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used breadcrumbs, I could find my way out of the woods and avoid being eaten by the witch and the wolves.Maybe.

four
    emotional english
    I n fifth grade we moved from my uncle’s machine shop to the saddle barn on the homestead where my dad was raised. The barn was situated about a hundred yards from the cabin where my dad had grown up and where my grandpa Yule still lived. One large room downstairs housed the kitchen, living room, and dining area with a view of green meadow, gray waters of the bay, blue mountains, and white glaciers. A metal oil drum that had been welded into a coal-burning stove sat in the middle of the floor, radiating heat, its rusted pipe climbing through the ceiling to lend warmth to the upstairs, where I shared a room with my brothers. There was a small room, partitioned off, which was Dad’s. Countless times he must have gone into that saddle barn as a young man for cinch or rasp. No wonder he seemed disoriented all the time now that it was so completely repurposed.
    Winter was the price you paid for the unearthly Alaskan summers, dark and cold in a way you could not shake off or dress for. It is possible to dress for, but our hand-me-downs and secondhand clothing always leftme with a chill. Alaska’s famed midnight sun eventually gave way to the winter solstice, its stingy grip allowing only the faintest dusk to slip through its fingers for a few hours a day. The coal stove would go out in the middle of the night, and I remember waking with frost on the tips of my eyelashes, making it nearly impossible to get out of the cozy nest of feather blankets in my bed. We would wake to inky blackness, and I would cook breakfast while Shane did the lion’s share of chores, milking the cow and feeding the horses while Atz Lee got dressed and ready for school. My dad was usually asleep still, often hungover in those years. We did the dishes and then walked two miles in darkness on the dirt road to the bus stop. Sometimes the ice would be so bad we could not walk a couple of steps without falling, so we devised homemade snow cleats by taking the removable soles out of our shoes, poking screws through the rubber bottoms, and then replacing the padded sole. It was a bit uncomfortable, as the screws always tried to push back up, but the thick padding kept them from poking us too badly.
    At school, recess was taken in a twilight state, that weak light lasting only a few hours, darkness descending again by the time we rode back to the bus stop. I remember looking down and not being able to see my feet. My eyes would strain to see the outline of the dirt road in front of me, but often it felt like we walked back and forth by braille on those days with no moon.
    At home in the evening, Shane again did the chores, Atz Lee got coal for the stove, and I would either milk the cow or help start dinner. My dad was a great cook, a skill required of him in Vietnam. His creativity shined in the kitchen; he loved to bake breads from scratch and make Swiss-style apple tarts. Our food was what we raised with our own hands, and the flavors of my childhood stay with me still. Fresh butter that I would make in the morning before school, squeezing out the buttermilk with a spatula. Fresh raw whole milk. Meat from our own cattle that webled and butchered each fall. Fresh vegetables from our garden that we canned in the winter. Water from the creek. Sourdough bread from a starter that was older than I was. Alaskans can be quite proud of their sourdough starter. It is a living thing that must be fed and nurtured in the fridge. When you take some out, you add a few more ingredients back in so that its flavor keeps maturing. We got our starter from Yule, and he’d inherited his decades earlier.
    I was proud to live on the homestead and to live off the land. I knew the sound of porcupines climbing the trees in winter, and could track the cattle in the snow back to where the water was. Wolves sang me to sleep at night across the canyon,