Driving east on International Airport Road we come to the intersection at Arctic Boulevard and I am unexpectedly struck with alarm. This was the parking lot where the police found Macklin passed out in the car, engine running, smoke wafting out from under the hood. I can’t remember where they took him, either the police station or the hospital for evaluation. In either case he was not charged with anything and he was furious about the whole episode. The car was impounded and never ran again. It was unclear what had happened to it, or, for that matter, to him. When he was released, he was shoeless.

Continuing east, now on Tudor, remembering how Macklin would call me at work. Out of gas or nearly so. Could I fill him up? Until payday? Always, I could. The usual rendezvous place was the Circle K on Tudor, the one next to The Silva Saddle, the western wear store favored by Macklin’s friend, Garret. When the tank was filled, he often needed some cash, too. Just to get to Friday. And I’d hit the ATM for a couple twenties.

Macklin had a counseling appointment up in Wasilla. He always had to be talked into it. He didn’t believe counseling could help him. And so, didn’t earnestly participate, so far as we could tell. I told him we could take our skis and snowboard and we could hit Hatcher Pass. I had never done this but had heard it was possible. I found the parking pullout at the 16-mile marker. There was a huge hairpin turn on the road, making it possible to ski from Mile 16 back down to Mile 12. Then we had to hitchhike back up to the car for another run. By the time we finished our second run it was dark, but the effort had been exhilarating, well worth it. The second ride we got back up to Mile 16 was in the back of a truck that had a mattress in it. We lay on our backs watching the stars begin to emerge out of the darkening ether. I had this strange flash of memory to a Ron Carlson story that ends with a couple drunks on a mattress in the back of a pick-up truck. Later I will seek out the text and read that the story’s last words are spoken by the drunk woman, who had been crying. “It’s so beautiful,” she said, “It’s so chilly and so beautiful.” So it was, so it was.

Sweeney and I read from our work at The Writers Block. Sweeney, who takes much pleasure in claiming everything I write is morbid and depressing, read three elegies to friends he recently lost. Pot meet kettle. The weather was rainy and the roads were icy, but both Sweeney and I were really gratified that reading was so well-attended. One of Macklin’s best friends, Kevin, showed up, driving all the way down from Palmer. A spindly kid, now an enormous, muscled man, the result of seven years of wildfire fighting. I was touched that he came, thinking all the while, man, Macklin would be so glad to have seen the man you have become. And then I stifled a strange thought; I almost said, Tell your Mom Macklin says hi. He’s both always gone, almost a decade now, and also somehow always present.

One time Macklin agreed to meet me for lunch at the Taco King on Northern Lights. Sometimes talking with him could go badly in a heartbeat. I always had to be conscious of not being heard as prying or criticizing. He was more or less on time, but he looked a little haggard. I didn’t know where he was living and I didn’t ask. He ate a large meal and then asked if it was okay if he ordered a little more. It was more than okay. I was happy to see him eat. When we parted I remember thinking I might never see that kid again, but at least he wasn’t hungry. It was a thought I often had when we parted, that I might not see him again. Except for the last time I saw him, I didn’t have that thought then.

David Stevenson’s five books include the short fiction collection Letters from Chamonix, winner of the Banff Mountain Book Award. This excerpt will appear in Securing the Shadows, Notes from the Crossroads of Mountains, Loss, and Writing, forthcoming from Torrey House Press in 2026.  He lives on the central Oregon coast.