One photographer's search for community, home and family.
The above is the subtitle of my blog, and I came up with it after I realized that my entire career as a photojournalist has been my own personal search for all three of these things: community, home and family. I define each term broadly, and in a way that pretty much opens the entire world up to this investigation.
My family, as anyone who has spent much time with this blog knows, is made up of many individuals of various ethnic and cultural backgrounds, some of whom I have a direct blood or marital tie to and some of whom I don't.
Of course, if a photographer is going to seek out his family, it must include those with whom he has a direct blood and marital ties and this is something that I have long had in mind to do.
My blood-tie family, like so many, is scattered about, coast-to-coast, over the oceans and on various continents. So, to seek out this family, I have imagined that sooner or later I would find the time and resource required to do the traveling necessary to track down a good sample of them, wherever they live, from my birthplace of Ogden, Utah, to Thailand, where one of my older brothers has apparently relocated (complicated story).
Yet, I have blood family close by - less than half-an-hours drive from our house - and virtually every day I wake up and fail to think of these family members. It does not occur to me that they are close by and that we could get together now and then and see what each other is up to.
The last time I had laid eyes upon a member of this Alaska-based part of my blood family was, oh, I don't know - close to 25 years ago, maybe?
Ten days ago, a new baby was born into this family and here she is: Makiah Young. Suddenly, these blood-tie family members have appeared in my life - most of them for the first time.
The woman in the back is my first cousin, Mary Lynn Spahr, eight years my senior and the oldest daughter of my Aunt Velma, one of my mother's two younger sisters. She lives in Malad, Idaho, where she grew up on the family ranch. Last week, she called me on the phone to tell me me about Makiah, her newest granddaughter and to let me know that she would be in Alaska until today.
She invited Margie and I to come to dinner last Friday, but I had a beard contest to go to, so the dinner was put off until last night.
Mary Lynn has her hands on the shoulders of her granddaughter, Madeline, who makes a dinner salad as another granddaughter, Mina, cuts up the pineapple. Mary Lynn introduced me to the girls as their cousin, Billy. I would be more inclined to think of myself as their Uncle Bill, but when it comes to the English language, the definition of relatives quickly becomes a confusing mess - at least to me. Maybe to some it makes sense.
Anyway, whether they be my cousins or my nieces, the two girls have grown up unbeknownst to me, and I to them, in a house that is 20 some miles away from my house - not far off a highway that I travel very frequently.
And this is Melissa.
Mina with her baby sister, Makiah.
And here is Austin, a brother to Makiah, perhaps a cousin to me, but I am more inclined to think of him as nephew.
And here is the littlest brother/cousin/nephew, Wyatt - eight years old.
The electric-green fingernails atop baby's head belong to Melissa.
To the left is Jennifer Young, Mary Lynn's daughter and the only member of the Alaska-based nuclear family that I had met until last night. Husband and dad Dan Young offers the blessing on the food before we eat.
As regular readers know, I was born into and raised in a Mormon family descended on both sides from the original Mormons, including the pioneers who settled in a much larger swath of the mountain west than just Utah. Although I am forever rooted in the heritage, my life has pulled me and all my family out of the Mormon congregation.
Mary Lynn and her family, including those who live here in Alaska, have remained dedicated and active Mormons. Dan is a doctor and Jennifer a nurse who works with heart patients at the Alaska Native Medical Center. She has cared for and will care for many of my friends from Arctic and rural Alaska.
I did not ask if Dan descends from Brigham Young and is therefore some kind of cousin to Steve Young. I must find out.
That's brother/cousin/nephew Mitchell, pouring himself a glass of water.
And this is the view from the family's living room window. Standing left to right: Foraker, Hunter and Denali, which, if measured from its base to its top, is the greatest mountain not only in all of North America, but all the world.
To have such a view, right out your living room window!
I don't know exactly how far these mountains are from the Young house, but I would guess about 200 miles.
Jennifer with Makiah. Two that were not here this evening are attending college. Makiah was unexpected. She came as a surprise - but a surprise the family is delighted to have. In total, there are eight children in Jennifer and Dan's blended family.
Cousin Mary Lynn... she looks pretty good, I'd say. When I was growing up, each summer, my family would take my Dad's vacation time and drive to Utah. Along the way, we would stop at the Ipsen Ranch just outside of Malad, Idaho.
We never stayed for long - maybe overnight and part of the next day - but the stops in Malad were always my favorite part of the vacation.
Aunt Velma had a big family - 11 children, including Mark, just younger than me and Brenda, a few months older, and we loved to play together.
Although she was nearly eight years older, I loved Mary Lynn, too. You could say that I adored her. She was beautiful and vicacious and she took me on my first horseback ride. I was tiny and the horse was big and I was frightened that I was going to get bucked off and killed but she spoke soothingly to me and with her horse kept my horse walking at a slow, easy, pace and so everything was fine - until we turned around to go back.
