Some Alaska Stories
an excerpt from the book 13 Summers in Alaska
I worked at four different fishing lodges in Alaska over thirteen seasons, which eventually led to the book, 13 Summers in Alaska. The Alaska stories below are taken from that book.
Gravel
Most folks fishing with me in Alaska walk on gravel all day long but never look at it. Rocks is just rocks to them.
When I walk on gravel I see a kaleidoscope of color, form, shape, and texture. I feel a deep sense of geology, history, archeology, and biology. In the right light, the visual richness of Goodnews River gravel almost overwhelms me.
Millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of years ago sediments settled. Volcanoes erupted. Magma cooled. All these processes form rock. Heat and pressure change rock that’s already there.
Mountains thrust upward by the motions of continents. Erosion wears them down. The river carries pieces of mountains towards the sea, shaping and polishing them as it goes. The river deposits the pieces in enormous piles we call gravel bars. I find these polished pieces of mountain when I walk on those bars.
I wonder how long it takes a piece of gravel to travel from a mountain top to a riverside bar where I might find it. No one has started a gravel tagging program.
I find beautiful pieces of rock in the gravel. Unusual shapes and intrusions fascinate me. And occasionally, if you look enough, you find aboriginal artifacts.
Men have lived in Alaska at least from the time of the Bering land bridge, about 12,000 years ago. Until Columbus arrived, these people lived in the stone age. Their discarded tools and implements look much like the rest of the gravel. You have to look at a lot of rocks before you begin to notice those that are different, those that look worked.
I find a curiously hollowed out rock. Mike Gorton tells me it’s a whale oil lamp. It might predate Columbus’s arrival in the new world.
I find a stone. The working of men on it is obvious. I take it back to camp and ask Mike what it might be. He says it’s an anchor stone, used by aborigines to anchor their skin-covered boat. Thousands of years may have passed since it was last used. Did the owners lose it when its tether snapped while anchored, or was it dropped, broken, and then discarded?
Footprints in the gravel indicate a large mammal has passed. Most of the time those mammals are bears. Their scat and footprints litter every gravel bar in the Goodnews River system, hundreds of miles of shoreline.
Bear scat releases nutrients into the environment that salmon have carried into the river from the Pacific Ocean. Salmon act as an enormous nutrient cycling system, although that system is nowhere near as efficient as it was before dams, logging, agriculture, mining, and commercial fishing brought Pacific salmon perilously close to being endangered.
Salmon lay their eggs in gravel. It’s astonishing how they alter the river bed, digging the holes we call redds in which to lay their eggs. On the downstream side of the redds big humps of gravel alter the current flow, and at low water form hazards to navigation.
As the hen salmon drop their eggs and buck salmon their milt, Dolly Varden and rainbow trout dart in to partake of the bounty of eggs. Salmon develop those gnarly teeth to fight off the egg predators. Apparently, they work well enough that salmon continue returning to rivers that have not been too severely altered.
As I walk on a gravel bar, looking for interesting stones, all these thoughts and others only half-formed pass through my mind. A gravel bar is so much more than just a pile of rocks.
Sonja’s Mom
The dining hall at Goodnews was a large Weatherport, the interior of which had a divider. The large main space was guest dining, the much smaller space staff dining. When the guests were served dessert Mike would go talk to all of them individually, filling the assignments for the next day. The guides waited in the staff dining room until he was finished. Then we got our assignments from him and introduced ourselves to our anglers to discuss the plan for the following day.
One evening Mike came into the staff dining room and asked, “Who wants to go mountain climbing tomorrow?” Only I raised my hand. He said to me, “You’re taking three guests to Tsuktulig. One of them has been there before. Park the boat at Toby’s Window and follow the dry braid up to the tundra plain. Bring a shotgun.”
The next morning, I parked the boat at Toby’s Window. In addition to the shotgun I carried a backpack with lunches, water, and my cameras. I felt quite the mule.
Some of the crew tried to keep their footwear dry by wading across the creek barefoot. The waist-high grass up on the tundra plain dripped with dew. We were all soaked to the skin from the waist down within minutes anyway.
Jimmy had been up the mountain once before, but it had been several years and his memory was vague. None of the rest of us had been there. We felt our way across the tundra to the mountain. There is no trail. It was hard work, slogging across that boggy ground.
We arrived at the base of the mountain. There is no trail there, either. What you find is a 45-degree slope and a tangled growth of alders to fight through for a mile or so. It was hard, hard work. We couldn’t see where we were going. We all fell several times.
We cleared the treeline. It was still steep for a long way. But the biggest plant was grass, so nothing could tangle our legs. All of us eventually reached the summit. It was glorious, a magnificent view, well worth the pain of getting there.
The clock keeps ticking. We reversed our field, got back in the boat, and returned to camp.
I went to staff dining to load my photos into my computer. Sonja, the breakfast cook, came and sat next to me while I worked. Looking at the day’s photos, she asked, “Where is that?” “Tsuktulig,” I said. “It’s a mountain, an hour’s run up the river.” She looked me right in the eye and said, “If you ever go back there I want to go.”
