Brushkana River

Brushkana River

It's the strangest ending to a summer I can ever remember. Yellow leaves are on the ground, the geese have been flying southerly for two weeks, it hailed yesterday - and yet the sun is out again, however briefly in between wet dark outbursts punctuated by thunder and lightning. After 32 straight days of WET, we saw blue skies, rainbows and the 60-degree clarity burned my nose just enough to feel hotly vindicated after so much sog.

This past weekend dad, Jim and I went on a fishing and camping trip up north to Brushkana River, about 200 miles north of Anchorage off of the Denali "highway" (quotation marks because this route was much more akin to an "unmarked backcountry road" - washboard, unpaved and deep gravel for many stretches). We left Friday and packed the minivan to the absolute gills, picked up dad in Wasilla, and continued north in the clear weather, espying the big Denali around a couple bends in the road here and there, amassing its own weather system - fat coronal clouds about the peak, and a wet cottony blanket pouring over the lesser peaks surrounding it like fog rolling in over skyscrapers should this mountainscape have been a cityscape.

We arrived and of the 22 campsites available, three or four were left. We met the extremely charming camp hosts who suggested site 1 for the best spot left, and we took it. We settled in, erecting tents and blowing up air mattresses - this was luxury car camping - and whilst we did this set up masses of cars and RV's poured in and we could only gloat that we'd left earlier. The creek was just a few feet behind our tents, on a brushy bank thick with blueberries. Dad casted a bit and we made dinner, had some drinks and enjoyed the campfire while talking about the world's problems, namely water shortages and other ecological concerns while feeding more logs to burn and to watch burn.

Dad fishing in silhouette

The next day Jim and dad woke up and took off to the river, upriver, to fish while I slept a bit more. I forgot to mention this totally humbling element of MY trip - the Friday morning before we left Anchorage, I went on the back deck to drink some coffee, sat in a chair which had but three of the four legs firmly planted on the decking, and then proceeded to fall ass-over-tea kettle onto the very hard and wet ground three feet below. It was one of those moments where you know exactly that something awful and unwanted is about to occur (looking over my shoulder, shit, there's the ground and I'm heading for it...), and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. So I fell hard, landing on my right shoulder, ribs and hip. So all weekend I felt sore and bruised and incredibly lame knowing that my present physical limitations were caused by own oblivious clumsiness - I fell off a deck, good god. Which is why I was moving so slowly Saturday morning, my arm wasn't working. What can you do?

Jim's grayling

I made lunch for the fishermen - Julie's delicious duck hot dogs that she has made from her solo duck hunting ventures each year. She is such an awesome human, I aspire to be more like Julie - hunting and fishing and general adventuring in her 60's - what a brave maven. Then I hiked up the hip waders as high as they'd go, which wasn't high enough as they were too big, and we hoofed it up the river and on my second cast I caught a grayling! Jim was taking it off the hook and it escaped. It took many more hours (and many lost bobbers and flies) to catch two tiny guys, but the sun came out and warmed my skin and the river was gorgeous and the air was clean. Each attempt went so relaxingly like this - casting not too far into the current where it bubbled up white and foamy, landing the bobber, letting it float downriver just a little, clicking over the reel to stop it spooling out, then the hypnotic tracking of it slowly (and sometimes rapidly) floating down downriver (while "Downriver" played ad nauseum in my head, see previous post- but it sounds MUCH better here: "Downriver, downriver - doh-uh-don't-stop!") until the line became taut (or became snagged) at which point I'd do what dad showed me - tug the pole a bit to jump the fly upriver, let it float a bit downriver, tug again, float away, tug, float, until it was too close to the shore and I would reel in and do it all again, between sipping on a Tecate.

Jim fishing in silhouette

I got into it, working my way downriver alone, spotting a quiet pool some feet away down there, thinking that was the place to be after only a few casts in my present place, realizing I am impatience personified but still going, picking my sloshy way through the river slowly over the slippery rocks, catching myself from falling a few times, until I got to this new place, precarious on a bank, or with feet wedged in between boulders to steady myself, giving a thumbs up to them up the river - I'm fine, I'm only on my knees right now because I'm trying to untangle myself from this bush, I'm good!

