My Grandmother is amazing! She just turned 90, and coincidentally
published her third book. The book is Bold Women in Alaska History (Amazon.com $10.80), and I can
think of nobody more apt to have written it than my own bold grandmother,
Marjorie Cochrane.
Granny was raised in
Idaho, where she traveled many narrow roads that have since become railroad
beds or bike trails. She visited Yosemite and saw the Firefall at Glacier Point in 1937. She rode horses, played the violin, and, of course,
developed a love of writing. She earned a degree in journalism from the
University of Oregon. After she was married, she lived in the ghost towns of
Central Idaho before they were abandoned, and even witnessed an atomic explosion
in Nevada in 1953.
While raising her five children, she became a reporter for
the Idaho Statesman, and for the Star Newspaper in McCall Idaho, where she was
also an AP reporter. On one assignment, she had to fly in a small plane in
order to interview fire crews at the Big Creek Ranger Station in what is now
the Frank Church/River of No Return Wilderness. The plane flew through a
thunderstorm and out over the raging fire, which from above looked like a “huge,
glowing snake weaving its way along the mountains.” In McCall, she took up
hiking and backpacking, taking her toddlers out into the mountains to sleep
under the stars, and instilling in them a love of the outdoors that has been
passed on through generations. She guided girl scouts on outings in the woods,
and took cub scouts to an army base for tank rides.
When the family
moved to the Boise valley, she once again worked as a reporter for the Idaho Statesman,
graded essays for English classes at the University, and earned a library
science degree so that she could become a librarian in her children’s schools.
One of her best jobs was starting a library at a new elementary school, where
she could decide what books to buy for an entire children’s library! Meanwhile,
she was taking backpacking classes and sewing backpacks for the family to use
nearly every weekend on trips to the mountains.
Her next adventure began when the family relocated to
Alaska. With her husband already at work in his new job there, she loaded the
children onto a ferry bound for Alaska. They slept on the deck, where the
covered area was full of sleeping bags, and passengers played guitars and sang
together late into the night as they sped past the wilds of Canada to their
destination in the North. In Eagle River, Granny was drawn to substitute
teaching by the magnificent salary they offered, and this was the hardest job
she ever had. After days of going home with headaches, she jumped at the chance
to become a reporter once again, this time with the Eagle River Star.
In the early years of
helicopter use by the police force, she reported on a demonstration of a new
police helicopter at a local school. The pilot offered her a ride, but while
they were in the air, the pilot got a call to tail an escaping bank robber, and
they followed the chase until police managed to arrest the suspect. Granny
loved it! The Star was also the first paper in Alaska to use a computer, and my
Grandmother was the first reporter in the State to use it. It took up an entire
room, and when working on a document she had to remember to save every few
paragraphs. Many good stories were gobbled up by the enormous computer and had
to be rewritten time and time again.
Her outdoor adventures continued there, too, and one of
the first things she did was sign her family up for a kayaking trip on Prince
William Sound with a couple of entrepreneurs known as the Bear Brothers, who
would take the family out on a float plane to an island in the Sound. They
would then have to paddle their way back to civilization. There were no cell
phones then, and the guides had no radio. Granny spent a sleepless night before
the trip wondering what she had been thinking. But they flew out the next day,
assembled their kayaks, and waved goodbye to the float plane in a wilderness
that stretched on forever. They saw what looked like multitudes of sailboats,
but turned out to be icebergs that had calved off the Nellie Juan Glacier. They
explored islands with no trace of human presence, collected mussels to roast for
dinner, and crossed a vast expanse of rolling water to reach the port of
Whittier and the train back home.
Summers in Alaska were spent canoeing and kayaking the vast
system of boggy lakes South of Anchorage, where moose and blueberries were
encountered on every trip. Winters were spent skating the frozen lakes and
cross country skiing in the hills. The winter highlight was the ski train,
which the family caught in Anchorage and rode along Turnagain Arm, while the
train rocked to the dancers in the Polka car. After a day spent skiing in the
mountains, the return trip was often even more raucous.
When the children had grown and gone their separate ways,
and Granny and Grandad retired, they decided to leave Alaska. For most
retirees, new adventures are not on their mind, but when Granny and Grandad
vacationed in Hawaii, they decided on a whim they wanted to live there, and the
only way to afford it was to become coffee farmers. So they exchanged their
house with a view out over Cook Inlet and a hot tub under the northern lights
for a coffee shacks with a rain barrel for drinking water and a composting
toilet in the outhouse, where they could wake up to the singing of the
cardinals and wear shorts every day.
Now Granny lives in Nahcotta on the Long Beach Peninsula in
Washington where she sings in the choir, gardens, and continues to write. She
published a book for young adults in 2010 called Three Dogs, Two Mules, and a Reindeer: True Animal Adventures on the Alaska Frontier(Amazon.com $9.74). She is editor in
chief for her family of writers and an inspiration for us all. If I could
change one thing about her most recent book, it would be to add a chapter about
her!
