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.