The air is still and wet. The humidity causes my father’s bones to hurt. He stretches after he climbs out of the little tent. It’s just above freezing and frost covers the ground.
My little brother lies in his sleeping bag, sleeping soundly. The cold doesn’t bother him. I’ve been awake off and on for an hour now. The hunt will start again soon.
I climb out a little while after he does. I wait for him to make coffee. Getting up this early ought to be a felony without coffee.
We talk a little bit in the morning light. Mostly I crack jokes to keep my father laughing. Laughter, to me, is the greatest sound a human can make. I do my best to keep it a close friend. The month is September and the world promises cold and snow and darkness soon. But for now, summer is telling us, no, not yet. Its beast is a hard one to kill and winter is trying, oh so trying.
A cow moose grazes across the lake. She knows she is safe from the steel and lead we have here. We can’t be sure so dad climbs a hill to peer through binoculars. If only looking hard enough could cause it to grow antlers. But life doesn’t deal in “if onlys.” It is harsh and cruel and beautiful.
He climbs back down to camp as I make David hot chocolate. David talks a little to me and I enjoy it because I spent much of my youth ignoring the words of little ones and as I live and learn a little more I know that these conversations though trivial to the elder, are foundation making for the young.
David wears my Carhartt hoody. It’s a little big on me and just right for him. It stops just below his knees and keeps him warm. We will cross the river today and spend hours scouring the ridge lines for caribou and moose. I wear my trusty mountain pack, dad wears his day pack and David puts on his fanny-pack. It’s a little big for his waist so David wears it diagonally. It loops around one shoulder and below the other. He tightens the straps. He wants to know if we are riding in the canoe. My shoulders moan a little in protest. I have enjoyed the lazy trappings of the city a little too much. I say yes. He smiles a smile that makes the sun jealous.
We ready our firearms and climb into the canoe. It’s much too small for all three of us and I sit on my knees in the front. I haven’t canoed in a very long time. I never got down the whole steering thing. Dad has years of experience, he sits in the back, and I try not to muck up our directions.
We cross over the liquid glass. David points out a loon. It calls to him in response. He talks to dad and dad patiently listens and answers. Years ago both of us would tell him to be quiet, but both dad and I have learned that little ones speak sometimes to learn. And they never forget an injustice, small as it may be to us.
I struggle with patience as my legs fall asleep and my shoulders burn from paddling. Dad sees a group of swans and they are pure, white and sleeping. It is early for them and they are leaving this place soon. They are dreaming now of warm shores and sunny days. We stay quiet.
At three thousand feet plus the trees here are few and far between. Mountains we are hunting in roll and jut into ridges sometimes. They are peppered with a few spruce trees but are covered in willow bush that can and do reach six feet tall.
We beach the canoe in a swamp. The shore is lower than the river and very wet. We make our way through it. I am worried about David getting wet and cold and not keeping up. I shouldn’t be, he hikes better than I do now, albeit a little louder.
We climb up a hill. One thing I’ve learned about Alaska, you are constantly climbing a taller hill. You could be climbing a mountain peak at thirteen thousand feet, but almost always, another taller mountain will be blocking your view. I’ve seen my fair share of Alaska and in that time I’ve learned the good spots, the stunning spots. They are always, without question, worth the climb.
We reach a knoll and get comfy. Glassing for game can take hours, and usually does. As my father says: “Binoculars can go a lot farther a lot faster than your legs can.” David doesn’t have binoculars and I wish I had some for him, but he doesn’t mind. He curls into a ball and dozes.
Dad finds some moose three miles away. It’s hard to see them even in field glasses so I take his word for it. I spot six or seven caribou on a ridge not too far away. We figure we’ve seen most of the game on this side of the river but we keep looking anyway.
As I grow older, I find killing another animal to be a deeply emotional and personal experience. Maybe it is the old one’s blood in me but taking a picture of an animal that has given his life for yours, to me, is disrespectful of the sacrifice. “Here is me.” It says “I have killed this thing which had no voice in the matter and is a silly stupid thing.” But I figure, if grass knows when it’s being cut, insects feel pain, and most birds are sentient, surely, it is a dishonorable and arrogant act to ignore the part the animal played in your hunt. It isn’t scenery, a meat machine, or foreground for a picture. It was a life that we took.
It is an outdated view, I’m sure.
The lichen stains the hills white in spots. The willow and alder leaves are a bright green and yellow. They prepare to fall and let the tree hibernate until warm spring lets them grow again. There isn’t much time in an Alaskan summer to grow and the tree things know it. They sprout and shoot up as high as they can in that short amount of time.
A pond holds home to a few geese and ducks. They bathe in it and dip down looking for lunch. The swan watches over it, they are the owners of this water and share it comfortably with the other winged creatures. This land goes as far as the eye can see and it’s hard to believe how finite it all really is.
I sit alone for a while and take in this beautiful thing that is promised to change. Mankind is the only game changer of nature that we know of, sans a gigantic meteor. But as a force nature can only let itself be warped and disfigured for so long by us. I sometimes cynically point out how men in tracked vehicles talk about how beautiful it is here and then do their best to wreck it. If human evolution has taught us anything it is that mankind, and mostly men, are an asinine lot. We are driven to destroy things and ignorantly speak as if we know all. I’m not sure why. The man with the biggest beer and the biggest truck and the biggest gun and the biggest muscle and the biggest house must be the biggest man. I hear it is strictly an American viewpoint. It is detrimental and silly but so many things we do are.
I sigh to myself. My ideals are in the minority in this state. I hope they won’t be forever. But even if they are they will still be mine and I suppose that’s some small comfort.
David rouses from his nap. I announce to him that we are going to try to get a caribou, and he seems nonplussed about the whole deal. I smile and ruffle his hair. He puts on his little pack and we ready ourselves for the hunt.
“Do you think we’ll get something?” He asks me.
“I hope so.”
“Me too.” I’m not sure if he understands what it will mean if we do, but he probably does. I have a problem with underestimating the knowledge of the young ones. If experience is any indicator it will only be exacerbated the older I get.
“You know,” I say to him. “If we don’t, we’ll still have them here.”
“Really?”
“Maybe, for a time.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“It does in a way. It just takes some thinking.”
He changes the subject.
“How come, when I do something fun time goes by really fast, but when I’m doing something boring it goes by slow?”
“Because time is relative.”
“Huh.” He scrunches up his face and I laugh. I see the gears turning. He’s quiet and I’m glad. I don’t know if I could clarify very well.
We climb back down the hill toward the canoe.
Dad is quiet like he gets sometimes when we are here in the middle of dangerous Mother Nature. He respects it as I have learned to. He knows that the peaceful silence can be shattered in a matter of seconds and the smallest misadventure can turn deadly and the cold world will only swallow you if you are not ready. David is of course fearless in it and he will learn, in time, to respect a force greater than anything man has been able to dream up, at least so far.
We stop paddling for a moment and I close my eyes and feel the cold breeze wrap around me. Then I open them and glance at the mountains. The snow line is creeping farther and farther down the summit. I breathe in the cold determination of the air.
Winter will slay this summer’s beast, but for now summer is holding its own.
Storied By Josh 