Fall

Along the Susitna

Winding our way to Talkeetna, heading for the cabin, we get deeper and deeper into the red and the gold the farther north we go as more of the birches, the fireweed, the highbush craneberry, the dwarf dogwood lining the road, show themselves to be leaving the summer behind.
Aware fall was on its way, seeing signs since early August, pushing it out of my mind, always in denial until the first frost, I didn’t notice it had actually arrived until a few days ago while, when driving down the road, I looked up and saw it in the birches. Yellow leaves. “When did that happen?" Even the waves of hundreds of sandhill cranes that entertained us with a fly over at Reflections Lake as they fled the oncoming cold didn’t quite register fall had arrived. It was a warm shirt sleeve and shorts kind of day.

At the Talkeetna station we find the usual old home week with familiar faces and catch up time learning the latest of friends not seen in months. Dave comes over to ask about Will. His son and Will were school mates and he always shows an interest as we do with Jonathan. I tell him Will is climbing Mt. Silverthrone and watch his jaw drop, his eyes widen and slowly from his mouth comes “That’s a VERY TECHNICAL climb. My mother’s brain hears TREACHEROUS climb and there goes my heart in my mouth one more time. Hail Mary full of grace.

On the train an Asian tourist hands me a flyer for a lost dog, a little black Scotty. Her English is sparse but she manages “lost” and “Gold Creek”. I find someone getting off at Gold Creek who knows someone who knows where the dog is hiding. The Asian lady starts to cry. I never did find out how a tourist manages to lose a dog in the middle of the wilderness. (We later found out she got her dog. The train waited while she called it and as soon as it heard its masters voice it came running.)

We have our picnic lunch at the trail head when we get off the train because Dan in his usual pragmatic way prefers not to lug the cooler all the way to the river, rod and reel in one hand, walking stick in the other, bear gun and lure case just about managed, meaning lunch would require a backpack. I on the other hand think only of the romance of a picnic on the river which loses its allure in the face of carrying a pack. Besides the trail head is looking lovely in autumn colors.

Two white spots on the left above the slough are swans. Need a telephoto.

 Munching on hardy sandwiches  and home made cole slaw of cabbage from our garden, we watch our resident swans hiding in the reeds, the cygnets just tall enough for their still grayish feathers to show above the greenery, still not as white as the parents, still not ready for migration. They’ll soon be pushing the envelope for migrating before the snow. Seems they do that every year.

A short hike brings us out of the thicket to a wide beach along the river to see a shore line littered with salmon, reeking of dead fish. I’m glad we ate at the trailhead. All spawned out, their flesh going white, they keep moving ahead until the river gets the better of them and momentarily washes them down stream. Yet they somehow pull themselves together and start swimming forward again. And so it goes until they die. Dan shakes his head and says “It doesn’t look good” but winds his way through carcasses, perches on a rock and lets go with his first cast. A few more tries and “it doesn’t look good” comes again. The salmon are so thick in the clear water along the shore where the creek runs into the silty river that there are no good spots for dollies or grayling or trout. They’ve been pushed further out  where they can’t see the lure, not that they would take it anyway, fat and full as they are on salmon eggs.
Very skeptically I find a spot relatively clear of dead fish and throw out my line only to have it snag on a salmon. Some how the fish still has enough strength to pull free but I’ve lost my appetite for fishing and fish so when Dan suggests we try the creek, challenging as it is, I’m happy to oblige.
We weave our way through a jungle of willow and alders interspersed with open areas of fall-flattened ferns, the bumps they grow from making it difficult to get passed them. We need  to get at least a 1/2 mile up the creek for any hope of a decent hole since the railroad dredged out the nearer creek to prevent track washouts. Eventually we notice we have found our way onto a trail of sorts wondering where it came from since we didn’t put it there til we look at each other and simultaneously say “bear trail”. We’re slogging through a bear’s dining room. Here and there a salmon head, a half eaten salmon carcass, all evidence of a well sated bear, so many fish at his disposal he didn’t need to finish them or, Dan says, he kept looking for one that tasted better than the rotten fish he was eating.
I start walking on Dan’s heels. He’s got the gun.
A huge cotton wood wind fall blocks our passage, too big to climb over, we follow it to where we can work our way around it, through devils club and rose thickets and no machete to clear our way.  Finally, we reach what Dan calls a likely  spot and he starts trying to clear away the sweepers and the snags. He’d need a chain saw to do a good enough job of clearing for an actual cast so he settles for a flip trying to work the line through the trees.

On the bank of the creek

“There it is” he yells on the first cast. Eyes wide, “A tank”. There it goes I see as the line breaks. Now I think we’re in trouble. I’m ready to go home but Dan now knows there’s a fish to be caught and I’m convinced he won’t quit until he’s used every trick at his disposal. So I’m surprised when he quits after just a few tries. “You know what, he says, macaroni and cheese is looking better all the time.”
We look for a better trail to leave than the way we came, find an open spot and disonance jumps out at us with all its machine tooled lines and colors jarring in the natural landscape. About 10 to 12 feet up a cotton wood , a two-seater hunting blind, part of a bear baiting station we soon realize, when we see the bear bait barrel tied to a tree, all the under growth around the tree torn away by a bear eating the bait and the under growth with it. Right away we start ticking off all the things that give hunters a bad name. Litter covers the ground under the blind. Empty beer cans, plastic juice bottles, food wrappers, all evidence of people too lazy to carry out their trash. On top of that the station is within a mile of at least three cabins. Not legal. The required permit number is no where to be seen. Also not legal. The litter is not legal. For all there sloppiness they obviously didn’t get their bear and should have removed everything but didn’t. Not legal. Bear baiting season is long gone.

We’ve spent the afternoon thrashing through the brush, now have about  two hours of more hiking to the cabin, no fish, bad bear baiter to ruin the day, but the sky is clear, the air is clean, and fresh tracks on the trail show someone may come buy for a friendly game of balderdash or just a quiet night of storytelling. And I’ m thinking I’m still not that old if I can follow Dan around in the back country for a good five hours or more and still look forward to entertaining a friendly visitor.