Memories of mother cherished in north woods

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Late each summer, Mike Jarvis packs up his truck, sets a course from Brattleboro, Vt., to the northern tip of Maine, and heads for Allagash, a place he has come to love.

Everybody would forgive Jarvis if he didn’t come back. Everybody would understand. But every bear season (and again during deer season) Jarvis returns to his second family, to his second home … to the place his mother died … to the memories that he and his father are still struggling to cope with.

Nancy Jarvis wasn’t your typical woman. That becomes clear as her son talks about her, sharing many memories in the present tense, nearly a decade after her death.

Look at Mike Jarvis and you see a small, sinewy, rugged outdoorsman who could (and will) track a deer for miles. He loves the woods. He loves to hunt. And he loves being in Allagash.

Just like his mother did.

“She gets back three or four miles and doesn’t worry about coming out,” Jarvis says, as if his mother were sitting beside us. “She knows her way in the woods and always comes out like she was supposed to.”

Except for that one time.

There was nothing anyone could do for Nancy Jarvis that day. Not Mike, who was back home in Brattleboro, finishing a job. Not Mike’s dad, Phil, who was deer hunting with her. Nobody.

“I don’t know if she was going into the [tree] stand or coming out of the stand,” Mike Jarvis says, shaking his head slowly, speaking softly. “She had a massive heart attack.”

When Nancy fell, her husband was there.

“For some reason, he had left his stand and gone to check on her,” Mike Jarvis says. “Dad caught her when she was falling out of the tree.”

Phil hiked two and a half miles out of the woods to get help, but nothing could be done. Just like that, Phil’s wife … Mike’s mom … one of the best outdoorswomen you’d ever find … was gone.

“Them two were inseparable,” Mike Jarvis says. “Anything one was doing, the other one was doing.”

Yes, everybody would forgive Mike Jarvis if he didn’t come back to Allagash. Everybody would understand.

But it hasn’t worked out that way.

Late every summer, bear season arrives in these remote Maine woods. Small towns like Allagash bustle. Excitement is in the air. Old friendships are renewed, and new ones forged around a common interest. And late every summer, Mike Jarvis returns to one such hunting town on the fringe of the massive north woods. This year, truth be told, he’s actually a week early. His wife is pregnant. She’s due on Sept. 25. And she has a habit of delivering early.

“So I had to come up the first week, and I’m probably still pushing it,” he says.

But he’s here. Make no mistake about that.

And Nancy Jarvis would surely be proud of that fact.

Phil and Nancy Jarvis headed to Allagash for the first time nearly 20 years ago, Mike explains. The family had always hunted near Moosehead Lake, and had heard tales of big north woods bucks. They visited Allagash, looking for some land to buy, and stopped at a small restaurant called Two Rivers Lunch.

That’s where they met Tylor and Leitha Kelly, the owners. And that’s when Mike Jarvis got his second family.

“They’re good-hearted people and you can tell from your first impression of them that they’re true to the heart,” Mike Jarvis says. “And you know people like that when you see them and deal with them.”

Soon, Mike was parking his camper on the Kelly land when he came to hunt … even though his mom and dad had bought a parcel of land from the Kellys. Soon enough, Mike was sleeping in a spare room in Leitha and Tylor’s house during bear season. Now, he helps guide Wade Kelly, Leitha and Tylor’s son, put out bear baits and pitches in on a variety of other camp chores.

Among the 22 hunters in camp this week, there are many who know the Kellys well. Most who have been here before become increasingly involved in the camp’s everyday chores. Jarvis, to be sure, has become more “guide” than “sport” over the years.

“We’re pretty much family,” Mike Jarvis said. “That’s how I think of them and I’m sure that’s how they look at me.”

With one of the pillars of his life missing, Mike found comfort in another. The Kelly men were woodsmen like he and his dad. Leitha Kelly is an accomplished hunter, just like his mom. Allagash felt right. It felt comfortable. It felt like a place he ought to be.

“That’s why I come back,” he says.

Mike Jarvis says he misses his mother, but finds solace in the woods he walks every time he returns to the place she loved so much, and every time he visits the family the Jarvises had become such good friends with.

He doesn’t forget what happened here. He hasn’t entirely coped with it. But he has put his mother’s death in context.

“If I had to go, I couldn’t think of a better way to go, myself,” he says.

Phil Jarvis has returned as well, at his son’s coaxing. Last year, he and Mike hunted in Allagash for a couple of weeks. This year, Mike is hoping he can lure his father north for an even longer stay.

There is pain for both in visits like this, but there is peace to be gained as well. There is. One step at a time … One visit at a time … One year at a time.

Yes, as much as they like having him around camp, everybody would forgive Mike Jarvis if he didn’t come back to Allagash. And everybody would understand.

But Mike Jarvis is here. And he’ll be back.

Jarvis loves it here, you see. And he’s got things he’s got to do … eventually.

“I still haven’t been back to the stand where she died,” he says, quietly. “I still have to do that, some day. I’m not ready yet.”

John Holyoke can be reached at jholyoke@bangordailynews.net or by calling 990-8214 or 1-800-310-8600.