Lende - If You Lived Here, Id Know Your Name

Praise for If You Lived Here, Id Know Your Name

Delightful.... The writing is simple yet graceful.... A pleasure to read.

USA Today

Lende offers touching stories about neighbors with whom she shares wedding celebrations, potluck dinners, tears for missing fishermenall the joys and sorrows of family life in a remote town.

People magazine

[A] beautiful, funny, compassionate story.... When, now and again, your reading is interrupted by tears, they will be the sweet sort.

Michael Perry, author of Population: 485

Part Annie Dillard, part Anne Lamott, essayist and NPR commentator Heather Lende introduces readers to life in the town of Haines, Alaska... subtly reminding readers to embrace each day, each opportunity, each life that touches our own and to note the beauty of it all.

Los Angeles Times

Dense and powerful.... Tiny jewels that, gathered together, create a stunning effect of pure, dazzling light.

The Grand Rapids Press

This is something tender and braveusing death as an introduction to lives and loves and fabric of community in a northern town. Heather Lende provides powerful witness.

Seth Kantner, author of Ordinary Wolves

Heartfelt, homespun essays about life.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Lendes quiet voice resonates long after the book is finished.

Booklist

A true tale of ordinary people who do extraordinary things with (and to) one another in one of the most beautiful backwaters on Earth.

Tom Bodett

Full of joy and insight, humor and sobering truth.

Salem (OR) Statesman Journal

Written with ease and empathy, this is both about maintaining a household in Alaska and about being at home in the world.

Kirkus Reviews

Absorbing and reflective.

Library Journal

Lende presents a remarkable sense of place.

The Oklahoma City Oklahoman

Heather Lende is the perfect frontier guideclear-eyed and big-hearted, tackling family and community and life and death with humor and hope.

Stewart ONan, author of Wish You Were Here

News from Small-Town Alaska

HEATHER LENDE

Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill

Published by
ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL
Post Office Box 2225
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225

a division of
Workman Publishing
225 Varick St.
New York, New York 10014

2005 by Heather Lende. All rights reserved.
First paperback edition, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, June 2006. Originally published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill in 2005.

Alaskas Flag by Marie Drake, copyright 1985, reprinted by permission of the University of Alaska Foundation. All rights reserved.

Lines from poem 1741, That it will never come again, reprinted by permission of the publishers and the Trustees of Amherst College from The Poems of Emily Dickinson, Ralph W. Franklin, ed., Cambridge, Mass.; The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright 1998 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Copyright 1951, 1955, 1979, 1983 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.

Lines from Barry Lopezs Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape, New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1986, reprinted by permission.

Material in some of these chapters was published in different form in the Anchorage Daily News, the Christian Science Monitor, and Alaska Magazine and broadcast on National Public Radios Morning Edition, Monitor Radio, and the Alaska Public Radio Network.

Most of the Duly Noted entries were written by Heather Lende; however, some may have been written by past and present newspaper staff. Printed by permission of the Chilkat Valley News.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

E-book ISBN 978-1-56512-656-5

For Chip

We bring our years to an end, as it were a tale that is told.

from Psalm 90

My heartfelt thanks to the people of Haines for giving me so many stories to tell, especially Doris Ward, who began the Duly Noted column I inherited, and to these friends, neighbors, and editors both near and far: Bonnie Hedrick, Tom Morphet, and Steve Williams at the Chilkat Valley News; Lee Heinmiller at Alaska Indian Arts; Liz Heywood from the Babbling Book store; James Alborough and Sarah Posey of Bear Star Communications; George Bryson, Kathleen McCoy, and Mark Dent at the Anchorage Daily News; Audrey Wynn and Greg Allen at National Public Radio; Tom Reagan, Sara Terry, and Duncan Moon from the Christian Science Monitor and the former Monitor Radio; and everyone at Algonquin, especially Amy Gash. Amy heard me on the radio, called to ask if I thought I could write a book, and then helped me do it with wit, wisdom, and grace. Thanks also to my family for giving me the confidence and time to writefrom my in-laws, Joanne and Phil Lende, and my parents, Bob and Sally Vuillet, to my children, Eliza, Sarah, Christian, Joanna Jeanne, and Stojanka, and a friend who is like family, Linnus Danner. Above all, thanks to my husband, Chip.

Over the past four years, five people in Haines have asked when this book would be done every time theyve seen mewhich was almost daily: postmaster Wayne Selmer, artist Jenny Lyn Smith, librarian Ellen Borders, and my neighbors Don and Betty Holgate. Here it is. I sure hope its worth your wait.

I HAVE LIVED in Haines, Alaska, all of my adult life but there are still times, especially winter evenings when the setting sun washes over the white mountaintops, the sky turns a deep blue, and the water is whipped into whitecaps by the north wind, that I cant believe my good fortune. Its so wild and beautiful that all I can do is walk outside my house and stare. Looking south, I can see the red cannery at Letnikof Cove on one side of the inlet and Davidson Glacier on the other. Out front, Pyramid Island breaks the surface where the Chilkat River meets the sea. Behind it, steep mountains rise right up from the beach. On this fading winter evening, standing in the snow in my yard, I think I hear a wolf howl up the Chilkat River Valley and hold my breath, hoping to hear it again. But I dont. Maybe it was just the wind. I turn around and look back at my houseour youngest children moving in front of lighted windows, the teenagers doing homework at the table, my husband, Chip, reading by the woodstoveand my heart swells in my chest like a balloon.

It took us a year to build our shingled home on the beach down Mud Bay Road, a mile and a half from Main Street. From my bedroom window, Ive watched bears wading in the channels along the shore in the summer. When I walk the dogs to the cove in the fall, the icy tidal flats are covered with bald eagles. The oily, smeltlike fish called eulachon return to the river in the spring, and the sea lions chasing them are so loud that they wake me up from a sound sleep. I see the light on across the road and, even though its two in the morning, call my neighbor Linnus. The sea lions woke her up, too. She and her husband, Steve, walked to the beach in their pajamas. The sea lions were having a wild party down there, Linnus says.