I thought, without vocalizing it, “Honey, you could never make it.” Sonja was nice and all, but she smoked a lot of cigarettes and maybe ate too many of the cookies and brownies she baked. I did not trust her physical condition.
Two days later Tyler and I got the day off. We left camp early, taking a boat up to Toby’s Window. Sonja was not with us, not having been asked.
We made better time up than I had on the earlier trip. The way wasn’t any easier, but at least now I knew where it was. The sky was a rare cerulean blue, wispy cirrus clouds, sun drenching us with radiance, just glorious after the usual crappy weather Goodnews offers. We could see Russia!
We lounged around, doing nothing but soaking it up. Lunch happened. There may have been a nap.
The clock keeps ticking. We reversed our field, got back in the boat, and returned to camp.
We were in the changing room, reveling in our wonderful day, when a very angry Kim Gorton came in. Her ire took a bead on me, and she blasted me with it. “Sonja told you she wanted to go and you left her here? What kind of jerk are you?” Tyler came to my defense. “Kim, she could never have made it.” “You could have left her there! You didn’t even give her a chance!” It was the angriest I would ever see Kim. I was deeply remorseful that I so upset her.
I hoped the whole thing would blow over, but of course it didn’t. It couldn’t. Our staff was a tiny community of 15 souls. I had to man up and face Sonja.
When she opened her door the next morning it was obvious she’d been crying. Again, I felt remorse. “Sonja, I’m sorry we didn’t bring you. It was nothing personal. I didn’t think you’d be able to make it. If you couldn’t, either we would have had to leave you there or turn around. Neither of those were acceptable options.” She told me of all the things she had done and what a capable woman she was, and I again apologized. She accepted that what was done was done, and when I left her we were as good as it was possible to be under the circumstance.
Mike was amazing sometimes. This was one of those times. He gave Jack Walker, Sonja, and me the afternoon off. My instructions were to take Sonja mountain climbing at another, smaller, more distant peak. We got in the boat and went.
Upon reaching the target peak we again had to explore and bushwhack until we found a game trail along the ridge that took us to the summit. We all sat up there, panting.
Tsuktulig dominated the horizon. I said to Sonja, “Do you see that mountain over there?” “Yes.” “That’s where we went.” It was easily three times higher than where we were. She said, “You were right not to bring me. This one almost killed me.” I went over and hugged her.
Sonja went rummaging in her rucksack and pulled out a Ziplock bag with a lot of white powder in it. “What’s that?” “It’s my mom’s ashes. I spread some at every beautiful place I go. Mom has ashes in a lot of countries. I wanted to put some on that mountain. That’s why I got so upset when you didn’t bring me. But this mountain is better, because I’m at the top of this one.” And she reached into the bag, pulled out a pinch of Mom, and tossed it into the wind. Mom’s ashes settled over the mountaintop.
The clock keeps ticking. We reversed our field, got back in the boat, and returned to camp.
Storming at Double Hut
It has been stated earlier that Goodnews weather could be less than ideal. When it really got raining I would sometimes wear two raincoats simultaneously in a usually futile attempt to stay dry.
We had a week where it rained continuously. The river flooded (I wondered how the floaters* were doing). There was a foot of water under our boardwalk. And then the wind came up.
It was probably blowing 50 MPH with gusts. There were five-foot waves on the river. Mike sent Jeff Arnold out to determine the safety or lack thereof on the river. Jeff recommended that no boats be allowed out. It was with great sadness that Mike announced no one was fishing. Angling had never been called off for weather before in the history of the lodge.
I didn’t like the idea. Safety was fine but I would go nuts hanging around the lodge all day. I decided to hike to Double Hut.
Double Hut was one of our fishing spots. There were two beaver lodges right next to each other (something I’ve not seen anywhere else). It was perhaps a half-mile upstream of the lodge, certainly not an overwhelming distance.
Most of the guests were in the dining room. Most of the staff was in the staff dining room. I asked if anyone else wanted to go. I got blank stares.
I put on my waders and raincoat, grabbed a shotgun (I might run into a bear), and left. The waders were a good call. It was knee-deep all the way, and I walked along the bank.
I made myself as comfortable as I could on one of the beaver lodges. The beavers don’t design, or build, the lodges with human comfort in mind. Beaver sticks are hard, and pointy on the ends. Sitting on the lodge requires care to find the right spot.
The river hissed and foamed, spray blowing off the tops of the waves. Scud clouds fairly flew by, low enough that a good stretch could touch them. Every so often a dust devil, made of mist instead of dust, would blow up the river, a tiny tornado dancing on the water.
Except for the sounds of the wind and the water it was silent. No beavers, no bears, no ducks, no people. I’m not trying to fish. I just watch the weather. It’s putting on a fantastic show. I sit there for hours, watching, until I just cannot get comfortable any more. I slog back to the lodge.
People ask me, “How was your walk?” “Fantastic,” I say. They think I’m weird for going out into the weather.
I think they are weird for not going out into the weather.
*”Floaters” are what we at the lodge called the folks rafting down the river. The Goodnews remains a popular float trip destination.