my little lemon today, her and her four hitchhiking summer friends. And just like my mama used to, I’ll probably talk to her a bit too, and remind her of where she came from, so warm and beautiful. How much we love it there, and how much she’d love it too.

But this place isn’t so bad, is it, little lemon? Oh sure, the sun isn’t as hot, and the winters get damn long, but your people are here, little tree. And while I know you weren’t born here, look! You’ve made friends and they’re growing right alongside you! I know sometimes it doesn’t feel like it, but you DO belong here. This is your home. You are loved here.

I wonder over my last gulp of coffee how many days it will be before I’ll have to take the lemon back into the big house. When the nights get long and dark, she’ll have to go where it’s warmer and I can turn the grow lights on to give her more than what Alaska does in those deep, dark hours of winter. I’ll water her on Saturdays and when she’s reaching hardest for the light rays that come around mid-morning, I’ll probably be reaching for the sun too, and seeking out tickets to go thaw my bones. We’ll weather the winter the best we can, reaching and shriveling and wishing it were warm. 

But for today, we’ll sit here at this worn and weathered desk and we’ll face the sun, us two things and our unexpected friends, none of us planted here, but all of us growing old here, together.