The quill scratches the bark, the flames flicker in the hearth. I can hear a Great Gray Owl hooting rhythmically outside in the trees – whoo, whoo, whoo. Do owls change their language over centuries, like people do? I don't know. There's so much I haven't learned. And so few people now to learn from. Learning ... it's so long since I even thought about this. The walls of the fort fade, the years roll back, aches and pains slip away like a snake shedding skin – and I find myself sitting in Mrs. Maclaren's class on a hot Friday afternoon in June: a nervous, over-tall, gangly and gawky teenager.

Mrs. Maclaren was my favorite teacher. She lived in the next road from us, though we didn't meet socially. But when I had a paper round she always left out a couple of dimes for me. She'd been teaching history classes for the 11th grade at Anchorage High for as long as anyone could remember. I enjoyed them. She talked in long, curling sentences that always seemed to be saying something important. So I felt I was learning something, even if I had little idea what she was talking about. Like, when I took coffee to my Dad in his study, with its book-lined shelves, he seemed knowledgeable, and I felt a fraction more so just by being there. I wanted to go to college so I could work in a library, and somehow all that knowledge might filter through, like osmosis.

Mrs. Maclaren explained how history "worked." She talked about movements, migrations, trends: about soil being degraded, forests cut down, climate changes. She spoke of the Indians coming to Alaska, followed by the Eskimos – I'd always assumed it was the other way around – and of the Vikings in Greenland, when it still had a touch of "green." They farmed the country for centuries but were wiped out in the mini Ice Age of the Middle Ages because they wouldn't adapt, wouldn't learn from the natives.

In her classes I began to think of history as a car – moving forwards, turning right, turning left, sometimes reversing. She talked of the explorers who tried to bend a harsh landscape and a reluctant people to their will – people like the Cossack Zhdanko, and Captain Bering – they were my heroes. I'd look at the map in the evening and trace the places they visited, the names telling their own story: Desolation Point, Goodnews Bay, False Pass, Halibut Cove. I guess even "Anchorage" actually meant something, back in those early days.

Mrs. Maclaren was short, bespectacled, her white hair tied back in a bun – actually, she could have been a librarian. Nobody raised their voice against Mrs. Maclaren. Joss Tinker called her a squaw – behind her back, and she did look part Indian with her light brown skin and slanted eyes – rumor had it that her Scottish great-grandfather had settled down with a Native woman after he left the Yukon, rich from selling shovels and supplies to the miners. I didn't like Joss, but then, he didn't like me. I talked to Dad about him once, when I came back with a black eye after he'd shoved me aside in the lockers and I'd bumped into the corner of an open door, how he thought he knew everything, but didn't know anything, and didn't care that he didn't, and didn't care who he thumped, either. Dad said that the President, Donald Trump, was like that. Back then, I thought he was wrong, though I didn't say so. Seemed to me he was a strong president, far more so than Hilary Clinton would have been, who, in my eyes, was just an old woman, though I wouldn't have dared say that with Mom in earshot. But it was progress, it was history. Women couldn't make strong presidents, it wasn't natural. OK, there was still Angela Merkel, in Germany, but she had let all the refugees in, which proved my point. Way back, there were bad bitches like Elizabeth I in England, Catherine the Great in Russia, but that was in primitive times – they didn't even have roads then, which proved my point again. Men were leaders, women were followers; at least those were my views at the time, before I really knew any women. Before I met Jessie.

"Spengler describes history in terms of cultures," Mrs. Maclaren said, "one of which is ours, the American/European culture. He says they each have a lifespan of around a thousand years, and ours is coming to an end. Was he just depressed by the First World War? Was he right? An essay, one thousand words, with your thoughts on that."

Joss put up his hand. "What's a culture, Miss?"

They carried on for a while, but it went over my head. Sadie, a couple of desks away, had yawned and was twirling a lock of hair that curled around her ear. The light streaming through the window turned it transparent, like the conch shell I had in my bedroom. I remember wondering, if I could put my ear to hers, whether I'd hear the sea breathing.

"Jim Richards! Wake up, pay attention," Mrs. MacLaren spoke sharply.

Then the school PS system crackled into life – "All teachers to the staff room now please." We'd never heard that before. It surprised everyone into a momentary stillness, then Mrs. Maclaren got up, and with, "Carry on reading the notes on Decline of the West, class," she left.

About ten minutes later, she was back, the noise subsided, we sat straight at our desks or scuttled back to them. She sounded tense, somehow. "School's closing early today. The buses are at the gate. Something's happened, and you need to get home. We've been contacting those parents who'll be coming to collect you; you can wait here until they arrive. Tell them that the President will be addressing the nation this evening at six o'clock, if they don't already know."

There was a buzz, a babble, a rise of voices, she patted the air in front of her, waving the noise down. "I can't tell you, I don't have any answers. Be calm, go carefully, God bless you."

Our family were the standard two plus two. I came home on the yellow bus with my sister, Bess – not that we sat together; she was in ninth grade; at fifteen she was two years younger than me, and had a load of friends who all thought I was a weirdo. Fair enough, so did everyone else. They sat at the back – cooler in the summer, with the AC on, warmer in the winter, furthest from where the opening doors up front let the cold winds in. I sat up by the driver. I was awkward around girls. And boys too, for that matter. I couldn't seem to get on the wavelength as far as joshing went, or carry much of a conversation. I was no jock, clumsy at throwing or catching. "Hey, klutz, fingers and thumbs," coach would call me, as I stood at the back of the line being the last to be selected for the baseball teams. I was better on the track; got on fine with long distance, my long legs seemed to eat it up, and I enjoyed getting into the rhythm of it, but we didn't do much of that. If you couldn't measure it on the track, it didn't count.

Lessons were different; I'd got into history, and I loved biology. I had a good memory, as if my head was full of endless filing cabinets, stacked like Russian dolls. I was hoping to do biology at college, only a year to go for that. But I couldn't get on with the other sciences. The Christmas presents Dad used to hopefully get for me – the chemistry set, the build-your-own steam...