Book: Gaining Daylight by Sara Loewen

Life on Two Islands

The two islands are Kodiak and Amook in Alaska. Amook is where Sara and her family spend their summers while her husband Pete works as a fisherman. They have two small sons. Liam and Luke. Amook is an island in Uyak, one of Kodiak's western bays. In the winter, they move to Kodiak. The book is a collection of wonderful essays about their life, weather, the sea, the Arctic seasons, local history, mothering and homemaking, writing, and Sara's resignation as seasonal affective disorder sneaks up every year:

"By February, I lose all perspective. I'm bewildered by the rage that wells up as I try to buckle stiff car seat straps over Luke's snowsuit while he cries about the cold and a passing truck coats my back with slush, or when I find myself cursing frozen door handles and the snowplow that knocked off the side view mirror, or crying at random magazine articles about warmer climates. And then I recognize the symptoms of seasonal affective disorder....."

Each chapter adds to a painting of their island lives, a canvas of place and history, with details of the grit and grace necessary for this chosen way of living.

"Last night I filled the old drum stove with wood and cardboard and lit the banya--a blending of Russian saunas with Alutiiq bathhouses: side huts carpeted in fresh grass where bathers poured water over heated rocks. A friend was visiting, and we washed the kids in the dark, hot room. Steam hissed off the cedar benches and round beach stones piled around the wood stove. Clean and content, we stepped out onto the banya porch into the cool autumn air. We are rich in  driftwood. Rich in fish. Rich in wind and blue tides."

Cold and always the capricious wind and water and weather; whales and bears; eagles and otters....family, home.... this is their life, and as I would read her words, I was also there.

Her husband returns from Kodiak, across Uyak Bay with their young son:

"It was too rough to bring the skiff in so Pete tied off on the running line. He shouted to me, but I couldn't hear him over the storm. He held Liam and jumped toward the beach, landing in water up his waist. We struggled to pull the boat sway from the rocks. My hands were shaking. Liam's chubby ankles were pink with cold. 'I should have turned back,' Pete said."

The wild heart of Alaska is offered as a gift in this small book....with a deft blending of past and present.

I had dinner with Dave and Ellen last night as they returned from Alaska, and I told them about this author. They, in turn, gave me some recommendations and told wonderful stories of the land, the people they keep meeting, hunting, rivers and mountains, brown bear and moose and halibut fishing one day when Ellen caught the big ones!