|
Lure of the North
In
1953 Dwight D. Eisenhower was
serving his first year as the 34th
president, Winston Chruchill had
just published his much touted
Triumph and Tragedy, scientists were
unraveling the mysteries of DNA,
Chevrolet was showing off its first
Corvette -- and on August 1st in a
small church in St. Albans, Maine,
Kenneth Hughes and I exchanged
wedding vows, packed up all our
worldly goods in a second-hand brown
Jeep station wagon and headed for
Alaska. It's been quite a
fishing trip!
Even as a child, I had always been
fascinated with stories about Alaska,
and especially the one my mother
told about an uncle who headed north
in search of gold and was never
heard from again. To me,
Alaska was a place of mystery,
intrigue, tall mountains and a tall
tales. So when one of my
eighth-grade students started
telling stories about her big
brother who was in the Air Force in
Alaska but soon heading back to
Maine, I was immediately
interested.
It wasn't long before the older
brother was regaling me with Alaskan
fish tales, embellished -- I
believed at the time -- with
skillful exaggerations of length,
weight, taste, numbers, difficulties
of outsmarting, and how I, already
an ardent fisherwoman, would just
love it. And when he promised
me that he'd take me fishing if I'd
marry him and go to Alaska, I was
hooked! (I often tease him by
saying the he's a real man of his
word because 25 years later he took
me fishing!)
Having succumbed to the bait and
gone through the formalities and
tearful goodbyes, we skipped across
Canada, pup-tenting, cooking most
meals outdoors and staying in fairly
civilized camping spots. We
ate lots of canned corn and peas
since Ken's Dad had given us a mixed
case of vegetables direct from the
local cannery. I'd picked wild
strawberries during the summer and
made 17 jars of jam for the trip so
breakfast was usually pancakes piled high
with the delicious memory of Maine.
We'd left home with $496, $96 of it
in cash and the rest in traveler's
checks. We arrived in Dawson
Creek, the start of the Alaskan
Highway, having spent only the cash.
We hadn't eaten out much.
Leaving Dawson Creek was a rite of
passage. Now the real
adventure would begin. The
Alaska Highway spelled adventure,
not only by the fact the it had been
punched through British Columbia and
Yukon Territory between April and
October in 1942 for military
reasons, but it was like a magnet,
luring the adventurous and
unsuspecting, and inspiring awe with
the beauty and promise of the
wilderness.
As we
headed north, a transformation took
place, an epiphany of sorts.
This wasn't Alaska yet but it was
the Alaska Highway. We were in
reach of the dream and reality could
be pushed aside midst the wonder of
it all. And the fishing.
"This
place looks real fishy, should be a
good place to spend the night,"
Ken remarked as we slowed down,
letting the dust catch up to us
before driving off the road onto a
small grassy knoll 422 miles out of
Dawson Creek and close to the banks
of the Toad River. "Just
look at that river--gotta be fish in
there." Opening the back
end of the vehicle, he started the
now familiar task of unloading gear,
only this time he dug out his
fishing equipment, to.
"Let's camp here for the
night," he suggested
again, knowing full well that I
preferred the more populated spots with
at least a few amenities.
As Ken disappeared down over the
bank, I recall looking around at the
rugged mountains not too far off,
how lonely and foreboding they
seemed, and how sure I was that
hungry grizzlies were sitting on
their haunches behind every scrubby
bush--just waiting for some
newlyweds to plunk themselves down
for the night. I'd always had
a fear of bears, probably stemming
from the fact that when we were kids
and misbehaved, we were told that a
bear would get us, if the devil
didn't get us first!
I stood up on the hill and let the
roar of the river drown out the
insecurities. Maybe there were
just giant toads around; after all, how
else would the river have
gotten its name? Anyway, I
hoped Ken would change his mind
about camping in the isolated spot.
He didn't.
Returning soon with a beautiful
Dolly Varden trout and grinning from
ear to ear, he couldn't curtail his
enthusiasm when he said, "I'll
catch more in the morning for
breakfast." Now resigned
to the situation, I shrugged my
shoulders remarked that Dolly Varden
was a funny name for a fish. I
didn't believe him when he explained
that the fish was named for a flashy
floozy in a Dickens novel, but I
found out later he was right!
We cooked supper in the August
half-twilight and set up the pup
tent, Ken's only acknowledgement of
my fearfulness being that he let me
put our little hatchet under the
pillow in case we needed it to fend
off the bears. Our first night
on the Alaska Highway was a portent
of things to come.
The next fishing adventure was
several miles off a side road, one
of many we explored. After
all, that was why a side road was
there, wasn't it? To be
probed, challenged by our presence
and scouted out for fish? This
particular trail soon degenerated
into a rather narrow and bumpy one
but a fishy-looking pond beckoned.
The shallow shoreline hindered
fishing but a fairly husky-looking
log raft hunkered down not too far
away.
"Let's find a pole and go out
on the raft," Ken suggested.
It wasn't very easy trying to move
the obviously water-logged raft but
of course someone I was getting to
know better all the time was
convinced there were lunkers to be
caught and it was our responsibility
to catch them. We were soon
out in the deep water in the middle
of the pond and getting fishpoles
ready. We'd just started
fishing when we noticed that the
water was coming up over the top of
the raft--fast. "Oh,
no," I yelled, "we're
sinking!"
I remember looking toward shore and
our second-hand Jeep which now
looked like a Chevrolet Corvette to
me, and I couldn't help but think
that we'd disappear and no one would ever
find out what happened to
us. We'd glub-glub our way to
the bottom with the sinking raft and
that would be it. We'd become
part of the family lore just like my
mother's vanished uncle. Who
would ever come looking for us in
this off-the-beaten-track spot when
we were supposedly were in a hurry
to get to Fairbanks where I was
going to teach while Ken attended
the University of Alaska?
But of course we did make it to
shore and although we changed into
dry clothes and got the heater
going, I trembled all the way back to
the main highway which now seemed
like a boulevard to us. We
hiked to the next fishing hole and
fished from shore.
When we stopped to gas up a Lower
Rancheria River, Ken overheard
someone talking about the good
grayling and Dolly Varden fishing
downstream. We were soon
heading off down a fairly well-traveled
trail. "You'll like
catching grayling," Ken
explained. "They're real
pretty with their spotted dorsal fin
and boy, do they like to
fight!"
"At least we won't have to go
out in a water-logged raft
again," I muttered, not
even trying to tone down the
sarcasm. "How much
further do we have to go?"
"We must be about halfway
there. The guy said it was
about a mile hike to the good hole,
sort of an eddy along the bank.
He also said we should make noise
hiking in because there were bears
around although they usually didn't
bother people." Wrong
thing to say to a scaredy-cat and I
hoped he was teasing! I kept
looking back and from side to side
and ahead to Ken who kept up a
chatter, whistled and sang. I
thought we should be as quiet as
possible to not let the bears know
we were there.
Ken abruptly quit his noise-making,
stopped in the middle of the path
and pointed to a large grunt pile.
"Bear scat," he explained.
"I've seen lots of it before
and I know it's bear scat."
"Bear scat?" I
asked, wide-eyed and starting to
quiver. "But
look--there's a zipper wound all the
way through it!"
"Well, so there is," Ken
ventured, pushing back his cab and
shaking his head. "I
guess that old bear ate some poor
guy up and all that's left of him is
his zipper!" I was
stunned, trying to picture it all.
"Let's go back," I
insisted.
"No, we're not going back.
Besides, that bear stuff is real
old. See how dry it is."
He poked it with the end of his fish
pole. But I wasn't convinced
and while Ken caught a good batch of
grayling but no Dolly Varden, I
watched for people-eating bears and didn't
fish.
Speaking of people, we made several
friends along the Alaska Highway.
Our opening line was always,
"Would you like some fresh fish
for dinner?" And now,
after 50 years in
Alaska, we're still asking the same
question. Creaking bones and
reluctant waders haven't diminished
the zeal for fishing.
.jpg)
This past summer one of the
grandchildren asked, "What's
wrong with Grandpa's hair. He
sure needs a haircut. Looks
like a goat chomped on it --- long in
some places short in others."
"I know," I sighed.
"He's been tying flies again.
He's got all kinds of fur and
feathers for tying but he likes to
use his own hair--gray, you know,
just the right color for his sockeye
flies--or so he says. When
he's tying his flies he just reaches
up with the scissors and clips some
off." We both laughed,
might just as well, and the
grandchild walked off in
bewilderment.
I did my own walking away this past
August down on the banks of the
Gulkana River. Ken seemed to
be the only one having success at
the moment in bringing in the
Gulkana red. A fishing tourist
finally came up to him and asked
what kind of fly he was using.
Ken reached into his little silver
fly box, took one out an handed it
to the man. "Here,"
he said, "try this. It's
one I tied."
The appreciative fisherman looked it
all over and said, "Gee,
thanks. I do some tying
myself. But what kind of hair
is this?"
Ken looked rather sheepish before
replying, "Mine." I
walked away and pretended I was
bird-watching.
by:
Althea Hughes
|
