I expected to feel devastated standing atop Skyline Mountain in Cooper Landing, Alaska, but instead, I felt hopeful. Once a vista clouded with trees in the Kenai Peninsula landscape, now, undergrowth reborn. Since my last visit, fire has ravaged the landscape. Green growth and a second act so breathtaking it mirrors the delight of peeling the sardine tin with crackers. My dad always packed sardines on hikes. High protein, easy to bring and tasty, if you convince yourself. I’m 45, my pregnant cousin 31. Both taught somewhat in the learning of our fathers, we summited the mountain. Maidenhood rooted in familiar flora—lupine, low-bush cranberries for morning muffins, birch scent waking Seminary mornings. Fourteen years apart, we didn’t grow up together, yet Alaskan recipes stay the same and shift, like tectonic plates.
On the cusp of Cronehood, I step on rich chocolate earth. I am this earth. My cousin’s slow steps check my pace. Cow parsnip, sweet birch, clean oxygen and a waft I can’t place: rose-like, pine-like, longing-like. We open the metal box of past climbers: an Rx bottle, ashes in a jar, Betty Boop, a reunion button, saltines. Wind stirs leaves like money, as it did in my childhood. These trees hum profit with or without me. When I return, the Land is my other parent. This mother cares nothing for profit, only mysticism. She is feminine reflection, hippy-momma, never-ending sunlight, glorious, always says yes to playing in midnight sun, dances under Aurora Borealis, hikes mountain without gun and has no cares. All children are hers; if they fall, dust to dust, ashes to ashes. My real mother feared the streets. My father, gun in hand, knew bears were real, tied my fishing lures, taught me to drive, swim, dance. She dimmed my light for humility’s sake. But here, climbing Kenai, I feel a new dissonance. I recall my father on Southern Idaho Albion’s peaks by Lake Cleveland, where we laid my grandfather to rest. Now, mountains bring discordant peace, salvation and turmoil mixed. I considered predators: cougars, occasional black bears, but they seemed imaginary. Was it naivete blanketing me in comfort? There is a story he told of a metal box in which he had money, he climbed to the peak of the mountain, dug a hole and buried his box. He did this before his missionary service. In retrospect he was not sure why. Was it a tangible ritual in the similitude of Joseph Smith who unearthed Book of Mormon treasure in the mountains? My father laughs boomingly, “I guess just because I could.” He could; he had strong legs, strong back from sugar beet hoeing, wrangling sheep, riding horses and fixing fences on his Wrigley grandparent property. He tanned deer he hunted, hides still hanging in that old shed next to the white house. I wonder how many more things I would do if I could.
My father is a man of compass, a deep sense of knowing where and why he exists, and one of extreme caution, care and respect for all natural laws. He will however, when pulled over for a routine traffic stop, not submit to police authority. He will get out of his car and wait for the police to approach and inevitably tell him he must remain in the vehicle. He has something brewing in him, calm as lupine, gentle as fireweed, but is a thistle in the right conditions. Is it the horror of his protective cousin who died falling off a horse when she was nine and he four? Did he realize natural laws betray, death is eternal? There is justice and no mercy. Did something in him settle, that one day he would use his keys, his power, his dominion to protect a future daughter? He did not act in fear. He taught traditional skill development; in being capable as a means of protection. No need to distress or believe women were second to the kingdom! My father taught me I could drive a stick shift. I could clean a fish. But still, in looking back, it is the watchfulness that was put upon me that unnecessarily barred me from wild living where rules are broken and autonomy dug from earth.
The patriarchy as a mountain, though, is known and unknown. It has a sunlit side and a shadowed side. In its warmth my father teaches me to isolate one note by blowing and drawing the harmonica reeds. But the shadow side is never learning a chord. I submit and do not advance independently. I allow my father, my husband to call upon who to pray over dinner. I say no when my non-believing husband has no father’s blessing to give his son when he goes on a mission but nudges me to bless my son— submitting to dogma, I decline. It would be wild, unruly, unknown, a threatening mother bear. I regret this choice. I do not use my wonderful words to nourish my boy. Instead, he is left in the lone and dreary world to puppet the words of The Handbook and the Come Follow Me manual.
This mountain should be mine. I should know it, as my father knows Albion Mountain. But I do not know this mountain. I trace through my inception as a daughter of God. I realize I am introduced to possibility, eternities, but, to immerse and attain celestial glory— I need a patriarch to cover the terrain. I am provided a glimpse but to know the life-saving graces of mountain survival I need a dose of risk that was not given to me. Young men got camping trips and glacier adventures while young women blotted acrylic paint into welcome doormats. We were told of the view but the doorway is where we remained. Scuffing the heavy mud of expectation, women say, oh, it will all work out in the afterlife. On my wedding day I am at a similar portal, where I learn my husband knew my true name but I ought never know his. A veil where again, I needed a man to transcend me. Is it any wonder that when the going gets tough, I have faltered? While the youth of Zion may never falter, the young women becoming middle aged tend to. I am good at New Beginnings but do not have the wisdom of an Eagle Scout. I’m told I’m capable, yet given little guidance to master skills. I untangle my own cat’s cradle, no knife to carve resilience, respect, or reputation. And no pockets for that matter. But the tools distributed are equal, I am told. Yet yarn can knot, bind, strangle. Better to hear tales of mountain grandeur than risk the switchbacks myself. If I want access to the mountain I go with Young Single Adults, a boyfriend, my father, but never alone or with another woman! But today, foolishly, we women bring useless mace and the desire to commune with mountains that should have been ours. Each step, great with child or dancelike, twirls us to the spiraling covenant path on the mountain of our Lord. We find spires of glory in Sitka Spruce. We bestow our own blessings; power always ours, permission never granted. Is that enough for spirits built for communion? Women encircle Zion’s fire with loud laughter. But atop the mountain, it’s lonely. The manna here tastes of regret. I could have high’d to Kolob. In a twinkling, I think of all the hiking boots I might have worn thin, the way I wore out pointe shoes. Instead, hammer toes remind me what a good young woman’s feet are for.
What heirlooms will grow if I teach my daughter to respect, cherish, and wildly experience the mountain? I am handmaiden of Israel, bridegroom of Christ, mother of all living—what my father calls his beautiful daughter of Zion. The name is irrelevant if she cannot access Sacrament solo. No one cares when we need Priesthood to keep you safe and they’re elderly men too feeble to keep the bad guys out. It is smoke and mirrors when you realize you do not need a portal.
You need only free oxygen from mother mountain. Yes, sometimes thin air requires endurance conditioning. It will pose real and emergent dangers— but it’s possible to bear testimony with something deeper than a simple faith. You may not need the armor of God. The little shining light of yours burns so bright you are found. But you will not know—unless you go to the mountain. Go tell it on the mountain. Over the hills and everywhere. Once you learn how to bend and flatten the notes, you are music here, there, everywhere. You are discerning light and further knowledge. You may go to the temple to seek intelligence. And you may learn that you are the mountain. You, with your curves, winding bosoms, giving milk, birthing babies, bestowing wisdom later. But why should we wait to make the mountain our own? Mountain starts with matriarchy.
Shannon Milliman, poet laureate of Florence, Alabama, courageous risk-taker. Theatrical, lyrical, dancer of words, body, spirit. One-woman show creator, Not So Supernova. Performer, marathon runner, storyteller, laugher, hoper, carpe-diem-er. Sparker of conversations behind closed doors. Alaskan roots. Mormon genetics. Living in the humid hug South, seeking, saying, singing, incanting. Seeker of revelation. Prophetess of natural water swimming. Improv believer.