Then that horse took off on a gallop and I could not slow it down.
That horse wanted to get home.
At least once, I followed her into the barn, where she milked the cows.
She had to get up very early in the morning to do these things.
Not many Americans live like that anymore.
Margie gets to hold Makiah.
Margie and Makiah.
On a Young bookshelf stands this picture of my Aunt Velma. I hate to single any one aunt out as my favorite, but Aunt Velma was the one I got to know the best and I loved her dearly. I spent the summer that I turned 17 living with Aunt Velma and Uncle Perry and working on their ranch alongside my cousin Mark.
It was, I would say, one of those landmark summers of youthful life. About 30 years ago, I began a novel loosly based on that summer and wrote about 100 pages, before the novel disappeared into the constant shift and shufffle of my life.
I have no idea where that 100 pages is now.
I would like to find it and finish it before I die, but, realistically, I am afraid to commit such a thing. I have another novel that I am working on a bit right now, about a Mormon missionary in Lakota country. If I complete but one novel in this life, I intend it to be that one.
Over two decades ago, Velma came to Alaska to visit Jennifer and I took her for an airplane ride in the now-crashed Running Dog. The ride was a big disappoinment to me, because the valley was completely socked in by heavy overcast and I could not fly out of it. We were flying in the midst of the some of the greatest mountains in the world, but I could not show her a single peak.
The clouds shrouded them all. So all I did was show her Wasilla and Palmer from about 1000 feet, and a few farms and a bit of countryside.
Disappointed though I was, everytime that I saw her after that, she brought up that ride and stated how much she had enjoyed seeing all the settlement below us.
But it was not the settlement that I wanted to show her - it was the wilderness, the mountains, the unsettled country.
I last saw her in June of 2007, at Dad's funeral. Her health was good and she looked much younger than her 80-some years. I had this hope that before too long I could sit down with her in the ranchhouse outside of Malad and have her relate some family history to me.
Sadly, life took a couple of very hard turns for her after that, including a fatal automobile accident that took the life of her second youngest son, my once-little cousin Jeff, who I had become fond of that summer in Idaho, and she passed on before I got the chance.
Austin, Mitchell and the older sisters all left for other places before Margie and I did, so Mary Lynn gave them some goodbye hugs.
Mary Lynn also asked me if I remembered a certain incident that took place between my mother, her father and my late brother Ron in a hospital after he broke his neck in a motor cycle accident. It was an incident that was imperative to saving my brother's life.
At first, my mind drew a blank. I could not think of the incident at all. Then she told me what she had heard of it and it started to come back. Then it came vividly back. Memory is a funny thing. You forget and yet, you don't forget. The information is back there, hanging unseen in the fog.
When this incident happened, my maternal grandfather had been dead for over a quarter-of-a-century. I did not witness the event myself, but Mom had been very intense in her telling of it.
In Mormon families, the veil between the mortal and the spirits of the dead is considered to be very thin, and this kind of story of communion between the living and the dead is common. We talked of other similar incidents that are spoken of among our families.
This is not unique to Mormons, though. And the sense of it can happen even between a strayed Mormon man and his close Hindu friend as well.
It can happen with Iñupiats, it can happen with Apaches.
It can happen among all people who believe it can happen and it can even surprise people who don't believe and can happen among them as well.
Still, it all remains a mystery to me.
My life experience has left me without any firm belief.
Just before Margie and I left, Mary Lynn took us in to see this crib set that she, Jennifer and the girls had worked long, hard, and lovingly to sew.
Then, for the first time ever, she laid baby Makiah in it.
Soon, all the family still present in the house gathered to see Makiah in her crib.
Do you think Wyatt adores his baby sister? Do you think he will be her protector?
Airplanes, real or model, always catch my eye. Mary Lynn had bought this one for Wyatt to use in a school project.
It was airplanes that helped bind me to my dad, to my brother, Ron, and to Alaska.
Just as we were leaving, Jennifer brought Makiah out to say goodbye.
Now, here is the question - will another quarter century pass before I see her or another member of this segment of my blood family again?
They are so close and yet I get so easily distracted and taken up by my own little enterprises.
The thought just now occurs to me that I might prevent this from happening this time by giving myself an assignment: to photograph Makiah every month. If I were to do that, I would probably get to better know her mom, dad, brothers and sisters as well.
I'm afraid to give myself such an assignment, though - afraid that I will still get swept up in my own life and will fail to follow through.
Still, I think the idea is a good one.
If I were to do it, I'll bet Makiah could then get to know her cousins, Kalib and Jobe, as well.
I won't commit myself just yet, but I will think about it.
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Sunday, March 13, 2011 at 3:51PM 
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