We got some good use out of our new Walkie-Talkie's from Trent - we'd separate and then radio about location, biting, etc. Funny - at one point Jim was upriver singing Creedence Clearwater's "Proud Mary" over the channel, minutes later some strangers come through - "Hey babe, you there?" and "I'm here, what's up?" - So, obviously channel 1 is tres popular and I do hope that these other adventurers enjoyed Jim's serenade as much as I did. We switched to channel 9 thereafter.

Two tasty grayling about to be cooked

We caught scads of grayling, and saw no grizzlies, thank god. We kept two of them and cooked them in the fire wrapped in foil. They were pretty good, could have used some herbs perhaps? I probably skimped on the butter... That night we made delicious steaks and baked potatoes in the fire, drank enough and fed the rest of the flammables into the flames - cardboard and logs - and talked and talked until we got uproariously giddy talking about "toilet monkeys" and that is all I will divulge about that topic. To bed with us.

It was really nice to get away, again, away from email and phone and to be under the bare sky, wading in the water, hiking up and down stream, catching fish, but mostly watching the river rush by, and coming to understand, maybe, how a fish might navigate through these currents, around these giant mossy rocks, where they might stop behind a crop of granite or bankside for a bit of rest and I almost felt like I shouldn't bother them there, in that peaceful place, but then I thought that is exactly where I need to focus and find them. So strange to find this predator in myself, not so much a bloodlust however, but more like wanting to win a game. Really, now that I think about it, it's a desire to outsmart nature.

Imagine this deck-fallen, novice fisherwoman in the too-big boots, looking over her shoulder for bears, trying to focus on catching a fish - attempting to outsmart nature in this way with very little acquired skills yet - sore and unsure and new, and part of me hopes that I never feel so confident in this, as much as I desire to be outdoorsy extraordinaire, the tough make-it-anywhere person. Which is a wholly new desire for me (in nature, that is, I've been focusing on the make-it-anywhere in a city for years which I think I've got down...) - it's just recently that I care about this enough to register on my personal desire scale of "who I am" and I'm adding in there "an outdoors capable person" who can exist, subsist and mostly, just enjoy the time exploring, cooking outside, getting some sun when it chooses to finally come out and talking late at night around a campfire. That rates pretty damn high on my scale at this point, and maybe in a few years I'll apex mountains with Jim like the peak he inspiringly bagged a couple weekends ago while packing a giant pack - straight up in 50 mph winds. First though, much before that happens, I'll be concentrating on keeping a solid footing on the back deck and perhaps locating some new river fish recipes.

One More Song

This makes me happy beyond belief - hand on my heart grinning wish I coulda been there in person, in fact. This new band that I really love right now (Mumford and Sons) coupled with a band that I've loved for some time (The Temper Trap) playing together. It's like double epic (I only wish the sound was better).

Roll Away Your Stone, I'll Roll Away Mine

I'd written this post about my favorite music at the moment and then accidentally deleted it. I don't even know...

Mumford and Sons. This is a band I am really digging on right now, and I played some of their videos for Jim tonight and he watched and said, semi-agape, "They just rewrote the book." Which means, in his opinion (and in mine, and probably lots of others') they are redefining our generation's music. Thank god, let's hear some real music, instruments and feet pounding wood and let's not lose any of the poetry, or any of the adamance. They are bluegrass punk, hillbilly rock, epic banjo, and as Jim says, "make your heart swell" - said so well. For me, they blend Arcade Fire's youthful exuberance with the temperance of Fleet Foxes' throwback bare instrumentation of the spare 70's and a bit of Jack White's solo defiance recording in a broken down house. Also, they can break your heart with a raw honesty that is rare these days.

We don't often agree on music - he's very country and I'm very... not. We, in fact, abhor some of each other's music choices from time to time. I can't stand literal rhyming songs about coming of age sung in a Tennessee twang and he's not the biggest fan of atonal pounding on a piano, synth-y backbeats or poetical hard-to-decipher lyrics, for instance. So when we agree on something, it's a coup and we get excited. These Mumford boys have enough country for him and enough loud and poetry for me to satisfy us both. An example from the lyrics of the song above - "Darkness is a harsh term don't you think? Yet it dominates the things I see" - but in a major key (read: happy) with banjo - perfect balance.

