Mike Sutton's Blog: For prose apply within. - Posts Tagged "kenai"

The three pairs of hip-waiters made a special style of music as the men wearing them slumped along the trail along the edge of the river bank. Slush-clump. The boots might have been the rhythm section of some funky new orchestra. Slush-clump. While the river drove along, forcing through a melody.

The kid nearly felt like snapping his fingers along with the tune that only he seemed to be able to hear as he raced to catch up with his father and their friend Steve. Slush-clump, clump, clump. And there went the rhythm, shattered by an act of pointless haste. The kid knew where they were all going, no point in running there. Three miles along a backwoods trail made for a long walk and running would only make things worse as he stumbled over roots and rocks as his fishing rod got caught on branches.

Watch the ground, watch the sky, watch for animals as they walk or lie.

The world around him was too busy as the flies followed him like a cloud of steamy breath on a icy winter day. Just one more distraction between the kid and the roots, rocks and bears that threatened to reach up and grab him. Three miles was a long damn way to walk.

The father and Steve stopped at a nice overlook for a moment to wait for the kid to catch back up.

"There's a couple of em right now." Steve said, pointing vaguely at a spot in the river that only looked like a swirling blur of blue-green water to the kid. His eyes had been growing worse over the last few months. He of course had failed to mention the change. "Do you see them this time?" The kid admitted that he didn't and Steve climbed down the bank and waded out into the turquoise current. With a flick of his wrist and a wave of his arm he dragged a rather surprised sockeye salmon out of the icy embrace of the Alaskan river and onto the bank. His was a special gift. He seemed to possess a strange sixth sense for locating fish, a talent he would often show off.

Steven loved to find a group of strangers, people who looked like they had been in a spot damn near the entire day. People who weren't having so much as a smidgeon of luck. Steve would stop, wade in, and in minutes he would pull out a salmon. Usually he just released it and then kept on walking. Smiling as his hosts cursed and scrambled as they tried to figure out how he had done it.

"A little gamey isn't it?" The boy's father asked as Steve held up the five pounds of living rot. The red salmon was already well into it's fresh water change that came with the end of its short existence as its body turned, well, red. A bright firetruck red, with a green snout. The first was unsavory and effectively a member of the walking dead.

Steve released the fish it back into the river. They state had imposed a three Sockeye per person per day limit all along the river for the season. Steve didn't want to waste a single slot on a fish that was so unsavory.

"Well, at least we know that they're still running." He said as he fastened the hook back onto one of the eyes of his fishing rod and scrambled back up the bank. "Even if that one was a fair bit on the gamey side of things."

"Enough of this, our spot is just a little farther on." The father said, and marking his words, he set off further down the trail, changing the rhythm yet again. Steve and the kid jogged to catch up. The kid lost himself in the dance again, evading rocks and fanning away the clouds of flies. Watch for bears and moose. Slush-clump.

They halted.

"Here we are." The father said with a grin that could be called boyish as he stated the obvious. Their favorite little spot on the river. The three men dropped their packs and took a seat on a log that had a decade or more before been a sizable cottonwood tree. There was nothing to say or do really, they just enjoyed the view for a few minutes after the long hike. The view alone was worth it. Three hours of driving followed by three miles of hiking.

The river like the lake that fed it, was a shade of blue, or maybe green, that changed before the eye as it rolled over the valley floor. The water looked so inviting on a warm and sunny day. Until you dipped in so much as the toenail on your smallest digit. After you recoiled in a mixture of fear, shock and pain, the illusion would melt away with than the glacial ice that fed the river.

A small island that was packed with trees breached the current about fifteen or so feet from the far bank. The island was a verdant speck in the middle of the channel. It was about fifty feet wide and a hundred or so long and cleaved the river like the wing of an aircraft. In a summer that was either abnormally wet or hot the river would easily swallow the little ribbon of land. The kid loved to explore the tiny isle, stomping up and down it's insignificant length and width, poking and prodding at the river in search for easier prey.

Off in the distance, a hundred miles or more. A line of mountains were painted into the background. They were framed by the forrest and the sky, with big white clouds drifting through the light blue . The kid found it so very easy just to sit and admire the scenery for hours at a time. It was one of those days that would make an entire trip worth all the time and money for travelers and sightseers from afar off.

Now though there was work to be done. The kid picked up his fishing rod and waded out into the current, unhooking the long colorful coho fly from one of the eyes on the rod and letting it swing loose.. The general technique was simple and easy to get a hang of. You cast the line upstream and then let it drift along the bottom with the current, reeling the line to take up the slack. You could feel the fly bouncing on the bottom of the river. When it stopped, you set the hook.

