Where had he come from? And why had he ended up alone in the woods three years earlier? Mike Cornell was born in 1919 in a remote northern settlement.
His father, Tom, worked logging camps. His mother, Eva, kept the household. Family of five. Parents, Mike, sister Anna, brother John.
They weren’t well-off, but they were solid. His father didn’t drink. His mother was strict and raised the children to work. Mike grew up in the woods.
His father took him into the timber and taught him how to cut, how to navigate, how to track game. By fourteen, Mike could spend a week in the woods alone.
No compass. No map.
He knew trails, berries, mushrooms, where to find water, where the game moved. In 1937, when Mike was eighteen, his father was arrested. Charged with anti-state talk.
Somebody reported that Tom had criticized the collective system while out in the woods. He got ten years in a northern labor camp. Mike never saw him again.
His mother said he died in 1940 of exhaustion. Mike himself was left alone. He was drafted in 1939.
He served on the eastern frontier, in border troops. In 1941 the war began. But he wasn’t sent west.
They kept him in the east in case of attack there. Only in August 1945 did he see combat, in the eastern campaign on the border. Two weeks of fighting, then surrender.
Mike received a campaign medal and came home in 1946. By then his mother had died in 1943, during the hunger years.
His sister Anna had married and moved to a large city. His brother John had been killed in a major battle in 1942. Mike was alone.
He got work as a logger, like his father. Worked, lived in a bunkhouse, drank on weekends, chased girls. In 1950, at a dance, he met a young woman named Gail.
Gail Mitchell, 22, pretty, lively, worked as a clerk in the local general store. Mike fell hard. Courted her for six months, then proposed.
Gail said yes. They married in 1951. Nothing fancy.
They rented a room in a workers’ barracks and started out. At first it was good. Gail was a good cook and kept things neat.
Mike worked, brought home money, didn’t drink much. They wanted children, but it never happened. Three years of trying. Nothing.
They went to a doctor. The doctor said Gail was infertile from an illness she’d had as a child. No children. Ever.
That broke something in both of them. Gail cried for months. Mike tried to comfort her, told her they could still make a life together.
But Gail couldn’t let it go. She wanted children badly. And all around her, her friends were having babies.
She’d see somebody else’s child and come home in tears. By 1955 she had changed. Became sharp-tongued. Bitter.
She blamed Mike. “Maybe it’s you,” she’d say. “Maybe you’re the problem.”
Mike kept quiet and took it. But things got worse when Gail started drinking. She’d buy vodka and drink during the day while Mike was at work.
He’d come home and find her drunk, the place filthy, no supper made. Mike tried to stop it. Hid bottles. Kept cash from her. Gail screamed, threw dishes, neighbors complained.
Mike was ashamed. In 1955 Gail met another man, a truck driver named Victor. He drove her into town, bought her drinks, and before long they were having an affair.
Mike found out and confronted Victor. Victor apologized, promised to back off, didn’t. In 1956 Gail told Mike flat out: “I’m leaving. Victor’s taking me to the city.”
“We’ll live there. I don’t need you. You’re dull, broke, and country. He’s fun, and he’s got money.” Mike tried to stop her. Gail just shrugged.
“Let me go. I can’t have kids anyway. I’m no use to anybody.” She packed and left with Victor. Mike was thirty-seven, alone, no wife, no children, no family.
He went on a bender. Drank for a month straight. Lost his job. Got thrown out of the bunkhouse.
He was sleeping on acquaintances’ floors in exchange for a bottle when luck stepped in. In the fall of 1956 he ran into an old acquaintance, Tom Evers. Tom was 60, a trapper.
He lived in the woods, trapped sable, sold pelts. Made a decent living and answered to nobody. He saw Mike drunk and invited him out to his hunting cabin.
“Mike, quit drinking and come with me into the woods. I’ll teach you the trade. You’ll make money and live like a human being again.” Mike agreed and went.
He spent the winter of 1956–1957 with Tom. Learned to trap, set steel traps, track animals, skin them, cure pelts. By spring Mike was doing well enough and had made his first money—about $800 for the winter, not bad.
In 1957 Tom made him an offer. “Mike, want your own place? There’s an old trapping cabin out in the woods, abandoned.”
“Fix it up and you can have it.” Mike agreed. They found the cabin half-fallen in, but sound underneath.
Mike spent the summer repairing it. Re-roofed it, rebuilt the stove, set windows. By fall he moved in. Became a trapper and hunter.
Alone, in the woods, sixty miles from the nearest settlement. He lived that way for two years—1957 and 1958. Trapped sable, mink, fox.
Sold the pelts to buyers in town and got cash. Lived plain, but free. Nobody ordering him around. Nobody blaming him. Nobody leaving him.
The woods didn’t betray you. They were honest. Put in the work, they fed you. Don’t, and you paid for it. Simple.
Mike got used to being alone. Talked to trees, squirrels, moose. Read books Tom brought him.
Smoked his pipe by the stove and listened to the wind in the pines. He wasn’t lonely. Thought that was how he’d live out his days.
Alone, till old age. Die in the woods and let the animals have what was left. Not a bad end for a hunter.
And then, on August 22, 1958, he found the cabin with the Old Believer women. Four women asked him to be their husband, father their children, and live with them. As Mike walked back to the cabin, he thought.
Why? Why take this on? He was free.
Why go back into family life, obligations, all of it? But another thought kept circling. What good is freedom if you’re alone?
What’s the point of living in the woods if there’s nobody to hand life on to? Children are continuation. Family line.
Memory. And one more thing. Those women were vulnerable.
Alone in deep woods. Who was going to protect them? Wolves, bears, drifters.
They might not make it on their own. And if he didn’t help, they might die. Four young lives gone.
Was that right? Mike reached the cabin near sundown. Phoebe was sitting on the porch, praying with a set of beads.
She saw him and stood. “You came back.” Mike nodded.
“I came back. Thought it over. I’ll do it.”
“But I have conditions.” Phoebe watched him closely. “Let’s hear them.”
“I’ll live with you. Hunt, work, protect you. I’ll be husband to all four of you, the way you asked. Have children, if God gives them.”
“But I’m not Old Believer. I was baptized in the state church. I don’t know your customs, your prayers.”
“Will that be a problem?” Phoebe smiled. First time he’d seen her smile.
“We’ll teach you. We’ll receive you by our rite. Baptize you again, the old way.”
“You’ll be one of us. Are you willing?” Mike nodded. “I am.”
