One man’s wilderness (3 page)

The snows and the campfire, with wolves at my feet . . .

Goodbye, for it’s safer up there.

From “Rhymes of a Rolling Stone,” by Robert W. Service. Reprinted by permission of Dodd Mead and Company, from the collected poems of Robert Service.

Going In

I recognized the scrawl. I eased the point of a knife blade into the flap and slit open the envelope. It was the letter at last from Babe Alsworth, the bush pilot. “Come anytime. If we can’t land on the ice with wheels, we can find some open water for floats.” Typical Babe. Not a man to waste his words.

This meant the end of my stay with Spike and Hope Carrithers at Sawmill Lake on Kodiak. I had driven my camper north and was doing odd jobs for them while waiting to hear from Babe. Their cabin in the Twin Lakes region had fired me up for the wilderness adventure I was about to go on. They seemed to sense my excitement and restlessness. I could use their cabin until I built one of my own. I could use their tools and was taking in more of my own. I also had the use of their Grumman canoe to travel up and down twelve miles of water as clear as a dewdrop.

I left my camper in their care. I waved to them as I heard the engines begin to roar, and then the land moved faster and faster as I hurtled down the Kodiak strip on the flight to Anchorage. Babe would meet me there.

May 17, 1968
. At Merrill Field, while waiting for Babe to drop out of the sky in his 180 Cessna, I squinted at the Chugach Range, white and glistening in the sun, and I thought about the trip back north in the camper. It was always a good feeling to be heading north. In a Nebraska town I had bought a felt-tipped
marker and on the back of my camper I printed in big letters,
DESTINATION—BACK AND BEYOND
. It was really surprising how many cars pulled up behind and stayed close for a minute or two even though the way was clear for passing. Then as they passed, a smile, a wave, or a wistful look that said more than words could. Westward to the Oregon ranch country and those high green places where I had worked in the 1940s. On to Seattle where a modern freeway led me through the city without a stop, and I thought of the grizzled old lumberjack who bragged that he had cut timber on First and Pike. Hard to imagine those tall virgin stands of Douglas fir and cedar and hemlock in place of cement, steel, and asphalt. Then the Cariboo Highway and beautiful British Columbia. Smack into a blizzard as I crossed Pine Pass on the John Hart Highway to Dawson Creek. And all those other places with their wonderful names: Muncho Lake and Teslin and Whitehorse, Kluane and Tok Junction, Matanuska and the Kenai. The ferry ride across the wild Gulf of Alaska and a red sun sinking into the rich blue of it. Sawmill Lake, and now Anchorage.

The weather stayed clear, and Babe was on time. Same old Babe. Short in body and tall on experience. Wiry as a weasel. Sharp featured. Blue eyes that glinted from beneath eyebrows that tufted like feathers. A gray stubble of a moustache. That stocking cap perched atop his head. A real veteran of the bush. “Watches the weather,” his son-in-law once told me. “He knows the signs. If they’re not to his liking he’ll just sit by the fire and wait on better ones. That’s why he’s been around so long.”

“Smooth through the pass,” Babe said. “A few things to pick up in town and we’re on our way.”

We did the errands and returned to load our cargo aboard the 180. Babe got his clearance and off we went, Babe seeming to look over a hood that was too high for him. A banking turn over the outskirts of Anchorage, then we were droning over the mud flats of Cook Inlet on the 170 air-mile trip to Port Alsworth on Lake Clark. I looked down on the muskeg meadows pockmarked with puddles and invaded by stringy ranks of spruce. Now and then I glanced at Babe, whose eyes seemed transfixed on the entrance to Lake Clark Pass, his
chin resting in one cupped hand. Meditating as usual. I searched the ground below for a moose, but we were too high to see enough detail.

Suddenly the mountains hemmed us in on either side—steep wooded shoulders and ribs of rock falling away to the river that flowed to the south below, here and there a thin waterfall that appeared and disappeared in streamers of mist. We tossed in the air currents. Then we were above the big glacier, dirty with earth and boulders yet glinting blue from its shadowed crevices. It looked as though we were passing over the blades of huge, upturned axes, and then the land began to drop dizzily away beneath us and we were over the summit. The glacial river below was now flowing in a northerly direction through a dense forest of spruce, dividing now and then past slender islands of silt, and merging again in its rush to Lake Clark.

