Alaska Shorts: “Fire and Ice,” excerpted from If you Lived Here, I’d Know Your Name by Heather Lende
AFTER THE LAST fisherman’s funeral, I decided water around here is best when it’s frozen. As I help my youngest daughters into their ice skates, I hum the old carol “In the Bleak Midwinter”: “Earth stood hard as iron, / Water like a stone.” The afternoon is so perfect; it’s like a big exhalation, throwing […]