Standing in the middle of the gravel road, I gape down Alaska Avenue at the brushy ditch where our house once stood, scratch my head, and ponder Shelley’s poem, Ozymandias:

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Over the six decades since our family left Valdez, I had heard that the town, destroyed by the 1964 earthquake, had been burned, bulldozed, or carted away. Still, I am unprepared for this. Boundless and bare. Nothing beside remains. Where has my childhood gone? A black bear strolls by, a sharp reminder that no one lives here anymore. Of the entire town, only Alaska Avenue and McKinley Street remain, forming half a picture frame from which spills out thickets of spruce, alder, and memories. Except for the occasional informational sign with a scan-me code, the thriving town of my childhood has vanished.

While visiting the rebuilt town four miles away, I am relieved to discover a 1:20 scale model of Old Valdez in the local museum. The detailed exhibit stokes memories of racing down dusty avenues, sometimes to the orphanage to play with friends, sometimes fleeing rival gang members intent on mayhem. Memories of walking to church or Bill Eagan’s Valdez Supply, learning my letters in Anna Bortel’s kindergarten class, or Dr. Spencer sewing my scalp back together in his clinic.

Besides the museum, I have Mom’s color slides of the house we rented, the orphanage, and the log church we built over the summer of 1954. Scary photos of 20-foot vertical snowbanks, sledding off a barn roof, and dip-netting salmon from the steep banks of the treacherous Copper River. Pictures of shooting snowshoe hare with the too-long rifle butt tucked under my five-year-old arm and of the bear cub Dad shot when the mama bear charged, and his gun jammed.

I know all this happened. I’ve even written a book about it. Still, peering through the gauzy veil of memory, I have to ask, “Are memories bigger than life, or was life bigger than memory?”