The kid found a spot on a exposed ridge of smooth river-stones and sat down. Time passed, as he enjoyed the sun, wind and repetition of the work. Cast-drift-reel was his new rhythm, replacing the slush-clump of his stomping boots.

Boom. His first hit of the day. The kid leaped to his feet as the line raced down river. The fish at the other end must have been as surprised as the kid himself by the suddenness of the hook appearing in its mouth. The kid then did as he was taught. Pull back on the rod and drag the fish forward, release and take up the slack. Repeat.

For five minutes he battled the mighty coho and then it was gone.

"Looks like you lost it." Steve said as the kid reeled in his empty line. "Don't worry, that one was really starting to turn, you wouldn't have wanted to keep it anyways." The kid sat back down.

A hundred casts with a hundred misses later and the kid was feeling restless. The island was calling to him. Come explore me, it was saying. He decided to listen and follow. Using the pole as a probe, he made his way across the river one step at a time, trying to avoid the holes and a quick slip into a cold bath. With a few creative steps and a vague clue how he was going to get back across, the kid took his first step onto the island.

He felt like a polar bear version of Tom Sawyer as he slogged along the length of the island following a muddy path that ran the length. An inept Tom Sawyer without the innate raft building skills. The little island was a disappointment, it merely looked like the rest of the forrest. The only high point was when he reached the far end. There he found a pool of deep water where a giant trout was hiding from the day. Later he would claim that the fish was at least the size of his leg. Maybe he wasn't very far off. Or maybe the water exaggerated the true size of the fish for him.

With another corner of the world explored and conquered, the kid headed back as a hero.

"Ready for lunch?" The father asked as the kid pulled himself up to the top of the bank.

"Sure. I'll take ham if any are left." A joke. They only had ham. They only ever brought ham. Ham sandwiches and the fudge striped cookies by Keebler. Sort of a tradition going back the breadth of a few years, started one after a successful day of ice fishing and carried on to that very day. The two of them sat down on the bank and ate in silence as they watched Steve slowly work an eddy. With the kind of lazy patience of a man who had already already finished his work for the day, so everything else afterwards was just for fun.

A grunting sound was coming from behind them. The kid turned around and peered into the brush as he tried to locate the source of the strange noise. It sounded similar to the noise that a hog might make, but so far as he knew there weren't any hogs living feral in the entire state.

"Dad, what was that sound?"

"You heard it too?"

"Of course I heard it. Do you know what it was?"

"That was a bear."

"What?"

"A bear, they're all over the place here. You're lucky that you didn't run into one while you were playing on the island."

"A bear?"

"Yep."

The kid fell silent, and went back to listening to the river as he watched twelve different directions at once for any more unexpected and unwelcome visitors. He had never given bears much thought, sure he had watched out for them, should one have stumbled across the path in front of him, but they were sort of abstract. Bears in his mind were sort of like the Soviets across the Bearing Straight. They were supposed to be dangerous, he heard all about them, but he had never actually seen one up close. The kid tried to stay calm like his father. Nothing to worry about. Animals wouldn't bother you if you didn't bother them. He tried holding onto that thought like a prayer. He wouldn't bother nothing.

That was when Steve started yelling, "Ya bear! Ya bear! Git! Git outta here bear!"

"What was that?" The kid squeaked.

"A bear just came out of the woods in front of me. He was going to climb down in the river. Took off when he heard me though." Steve said as his line drifted down stream between casts. He took a step up river and pulled his line back in, snapped it back, and placed it into the river once again.

"I'm ready to go."

"What?"

"Now. Lets, up and move back toward that direction with the camper and the food and where the bears aren't so much at." He started babbling as he packed his gear and made wild gestures with his arms back towards the direction of their camp. The general and inescapable point was that he was ready to get out of there immediately.

"Well Steve, are you ready to get out of here?"

"Sure. We can head back up toward the lodge and get dinner, and maybe hit Quartz for a while."

"Good idea. It's been a long time since we picked out some Dollys."

"Well, good luck with that. They upped the size restrictions for the fish to twenty-four inches. So it's likely we won't be keeping anything we catch. Still, I hear that the population has come back with a vengeance."

"Oh well. It isn't about the keeping." The father said as he shouldered his pack and headed back towards the campground. The kid followed, watching the brush closely, more closely than he should have, as he stumbled along at his his father's heels. Sometimes on his father's heels. The peculiar sound of the hip-waiters forgotten.

Three miles down and three miles back, with hours wading in the river between the two hikes. Each step was agony by the time the kid made it back to their camping spot. His boots flew off in two different directions as he sat down at the picnic table. There would be no more fishing that day. Only dinner and then rest. All in all, it had been a good day.