Читать книгу Never Cry Halibut. and Other Alaska Hunting and Fishing Tales онлайн

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MY BEST TROPHY

I CAN IMAGINE FEW THINGS more terrible or wonderful than being a parent, particularly a mom. My own mother was abducted from California to Alaska and then forced to live with a wild husband and three savage sons. Imagine coming home from work to see a bloody pelt on the kitchen counter and your six-year-old son gnawing a boiled squirrel. Maybe it’s not that weird for Alaskan mothers, but for a young woman who grew up in Sacramento, it must have been disorienting at best. Ermine, marten, and a variety of rodent soups—my mom was always in for a surprise when we cooked dinner. The house, with piles of bones and antlers strewn about, seemed like a Neanderthal clan’s cave crossed with a hunting lodge. For the most part, she bore the horror quietly and late at night, as she stared up at the aurora dancing or through sheets of rain in the inky blackness, dreamed of ridding her house of dead animals. This seemingly simple task—a basic human right in other parts of the country—became as epic a quest as Frodo’s journey to Mordor in The Lord of the Rings.