An evening of listening to music while we cooked pizzas on the outdoor grill was a really nice after-day as we'd both had trying times today. For him, it was presenting his university-wide project idea, now a reality, he'd been working on for years to the muckety mucks. For me, it was one of those days when I leave my handbag places, rude weird people and everyone cuts me off in traffic and I wonder if my car is invisible, then I wonder if perhaps I'm invisible to the point where I am pinching my thigh while I drive to make sure.

But then I go home (coming home is so nice), and I put on my music and put away my groceries and talk to a couple three friends on the phone and prep dinner, then Jim gets home and we talk about what to do this weekend - fishing, camping, what? I called my dad and we talked about fishing ideas whilst Jim called his bro and talked about the same. We decided that we'd buy a little boat in the off season, I think, for use next year - something with an outboard that we can load up with gear for camping on islands and also fish from, obviously. This weekend is still undecided, maybe the biking trip to camp ten miles out on Eklutna Lake, or maybe I'll find us a nice little cabin to rent, I don't know. Everyone I talk to, and I mean everyone is catching salmon right now - dip netting and now bait fishing - and I am so jealous. I want some salmon.

I have to pause for a sec and realize the perhaps, seeming, absurdity about me writing about fishing and camping. I have come around to these things in the years I've been returned to Alaska, with fondness and desire, absurd that it was nothing I used to enjoy or seek out, and now I really do. It feels adventurous and independent and self-sufficient - to go out and exist, to catch fish - all on my own, our own, while knowing that people pay hundreds, sometimes thousands, of dollars to do the very same things that we do for the price of a local fishing license, a campsite sometimes and food for the excursion. And then, on top of that, you get some fresh air and some fresh fish and some good times in utile outfits like sweatshirts, fat wool socks, rain gear and waders with others in the same, all of us just talking looking at the water, the mountainscapes, knowing that we live here amongst all of this, and it sort of belongs to us, belongs to me.

This is exactly how this grace thing works.

And it keeps being exactly what it is - this outdoors, nature that appeals - it is not a fad that will pass and be replaced by the next hot thing. It will keep being and being and being (as long as we take care). The fish will come back to run and spawn and the snow will move down the mountains in the fall and up in the spring, the bears will run out in the road in the summer and hibernate in the winter, the raspberries will hang low the bushes in the backyard in August and go bare and come back a year later, it all repeats, this very assuring and beautiful cycle of things to depend upon. But even without my reliance and hope they will be back anyway, doing their constant thing.

The music we cannot agree on, he and I, it's because of how we see the world. He is marinated in this good cycle of wax and wane, and I am new to the trust of fluxing things that go away and come back. He's always saying things like "give it four seasons..." or "it's the circadian rhythms..." and I've thought for all this time we've known each other and he's been saying these things that it was the country music in him or something, what is he talking about - changing moods and ideas with the seasons? Aren't we always the same?

Now I grasp this as I adapt - I see how we go mad in the dark and then how we go glad in the sun, and we are still the same person. I understand. But for me it's about all the little bits in between - the deep introspect in the dark and the sudden explosion of glee in the too-much sun - this is how I connect the dots that make up the big picture. We are both doing the same - he is overall, the overarching story from beginning to end, and I am plot points, the nitty gritty poetry of days, of nights that add up to meaning, and either way they both eventually add up to a beginning, a middle and an end.

Music and Mountains, Rain or Shine

The weather has been relentless this summer - exactly opposite of summer weather, wet and gray when instead in a perfect world it ought to be dry and golden light. In the fleeting moments when the sun peeks out from time to precious time from the low dark clouds I run outside to squint my eyes and feel a bit of sun on my face. I do. I am seeing photos of others on beaches, basking, and it looks so foreign, like another planet where there is hot sticky summer worlds away.

A couple weeks ago we decided that this was just it - the rain - and we'd better deal with it and get outside anyway or else the snow would be here before we knew it and then it'd be a whole different story of ice. So we've been sucking it up and packing the rain gear and just going outside to be outside. Rain or shine.

Like last weekend: we'd read that it was supposed to be sunny south of here, on the Kenai Peninsula, and we flew south. Not so much - mud and water and very wet brush like horsetails and fireweed as we hiked through the meadows and trails on the way to lakes and mountain tops, soaking our pants that would not dry over three days of trying to dry them in the tent and near a campfire.

