At the end of my first trip in 1999, I looked at J and said “Alaska is like the deepest breath I’ve ever drawn.”
Little did I know at that point that I would later get to live in Alaska for six years and travel back several times after that. In 1999 I figured I had just completed the trip of a lifetime. And I had. I’ve completed that same trip over and over since and I never grow tired of it.
It’s not just the fishing. Well, that’s a huge part of it as the pictures below will attest. But, there’s something more. It’s something that causes people to make vague allusions that are arcane outside of Alaska but are crystal clear once you’re there.
“I came here for a summer 30 years ago and never got around to leaving.” That sort of comment is bandied about from time to time in many places but, in Alaska, it is the standard explanation for why people live there. As far as human habitation goes, there is a subtle feeling of impermanence. Everyone has a half-baked plan to leave that usually only gets fully cooked when life somehow forces the issue. Until then, it’s always a matter of staying just a little longer.
“You just have to get out in it.” This is how people in Alaska deal with winter. I hated it because being cold is one of my least favorite things. But Alaskans (and faux Alaskans) attack winter like they think they can intimidate it. They “snow machine” (or snowmobile as we call it in the Lower 48, as if we have any concept of snow), cross country/back country/downhill ski, play hockey, go orienteering, snowshoeing, etc. And not in the “I tried snowshoeing last weekend—that was pretty fun” sort of way. They will work all day and then go out under a full moon to do an excursion with something strapped to their feet in 10 degree weather (if it’s nice out)…and then do it again the next night…and the next. Folks in Boulder, Colorado like to think of themselves as uber-athletes. But they have been known to sit out blizzards. Not in Alaska.
“It’s all about the gear.” This isn’t something that men in Alaska say to establish their testosterone bona fides. Well, OK, actually, they do but, everyone says this. Men, women, children, grandmothers. Why? Because it is. If you have the right “gear” (layers of clothing, skis, fishing rods, “snow machines”, trucks, boats, planes, dogs, sleds, guns, knives, nets, backpacks, bear spray, rafts, boots, blankets, to name a few), you can venture out with some hope of surviving. This includes trips across town in your car in January.
“Termination Dust and Break Up.” Termination Dust is the first time snow reappears on the mountain tops, usually, in the early fall. Sometimes it happens in the late summer which is really alarming for the uninitiated. For folks in the Lower 48, the first snow is often a welcome change after summer’s heat, little league, family vacations, barbecues, etc. Even if it isn’t welcome, it’s not an ordeal. To Alaskans, the arrival of snow is an ordeal. Not the sort of ordeal that can’t be managed and, indeed, no one this side of Nepal manages snow like Alaskans. For Alaskans, the weather itself is not the ordeal. The ordeal is the transition between the weather. It’s the ordeal of putting away all the toys of summer in order to unload and make room for the toys of winter. Despite the somewhat fatalistic nature of the phrase, the appearance of termination dust is not the end. It’s yet another beginning in Alaska, a place that seems to be constantly “beginning.” If you live there, you can feel and hear the collective, “Well, there it is. Here we go again.” This is followed by a shrug of the shoulders and a wry smile. The same thing happens in April. Then they call it “Break Up” and it’s not nearly as pretty as a dusting of snow on the mountains. Honestly, Break Up is a big, slushy mess where a winter’s worth of trash “breaks” free of the melting ice and floats “up” to the surface. But, it has the same effect as termination dust because, as always, there is more fun ahead. But only after you’ve picked up your toys.
“It gets down in your soul.” This is my favorite. Virtually anyone who has lived in Alaska has said this at some point. After six years the winters got to be too much for me to stay on. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t get a yearning to “feel” Alaska again. I love traveling to developing countries because there is always that sense of “they’re just making this up as they go” and that tomorrow they will do it completely differently. Alaska is that way but with the accent on nature rather than people. In fifteen minutes, you can drive from your home in Anchorage and be out of sight of any sign of civilization and may even run into a bear or moose. In a half hour you can fly to a wilderness location that makes even the Tetons look suburban. That’s what gets down in your soul. And there’s no shaking it.
My wife has a particularly acute case of Alaska deep in her soul. If her husband wasn’t such a wimp about the cold, I suspect we would be living in the hills above Anchorage now. So, she settles for trips back every few years. She has been all over the world but Alaska is the one place that calls her back again and again. And she answers because she knows contentment and beauty await.
I recently got to visit Alaska again and, COVID and whatever-other-surprises-are-out-there willing, I’ll go again next year with my sons. We will fish because that’s what you do in Alaska. But we will also have moments like the first time I realized that Alaska had got into my oldest son’s soul. We had only lived there a few weeks and he was still in the “will I ever have any friends again?” phase of the move. We arrived home after a full day of work and school. He didn’t go directly inside but stood in the driveway looking out at Cook Inlet. I walked up behind him in time to hear him say “Cool” which, for a teenage boy, is fairly garrulous. I asked, “What’s that?” He kept looking at the Inlet and answered, “Alaska.”
If we gave our sons nothing else, I would still be proud to say they have got a bit of Alaska down in their souls. J.C. wrote a song about it called “Great Northern Lights” that I have included below.
Rainbows are my favorite fish. Obviously, I have a preference for Alaskan rainbows.
The good news is that J caught the fish. The bad news is that it broke his rod.
There were actually two of them in the water. A nimbler iPhone operator would have got that picture.
Residents. They scoff at all our fishing gear.
Brett hiding behind a silver. Or maybe they’re just that big.
Simon, Gary and me with a few silvers. We caught more than a few.
Randal and me with a couple of prehistoric grayling
This is how all these pictures happen.