Fort Abercrombie

We all have a place that has been an important part of our lives since before we can remember. For me, that place is Fort Abercrombie State Historical Park. The house I grew up in was only two miles from the park's entrance, so we were regulars. My parents tell me of the first time I walked around Lake Gertrude on my own, instead of sitting in a backpack for the walk. A tiny victory, to have a toddler wobble up and down the salmonberry lined trails, probably tripping on roots and tasting spruce cones along the way.

As young entrepreneurs, my brother and I started a restaurant on the beach that lies between the ocean and the lake as soon as we realized our parents and their friends were willing to order "food" from us. Our restaurant was located within the twisted branches of an old piece of driftwood, and we would serve beach greens and seaweed to our loyal customers. We made receipts by etching words onto shale from the beach. The driftwood restaurant is still there, I walked by it today. I hope business is still booming.

As I grew older, I began to share Abercrombie with my friends who were less familiar with the trails and tide pools. In high school, we basked in the Alaskan summer sun besides the lake, and would return at night to swim beneath the never completely dark sky. When I was deciding what to do after high school, I would walk alone along the cliffside trails to think things out, stopping every once and a while to watch an eagle or stare at the horizon. Sometimes I would just walk and cry, realizing that I would soon leave this place to go to college in a town where I wouldn't have a Fort Abercrombie.

Throughout college, I yearned for that place. I had loved Abercrombie before leaving home, but I didn't realize how special it was to me. During midterms and finals weeks, I'd hold my head in my hands on the second floor of the library and close my eyes and imagine I was there in the midst of a winter storm - sea spray slapping the cliffs, the tall and thin Sitka spruce trees creaking in the wind. If the landscape there was resilient enough to withstand years worth of winter storms, I was resilient enough to withstand the stress of college.

This is my personal history of Fort Abercrombie. What awes me is that the land there holds so much more history than I can imagine. On the cliffs sit old World War II bunkers and canons. Today as I walked, I tried to image the place in the early 1940s, when hundreds of soldiers occupied Fort Abercrombie in an effort to protect the US from Japanese attack. Were the soldiers ever distracted by whales while looking for submarines? Did they, too, find peace among the lake and the ocean and the trees? Or was Fort Abercrombie merely their workplace where they were sent to defend their country?

And who was there before the WWII soldiers? Did the Aluutiq people of Kodiak subsist off of that same land? Did Russian settlers visit Fort Abercrombie before it was even named that? What did it look like before the non-native Sitka spruce grew there? I suppose I could probably go to a museum and find out the answers to my questions, but for now I'll wait a bit before an old black and white photo puts a stop to my imagination.