It was very nice to get out despite the cold humidity exacted and the exertion expended. The surrounding mountains and lakes and rivers and wildlife that we have near us are always out there, even in rain, so beautiful and available to be seen like some enduring and hard-hitting, but ultimately beautiful and human, documentary film that stays with the viewer for years whenever you can bring yourself to watch it. I already mentioned night one and night two, and then Sunday when we packed up camp we hiked up a mountain trail and it was HARD for me. I'm not in ideal shape, but I still feel like I will not, cannot give up, so I trudged through the pain and I whined a few times on the way up on these endless switchbacks, clutching my sides and breathing hard. One of the terrific things about my husband is he just lets me whine and then he says something like, "Alright, sweetie, are you ready to keep going now?" And as much as I want to say "no" I do because he loves this and because I love him, I endure it. We summited and I was indeed, breathtook - bare rocks above the treeline and we could see the wide, too-turquoise winding Kenai river emptying in the lake below via a crazy monkey puzzle delta, slim creeks snaking into the lake, snow spotted mountains all around and maybe two volcanoes, which I'm not sure we actually saw on this gray overcast day. We did watch bald eagles soaring on the wind, they were below us.

One of my favorite parts of going somewhere is the music in the car on the way there, singing looking out the window at everything passing for now that will repass again coming back, feet beating downbeats up on the dash, hands keeping time on thighs. There and back and in the week before we left I'd been constantly listening to this Florence + the Machine album - sort of Lorena McKennit with drums, or Stevie Nicks more adamant, and I'm guessing influenced by both Tennyson and PJ Harvey (so my cup of tea), and it became my personal soundtrack. It was uncanny how this music proved to be so apropos while hiking trails and ascending mountains. I'd be breathing hard, stitch in my side, other hikers coming up behind and there was NO WAY they were passing me and I'd hear in my mind these words from Rabbit Heart: "I must become a lion hearted girl.../ This is a gift/ It comes with a price!" And I'd think, yes yes, it is and it does - keep going, self, get up there and pay for this gift of health and vistas. Later, going up a mountain, calves wanting to burst with lactic acid and my soaking head pounding, I'd pause and hear these lyrics from Between Two Lungs: "The air has filled me head-to-toe/ And I can see the ground far below/ I have this breath/ And I hold it tight/ And I keep it in my chest / With ALL MY MIGHT/ I PRAY TO GOD THIS BREATH WILL LAST!" I know. Perfect.

One Last Look

Fire in the Rain

Plastic to keep the rain away, poles to hold the plastic up high, socks to keep the poles from poking through and ruining the whole dry effect.

I Call This "Nice View 2"

Night two, Upper Skilak Lake and noisy gull island off to the right.

Let it Rain

The weather outside is frightful...

Night two at the walk in site on Upper Skilak Lake- we weathered the rain by doing some MacGuyver sheltering - tarps over the table, and some plastic sheeting, rope, extra tent poles from the small tent and two cashmere socks.

...but the fire is so delightful.

Nice View

Little Tent, Big Lake

Friday night: on the shore of Skilak Lake in the very small old school tent.

Skilak Wildernesss

It's 5:30pm and I'm sitting in the tent on the shore of Upper Skilak Lake in the Kenai National Wilderness Reserve. It's pouring rain and framed outside the unzipped door of the tent are three big bundles of firewood, staying dry under a table until the small chance that it ceases to pour and we can light a campfire. It doesn't seem likely.

Jim is snoring next to me while I now write this, and before that - play solitaire, eat cheese and drink wine to the soundtrack of plippitity ploppiting on the stretched nylon and the unceasing squawks of gulls that are amassed on a tiny island about half of a mile off shore.

I'm also being bear aware because I'm in "Bear Country!" as the signs everywhere like to tell me. There's a bear locker at each site and I'm wondering if they A) even come out in the piss ass rain, B) are attracted to the smell of aged Gouda, and C) have enough to keep them busy eating elsewhere what with it being both the sockeye salmon run AND early berry season. I'm betting - yes, maybe and yes.

Yesterday we backpacked in to another spot on Skilak lake a few miles from here. It was gorgeous and serene and there was no one around last night. Our small backpacking tent is on extended loan to a friend, which we realized right before leaving. So we borrowed Ray's very old Eureka tent which, as Jim put it, looks like the tent in Bugs Bunny cartoons - green and triangular - or as I think of it, like how a child would draw a picture of a "tent" - green and triangular. This morning we were awakened to people walking past the tent, like a steady stream of them. Turns out we camped in a tres popular fishing area, indeed we saw copious amounts of fish jumping in the lake, both of us so mad we didn't bring poles. But god knows, had we caught something and gutted it there, I'd be off the charts nervous about bears scenting that because we all know how they love them some fishes.

