It is one of those things that I figure was meant to be. There was this shack with an orange For Sale by Owner sign that remained un-sold on each visit to Tenakee the last few years, and then there was an unexpected windfall, and before I knew it, I had a little place in Tenakee.
It needs work.
Actually, it’s made of plywood and threadbare tarps, the floor is rotten and it’s all falling down into the city right of way on East Tenakee Avenue, which is not really an Avenue at all, but a trail for walkers, cyclists — well, people riding bikes– mostly one speeds, with baskets on the front and milk crates on the back, and sometimes a trailer for totes, tools, trash, packages, fish or babies- — and “wheelers,” which I learned is the local term for everything from brawny ATVs to old golf carts that all putt up and down the trail at no more than 10 mph. There are no cars in Tenakee. Can I tell you how nice that is?
The shack is about to be torn down, and a new place will go up on the lot. It will be 18’ wide, and like the others on my side of the trail, stick out over the beach on pilings.
This trip, I stayed at my friend Teresa’s house. She was a teacher in Tenakee and after they moved to Haines they kept the home there and spend a lot of time in it. She planned to come with me to meet the builder and check on my permit applications, but at the last minute she couldn’t. I didn’t even know how to open her house up, where the drinking water came from, how I’d get the heavy tote and cooler she had instructed me to pack for her from the float plane dock to her house– It was not a good omen, especially since the framing materials for my cabin are already ordered and will arrive on the fall barge. “This is a terrible mistake,” I told Chip. What was I thinking? “Heather,” he said, “You are going to Tenakee, not Afghanistan.” He assured me that I’d be fine.
What I was thinking, is how easy it is to pack for Tenakee.
I don’t need any special clothes or shoes. I can bring the dogs when I have my own place, and I can get there from Haines without a passport or going through security. Plus, because of the hot spring, there is plenty of warm water to soak in in January. All that, and it is a little city. (Very little, about 100 people, but living close together and quite social.) There is a library and a shingled Catholic Chapel named for St. Francis. Painter Rie Munoz was inspired by Tenakee and her old cabin is right across the trail from the church. I think that my stories and her pictures are connected spiritually. That sounds weird, I know, but I feel it. While I was there, I wrote 20,000 words. That’s a lot.
After the floatplane docked that first evening, Teresa’s friend Wally met me with his wheeler. Another friend had already turned the spring water tap on at her house. I found the propane valve for the stove, the switch for hot water, the place down the trail to fill up drinking water jugs, and then re-programmed the radio so I could listen to KCAW from Sitka while I heated up some soup I’d brought in the cooler from Haines. The landline wasn’t hooked up and cell phones don’t work, but that is all why I have such a crush on Tenakee.
I have lived in a small town long enough to understand how little I know about this place beyond my rose colored impressions from a few visits, but I choose to look on the bright side. I imagine many happy years to come. Not knowing all the ins and outs of relationships and histories is a gift, really. I love being the new person with the questions instead of the answers. I was not a bit embarrassed to ask if the red berries covering the bushes along the trail were edible. “They are huckleberries…” a guy said with a look implying that I was not the sharpest tool in the shed. I shrugged, “Good to know. I’ve never seen them before.” After that I never left home without a berry bag in my pocket.
Teresa made it in for the second week, and I drove her batty with my cabin sketches and walking around her house with a measuring tape, when we weren’t cutting the thimbleberry and salmonberry bushes back from her path, boat and woodpile, making jam, taking walks or bathing in the hot spring.
When Teresa introduced me to a friend of hers on the trail, the woman replied that she already knew me: “We’ve taken two baths together.” That is something you don’t hear everyday. I’m pretty sure that spending time in the communal bathhouse with strangers and friends, neighbors and visitors, completely naked, adds to a collective empathy and lack of judgment. Kindness even. I say “pretty sure” because I am an outsider here, and too new to town to know better. It’s just a hunch– and a hope.
