** The following is an excerpt from Kaylene Johnson’s latest book, A Tender Distance: Adventures Raising My Sons in Alaska, available in bookstores October 1. To view a trailer of the book, visit her website at http://kaylene.us.  This except is from the chapter “Moose Meadow” which was a Notable Essay in Best American Essays 2002. **

            We settled in the community of Eagle River, the name of both the river and the town perched along its banks. The Chugach Mountains rise on both sides of the valley, sentinels of the river whose headwaters trickle off Eagle glacier twenty miles upstream. In winter, the skin of the frozen river creates a smooth white ribbon of ice and snow. In summer, the river grows angry, churning with glacial silt, rain, and snowmelt.

             Although we treasured our wilderness backyard, we were not above using human invention to protect ourselves from Alaska’s extremes. And in the process of accumulating tents, backpacks, sleeping bags, tarps, clothing–all of which in some way protected us from the elements–I reluctantly accumulated something more. Beginning on a rainy day in July, I began to collect something akin to fear.

            That first summer the boys and I made a delightful midsummer discovery – an ample harvest of berries. The boys liked nothing more than picking raspberries and blueberries –except maybe eating them. Looking for berries held all the fun of playing hide-and-seek or hunting for Easter eggs. Every plump, juicy orb was a prize. 

            Erik especially savored the taste of blueberries, plucking them off the bush and popping them into his mouth. He announced one day that he would be a blueberry farmer when he grew up.  I believed him. Already, his eyes were the color of blueberries, his rosy face embraced by wheat-colored hair. His gentle nature made it easy for me to imagine him bent over fields of shrubs, nurturing them to produce his favorite food. It would likely be an unprofitable enterprise, though. Few berries actually found their way into his bucket. After he picked berries for awhile, he sidled up to my pail and asked, “Do you need all of those to make jam?”         

            Mark, whose arrival followed Erik’s birth by only eighteen months, refused his status as younger sibling. Having outgrown his infant insecurities, he fearlessly attempted every skill his brother already possessed. At five months he crawled; at nine he walked. With his determined athleticism, his soft baby features quickly give way to the more angular shape of a little boy. His enormous eyes, a darker blue than Erik’s, reflected every passing mood, either sparkling with jubilation or glowering with indignation. When he slept, with intense eyes closed, Mark appeared wholly at peace – a tender contrast to his smoldering personality.

            Mark picked berries too, but after collecting what he considered a fair amount (half a cup or so) and eating another pint, he flicked berries at his brother.  In the echo of Mark’s belly-laughs, Erik happily reciprocated. Not thrilled about the wasted berries, I suggested that if they must throw things, at least chuck crow berries–something we wouldn’t use to make jam.

            On this particular rainy day, we wandered into an abundant patch of raspberries and settled into picking. I breathed deeply the clean scent of rain. The boys squatted under a canopy of foliage where raspberries grew thick under an overhang of alders and scrub willow. Steeped in shrubbery, the only opening in this mass of greenery lay several feet behind us. The drizzling rain muffled our voices, pattering softly on the hoods of our jackets.

            I did not hear, until the sound was very close, the approaching crash of a large animal moving through the brush. My first thought was a bear. We were, after all, in bear territory and very possibly trespassing in some bruin’s favorite berry patch. Instinctively, I grabbed the boys by the nape of their raincoats and pull them toward me.

            “Go on! Get out of here!” It surprised me that my voice sounded so loud and fierce with alarm clutching at my throat.

            In two steps I rose out of the brush to face whatever was thundering toward us. As my head came up into the clearing, I nearly bumped into the elongated nose of a mother moose, her spring calf trotting at her side. She stopped abruptly and snorted. A grown moose can stand six feet at the shoulder, and this mom was no exception. We eyed each other for an instant. The brown fur on her neck and shoulders bristled. Her ears pressed against her head as she considered a charge.

            “Move it! Get out of here!” I shouted, waving my arms. Startled, she lept away from her original path and crashed back into the brush.

            Still in my grip, the boys were too low to the ground, and the brush was too thick for them to see. “What was that, Mom?” Erik asked, blueberry eyes wide with surprise.

            “It sounded very big,” Mark said, his hands clasped together, his shoulders rounded.

            The most dangerous animals in the world are females protecting their young. A mother moose with a calf is potentially as dangerous as a bear.  I suddenly realized that in a confrontation between mothers of the wilderness and a mother of suburbia, I possessed absolutely nothing with which to defend my own babies. I sank down on wobbly knees and tried not to sound panicked.

            “It was a mama moose and her calf,” I said. “She’s gone now. I think we scared her pretty good.”

            “I think she scared us,” Mark said, always quick to the truth of the matter.

            We went through the motions of berry picking a little longer with the boys hanging close. I carried on without a fuss. I didn’t want the boys to develop any apprehensions about the outdoors.  Yet, I could not rid myself of the coppery taste of fear in my own mouth.

             Relieved to get back into the car, I buckled the boys into their car seats. They struck up a conversation with each other, a cheerful banter in the background of my thoughts. As wipers squeaked against the windshield, I decided that I could not, in good conscience, take my children into wild areas without some way to protect them. Wild mothers had hooves or claws or teeth to defend their young. I needed something to even the odds. I needed a gun.