The hike out this morning was une peau dificil, steady upwards the whole time and then steeper at the end. It was short, but with a heavy pack that originally belonged to my tall skinny brother in law and so didn't fit me so well, I was feeling the burn.

Our plan today was to hike up a mountain to stay the night, and after hiking out this morning I wasn't super excited about going 2 miles straight UP. Then it started to pour, and I got chilled and cranky, so Jim made me some miso soup and we started cruising for car camping sites until we found this place quite by accident, and were it sunny today it'd be paradisical. Right on the lapping shore of a giant blue-green lake in this very nice, walk-in tent-only campsite. So we still did a bit of hauling as it turned out - the 200 yards to the van, 200 yards back to the site, repeat...

But we'd prepared in the case this happened as this entire summer so far has been one constant downpour - we brought the "big ass" 6-person tent and inflatable mattresses just in case. Would that I'd thought to throw some pillows in the van too.

Despite the rain and chill and sitting in a tent when we could be hiking or swimming or at least sitting by a campfire, this is really nice. I'm dirty and damp and there's nothing to do but think and stare and play cards and write. Which we identified at last night's campfire as one of the very nicest things about getting into the wilderness - all those terrible multiple options for things to do at home, to get done, to accomplish, to entertain oneself - are all removed, and instead the basics of staying warm, dry and fed become wholly satisfying pursuits that remind us of how human we are, which is to say: very.

Sent from my iPhone

Northern Sky

It took a long time to choose the perfect wedding song, and then we did choose one, and it was, indeed, perfect. Northern Sky by, Nick Drake, sitting there all this time in my music library, unbeknownst to me until I thought - hmmm, I love Nick Drake, and "northern sky?" that's pretty apropos... Then we listened, googled the lyrics, and were blown away about how it pretty much said it all. This was the one.

So I sent some chords to Matt, who'd already agreed to play and sing whatever we'd chosen, because he's terrific like that, and he learned it, came up here for the wedding and called a couple days before to say that he'd lost his voice, maybe his sister could sing while he played guitar? Yes, sounds lovely, anything you devise, maestro. Turned out that they sang together, his voice was a-ok, a beautiful duet of them together, more than I'd hoped, both smiles and tuneful serenade.

Today as Shana, his sister, and I embarked on our first radio show endeavor together, just minutes before, Matt's email arrived with this recording of the song, the two of them singing together this song, an aural and enduring gift of music. When I got home Jim and I listened to it and were just two happy people hearing dear friends sing for us:

Northern Sky by, Nick Drake, sung by Matt and Shana

Starts and Sunsets

Tonight Jim and I went to dinner downtown to celebrate the first radio show I produced which Shana and I recorded today. It won't air for another 3 weeks on the big NPR affiliate station, but it was live on the college station and there I was on the controls sliding volumes and turning mics off and on and counting down to back on the air, switching to station ID and playing phone calls, and I was so nervous I'd screw something up. It was all pretty exciting and it all went perfectly. For this all to be happening after a year of working to get to this point is pretty fantastic, and I can't wait for August 31 when we have the big debut on KSKA 91.1 at 2pm. :)

After dinner we walked out of the restaurant around 10 pm and it was a beautiful summer night. It's been WEEKS of nonstop rain and low gray skies, that is to say - no sun for seemingly ever - instead days upon days of suffocating cloud cover and low light and this acute awareness that your skin is not sun warmed and you are not squinting your eyes for the bright light. Instead, this year it has set a rainfall record, and for me, it's been wedding and radio plans so I've gotten to do little outdoor enjoyment which seems moot anyway when the weather has been so ick.

Anyway tonight, seeing that sky - soft and blue and just a few wispy pink clouds way up high, not low or encroaching as per the last few weeks, it feels like someone took the top off Anchorage to let it breathe a little bit, let it dry out. We walked a few blocks to the coast, to Resolution Park, where there is a statue of Captain Cook in his brass pantaloons pointing at something in the distance, and in this instance it was the beautiful sunset: