My dear Allen, I miss you more than I could ever imagine a heart could bear. Nearly half a year you have been gone from me. Again and again, I read the letter you sent from Alaska. I am sorry that all scent of wilderness and camp smoke is gone from it now, for I like to hold it to my face and close my eyes and picture myself beside you.
You will be proud, I think, to know that I have not squandered my days in melancholy, however. In the spring, I purchased a camera and these past months have endeavored to photograph wild birds. I thought often of how you would counsel me, how you would say that I should step bravely, and so that is what I have done. Our ledger book, my housekeeping, and our little cabin at the barracks have all suffered for it, but I hope you will find it has been a worthwhile pursuit.
I have been blessed with some praise for my work, and am astounded to find that an editor in Philadelphia has passed several of my photographs on to an ornithologist who is compiling a new book, and they have asked if I might provide them with at least a dozen more photographs of varying species from Oregon and the Washington Territory. I have not agreed yet. I have ventured no more than a mile from home with my camera, and I admit I am somewhat daunted by the scope of the request. I wonder if you will think it feasible.
This particular photograph that I send you, however, I have not shared with anyone else. I took it just days ago, and I wanted you to see it first. It is, I think, what I have aspired to from the beginning.
Look closely?—?do you see? Is there not something to it?
This is all that I can manage to write just now, as the messenger is at the door and I am out of time.
Let this token of my love find its way to you, and bring you safely home again.
With all my heart’s love,
Sophie
Lieut. Col. Allen Forrester
August 20, 1885
Aboard the USS Corwin bound for San Francisco
Sophie, my dear, I am on my way to you at last. Your letter, dated nearly a month ago, along with your photograph, greeted me aboard the revenue cutter when it arrived at St. Michael’s yesterday. It was a most welcomed surprise.
These words that I write in return will not be passed to Indians or mail ships, but instead I will deliver them to you myself, & then I will grab hold of you & never let go again. Now more than ever, we are in need of each other’s comfort.
I come home without my men. After all that we endured, Bradley Tillman was killed in a senseless & drunken misunderstanding just days before our ship was in sight. Never is it easy to lose a soldier & friend, yet a man who dies in battle at least gives his life for some purpose, if only in protection of his comrades. This, this absurdity, is a blow. My task was to bring my two men safely home from Alaska, & I have failed both of them. It troubles me terribly.
The loss of our baby, my fatigue, all that you & I have experienced in our separation?—?I am unkeeled by it. My emotions rise too quickly.
Yet this alone cannot explain how your photograph has affected me. I have removed it from its wrapping many times to study it, & I cannot get my fill. It is stirring in a way I am hard pressed to describe. There is texture & depth to it that seems born more of brush strokes than camera work.
You have an eye for the extraordinary, Sophie. It makes me wish all the more that you could have seen Alaska, only without our hardships, for I believe you would have spied something beyond what my poor senses could fathom. I found myself inadequate in the face of it. Only now, as I leave these shores behind, do I begin to try to comprehend: gray rivers that roar down from the glaciers, mountains & spruce valleys as far as the eye can see. It is a grand, inscrutable wildness. Never are the people here allowed to forget that each of us is alive only by a small thread.
Perhaps this is what young Mr. Troyer so longed to hear from me. I could not find the words then. It is you, Sophie?—?you make me want to express myself more profoundly. You give me hope that we may yet find meaning in our days. Your photograph serves as evidence.
I am reminded of something the trapper Samuelson said of Alaska’s wild country.
Here, I have found the passage in my diary:?—?She always keeps a part of herself a mystery.
You have focused your lens on just such a mystery.