To the Bright Edge of the World

by Eowyn Ivey

I looked directly into its eyes and knew that I understood nothing.

There is no need for a bright young woman such as yourself to join in such idiocy. Leave it to the men to throw themselves off the face of the earth. They are quite adept at it by themselves.”

Yet for all my keenness, I see now that I have a great deal to learn.

Between Science’s measuring and my God’s condemning, I find no room for the Soul.

The shades of the ice hypnotize—Tillman & I stood beside each other, stared, speechless for some time. Even from this opposite shore of the river, a man is pulled into the blue of the deepest fissures. Within are the hues of cold itself. The sight chills me, yet I thirst for more.

(And I am afraid I am not so fond of Evelyn’s Lieutenant Harvey. He is handsome, but I have always been wary of men so at ease with their own swagger and boast.)

There was something diminishing about the conversation, too, as if suddenly we had become only, collectively, and forever Mothers, with no room for an entire individual.

If only I could hear Allen, his voice in another room and know that he was soon coming to bed. In the warmth and comfort of his arms, sleep would soon be upon me. Instead my only company are the books at my bedside. Illustrations of deformed organs and stillborn infants, descriptions of all the ways one might die in childbirth—the stuff of nightmares surely. The photography book, on the other hand, is numbing, with its “depth of focus” and “width of angle” and chemical formulae, but I will turn to those pages, for at least they might lull me to sleep.

It was about that time she came down with the cancer, and she was gone before I knew it. That’s how it goes when you get to be my age. Makes me see that there might be some sense to having children after all, just so your entire life and all your family’s contributions aren’t relegated to Goodwill in the end.

There is a mythical element to our childhood, it seems, that stays with us always. When we are young, we consume the world in great gulps, and it consumes us, and everything is mysterious and alive and fills us with desire and wonder, fear, and guilt. With the passing of the years, however, those memories become distant and malleable, and we shape them into the stories of who we are. We are brave, or we are cowardly. We are loving, or we are cruel. All my life, I have only considered this through the eyes of the child. Yet now, my view begins to shift. More than anything I want to hold this little baby, to feel his warm weight in my arms and kiss his small fingers. Yet, too, it is such solemn responsibility. To think that these next years, as Allen and I make choices that will seem to us so mundane and ordinary, we will shape our child’s vision of the world.

Samuelson saw footprints in the gray mud along the river. Looks as if at least three men, several women & children, travel together. He advises us to salute the Indians with gunshot when we near them. It is a show of greeting & strength. The more rounds we fire, the more respect we earn in their eyes. In turn, the Indians will likely throw a feast in our honor. I hate to waste the ammunition.

I despise my own propriety. It keeps me to this bed, docile and quiet, hair brushed and pinned, bed clothes smoothed neatly over my lap. I mark the days. I eat. I breathe. I say thank you and please and feign sleep. Yet it is all a lie. In my heart I am something else altogether. I am burning with grief. I should be out in the rain, barefooted and wild. I should roar and claw at the sky. I should rip open my gown and bare my breasts and bare my pain and plead and rage. It is a selfish daydream. Who am I to claim such boundless sorrow? This heartache, acute and true as it may be, is slight compared to all of this world. Five miscarriages, two stillborns, three live births, and Mrs Connor is one of our fortunate. She is not disemboweled in the snow. Her hands have committed no atrocities. She believes in God. It is remarkable how we go on. All that we come to know and witness and endure, yet our hearts keep beating, our faith persists.

I’m starting to think it’s just as well that I won’t be around much longer. I don’t have much desire to see where these idiots take us.

I am desperate to begin. I have become too mindful of suffering and darkness; they attend to me even when I bid them not to, like scavenger birds perched and waiting for the calf to die. And when I seek a finer grace in the day, some essence of love and life, the light fades beneath my eyes. I will not abandon the quest before it has truly begun, however. I will let this grief sharpen my gaze, polish and shape it until it becomes a magnifying lens through which I might yet see.

could not help but hear Mother’s voice of reproval: a woman should never depend on marriage alone to keep her safe, as any number of tragedies could befall her, and we must always be prepared for the worst. Hers is the voice of experience, I know all too well, but I will not heed it. I refuse to assume a long, dreary life. I would prefer to spend every last penny, if need be, and visit every druggist from here to San Francisco; I would place all my faith in something mysterious and joyful and surprising, even if it fails me in the end. And well it might. I have sense enough to know that I might delude myself, that in all likelihood this lies beyond my ability and artistry, perhaps even beyond my faith, but then I think of Allen and know precisely what he would say—nothing is impossible. Take one step, and then another, and see where the path leads. Don’t think of the obstacles, only the way around them. Thursday, then, it is Portland. And tomorrow, I will look for birds.

I am glad it didn’t end me. Not that I’m clinging to life by any means, but it would be an embarrassment to be knocked off by an infection in my piss-pipes. It seems to me, all things weighed, I have earned a more dignified exit.

I remarked that any man who has spent time in Alaska should be nothing if not humble.

—Sometimes I fear that our prayers are not strong enough for this wild place, she said.

You have an eye for the extraordinary, Sophie. It makes me wish all the more that you could have seen Alaska, only without our hardships, for I believe you would have spied something beyond what my poor senses could fathom. I found myself inadequate in the face of it. Only now, as I leave these shores behind, do I begin to try to comprehend: gray rivers that roar down from the glaciers, mountains & spruce valleys as far as the eye can see. It is a grand, inscrutable wildness. Never are the people here allowed to forget that each of us is alive only by a small thread. Perhaps this is what young Mr. Troyer so longed to hear from me. I could not find the words then. It is you, Sophie—you make me want to express myself more profoundly. You give me hope that we may yet find meaning in our days. Your photograph serves as evidence. I am reminded of something the trapper Samuelson said of Alaska’s wild country. Here, I have found the passage in my diary:—She always keeps a part of herself a mystery. You have focused your lens on just such a mystery. These months I’ve been gone, I have thought often about the narrowness of your life at the barracks. I know all too well how meddlesome that society can be, & it grieved me to think of you so confined. I should have known you better. Of course you would buy a camera & build your own dark room. School teacher or officer’s wife, you are every bit the woman I fell in love with. This is what we will do, as soon as I am returned to Vancouve...