I’m sure you’ve also found the few photographs that managed to survive the expedition. The plates must have been left at the bottom of the crate when the Indians were exposing most of them. I wish there were more.
As for the medical references, those are from my sister Ruth’s research. She knew I had the Colonel’s old papers, and when she was visiting a few years back, she asked me about them. Come to find out, she’d never actually read any of it, so I got the boxes out, and she and I spent the next week or so poring over the letters and diaries. She got so interested, she started looking up information on 19th-century obstetrics and field medicine. Next thing I knew, she was headed out to Portland, Oregon, and visiting Fort Vancouver. The old cabin the Colonel and Sophie lived in is long since gone, but a lot of the other barracks buildings are still there in a historical park. Ruth brought back a bunch of photographs she’d taken. And while she was in Portland, she went through microfiches of old newspaper articles. I’m glad she dug those up?—?I’ve always thought Mr. Jenson’s fate on Perkins Island was fitting.
With all that happened to the Colonel in Alaska, though, it was our great-aunt Sophie who really got hold of Ruth’s heart. She always said someone should write her biography, and I think she was working the nerve up to do it herself. At one point she marked everything with little yellow sticky notes, about a hundred of them, and had it all laid out in my back guest room, but it seemed to me she was just shuffling everything around and around. It was about that time she came down with the cancer, and she was gone before I knew it. That’s how it goes when you get to be my age. Makes me see that there might be some sense to having children after all, just so your entire life and all your family’s contributions aren’t relegated to Goodwill in the end.
I enjoyed your story about the raven. They do have a comical way about them. They like to harass the dogs, too. I had a golden retriever years ago. The ravens would steal food from his bowl a piece at a time while he was barking and trying to chase off one bird, then another. It drove the dog crazy, and amused me.
One time, though, I watched a raven snatch up a baby rabbit, carry it off into a nearby field, and rip it to shreds. It changed the way I see those birds. They are crueler than you might suppose, or maybe not cruel so much as self-serving.
I didn’t mean to end on such a grim note. But I do hope you’ll write again when you have the chance and let me know how the reading is going.
With regards,
Walt
December 22, 1884
Merry Christmas to Allen & Sophie.
Allen?—?stay warm and safe in the Far North & don’t let the polar bears get a hold of you. Your brother, Harry
Col. James Forrester
Fort Independence, Massachusetts
17 November 1860
To Allen Forrester, 2nd Class Cadet
West Point Academy, New York
Dear Son,
Your mother has informed me of your intention to study toward joining the Corps of Topographical Engineers. I cannot fathom such a decision. You and I have already thoroughly laid out a strategy for your future, and I wonder that we are discussing it again.
Let me be forthright?—?I will not allow you to waste your God-given talents as a soldier and leader so you can tramp about the country with a measuring stick. It has been my sincerest hope since you were a young boy that you would continue to carry the torch of honor and service that the Forresters have kept alight for generations. I am confident that between my own connections and the reputation you have already earned at the Academy, I will be able to secure you a worthy commission.
If it is, in fact, adventure you seek rather than service to your country, I suggest you pursue it through some other means than that of your career. And I will tell you this: as an officer and leader, you will soon discover that adventure is a romantic notion, best left behind with childhood, and that you ought to be grateful for the opportunities allotted you.
Your mother might be correct in her assessment. You are a different young man from what I was at your age. Perhaps you are not as ambitious or as desirous of a challenge. Perhaps you will be content to rest on the laurels of our family. I hope this is not so.
I sharply advise you to reconsider your aims, and your duty to family and country, and I trust we will not need to speak of this again.
Your father.
Sophie Forrester
Vancouver Barracks
April 6, 1885
I am convinced that all this laudanum and endless hours of sleep do my health no good. Such dreams. The worst woke me before dawn. Allen was there, but he was a stranger, and I was not myself. We ran through an old forest, and it was so dark and overgrown that the roots grabbed at our feet and the branches tore at our faces, and for all our effort, we could not make our way out. I could hear Allen’s hoarse breathing and struggle in the near shadows, but because he was a stranger to me, I dared not call out.
April 11