There it was, a great silvery area in the darkness of the spruce—Lake Clark. We came in low over the water, heading for Tanalian Point and Babe’s place at Port Alsworth. Years ago he had decided to settle here because it was a natural layover for bush pilots flying from Kachemak Bay and Cook Inlet through Lake Clark Pass to Bristol Bay. It had been a good move and a good living.

I spotted the wind sock on the mast above the greenhouse and glanced at my watch. The trip had taken an hour and a half. Down we slanted to touch down on the stony strip. On the taxi in we hit a soft place, and we wound up hauling our cargo of baby chicks, groceries, and gear in a wheelbarrow over the mud to the big house.

I helped Babe the next few days. We patched the roof of his house. We put a new nose cowl on the Taylorcraft, attached the floats, and there she was, all poised to take me over the mountains on a thirty-minute flight to journey’s end.

May 21st
. Mares’ tails in the sky. A chance of a change in the fine weather and probably wind that could hold me at Port Alsworth until the storm passed over. I had been delayed long enough. Even Mary Alsworth’s cooking could hold me no longer. Babe sensed my itchiness. He squinted at the mountains and gave his silent approval.

We loaded my gear into the T-craft. Not too many groceries this trip; Babe would come again soon. Seemed like a heavy load to me, and jammed in as we were, I found myself wondering whether the old bird could get off the water. We taxied out, rippling the reflections of the sky and the mountains. The motor shuddered and roared, and I watched the spray plume away from the floats. We lifted easily toward the peaks and home.

Below us a wild land heaved with mountains and was gashed deep with valleys. I could see game trails in the snow. Most of the high lakes were frozen over. I was counting on open water where the upper lake dumped into the lower, but the Twins were 2,200 feet higher above sea level than Lake Clark and could still be sealed up tight.

We broke out over the lower lake to find most of it white with ice. There was open water where the connecting stream spilled in, enough to land in. The upper lake had a greenish cast but only traces of open water along the edges. We circled Spike’s cabin. Everything looked to be in good shape, so we returned to the open spot of water on the lower lake. I would have to pack my gear the three and a half miles along the shore to the cabin. As we sloped in for a landing, a dozen or more diving ducks flurried trails over the water and labored their plump bodies into the air.

After unloading, Babe and I sat on the beach.

“This is truly God’s country,” I said, my eyes roving above the spruce tips to the high peaks.

Babe said nothing for a few minutes. He was lost in thought. “Compared to heaven,” he said finally, “this is a dung hill.” He rubbed a forefinger against the stubble of his moustache and pushed the watch cap farther back on his head. “Nothing but a dung hill.”

I looked at the water, at the stones on the bottom as sharply etched as if seen through a fine camera lens. “This is as close as I hope to get to heaven,” I said. “This is here and now. Something I’m sure of. How can heaven be any better than this?”

Babe’s eyebrows seemed to lift like crests. “Man!” he spluttered. “Man, you
don’t know what you’re talking about! Your philosophy worries me. Why, it says plain in the Bible. . . .”

I knew he would get me around to his favorite subject sooner or later. “One life at a time,” I said. “If there’s another one—well, that’s a bonus. And I’m not so sure of that next one.”

Babe shook his head sorrowfully. “You better think on it,” he muttered, rising to his feet. “You’ll have a lot of time to do just that.” He waded out, stepped up on a float, and squinted at me over his shoulder. “Man, your philosophy. . . .”

I pushed the plane toward deeper water. The T-craft coughed and stuttered into a smooth idling. Babe craned out the side hatch. He wondered, would the lake be open in a week? Ten days? He would be back inside of two weeks.

I watched him take off like a giant loon. He was really banking a lot on heaven. He said he was ready for the Lord to take him anytime. He was even looking forward to it. I just hoped that when the time came he wouldn’t be disappointed. I watched him until the speck went out of sight over the volcanic mountains.