Page 7 of Catalyst

Home.

The next morning I take the north road toward Palmer for supplies. The route runs along the river for the first stretch, then climbs through spruce forest where the trees press close to the pavement and the sky narrows to a pale strip above the asphalt.

The Stoddard property is visible from the road where the terrain opens up, timber stretching up the mountain in rows that took generations to grow.

Liam's truck is parked near the access road, which means he's on his land doing whatever Liam does.

From the highway, the property looks the way it has always looked. Permanent. Rooted. The kind of land that doesn't change because the people on it won't let it.

A white SUV is parked near the tree line, facing the property. Rental plates. Tinted windows.

Probably a lost tourist. Maybe a hunter scouting for fall. Rental vehicles end up on strange roads in Alaska all the time.

I keep driving. The SUV shrinks in the rearview mirror until the trees close behind me and the road curves south.

I don't mention it to Rhys. Probably nothing.

3

LIAM

The eastern drainage runs clear. The creek narrows between two boulders, and the water coming through carries no silt, no sediment load from the upper slopes. The channel has settled into its summer rhythm, steady and low over ground that has been here longer than any Stoddard.

Temperature says the spring feeding this section is still strong. Clarity says the root systems on the upper bank are holding. Instruments aren't necessary.

My father taught me to read water the way he taught me everything else. With his hands. Without sentiment.

The lesson landed, and the man who delivered it is in the ground on the hill above the creek. The lesson is the part that survived.

The notebook comes out of my back pocket. Date, water level, temperature by feel.

The leather cover is soft with years of handling. The first thirty pages are my father's handwriting. Mine picks up after that. Same measurements. Same shorthand. Same columns of data that would mean nothing to anyone except the two men who came before me.

The pages are running out. Every morning I reach for this one instead of starting a new book. A new one would just be mine.

The drainage comes down through old-growth spruce. My grandfather planted the first of these trees when the land was raw and open, scoured by a fire that burned through the valley before he was born. He spent decades turning bare ground back into forest.

A raven calls from the ridge. The sound carries through the spruce and fades into the drainage below, swallowed by the water.

My father continued the work. It passed to me the way everything on this mountain passes—without ceremony, without asking whether I wanted it.

Three generations of Stoddards putting trees in the ground, knowing they'd never see the full canopy but planting anyway.

Thick carpet where last autumn's thinning opened the canopy. Hemlock seedlings pushing through the needle mat. The stand is responding the way healthy timber responds when you manage it instead of strip it. Slow. Patient. On a timeline that has nothing to do with quarterly reports or fiscal years.

Just over five hundred acres. Every ridge, every hollow, every drainage and game trail and stand of timber cataloged in the notebook or in my head.

The elk cross at the north saddle in October. The lower section floods when the water jumps its bank.

A pair of goshawks have nested in the same spruce for several consecutive springs, and the female will dive at anything that comes within range of her chicks. The scar on my forearm proves she doesn't make exceptions for landlords.

Ownership is the wrong word for what connects me to this ground.

My great-grandfather Ezra filed the original claim. His wife Catherine held every acre alone after he died, running the operation until my grandfather Dale was old enough to take over. Dale planted the first managed timber and taught my father Robert that the land is a conversation that outlasts the men having it.

The same lesson reached me through his hands. By the time he died, it was in the calluses.

The cabin sits in a clearing on the south-facing slope. My grandfather positioned it where the morning sun hits the porch first and the prevailing wind pulls the woodstove draft clean.