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

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“I’m a writer! I know what I’m saying!”

Whenever I get to feeling too domestic, I crack a beer, pick up a hammer, and start hitting two-by-fours. My pounding succeeded in annoying MC so much she kicked me out of the house. Soon, I was happily climbing through the rainforest, wading through devil’s club, and stuffing my face with marble-sized blueberries and huckleberries. A black merlin winged along the edge of a meadow, hunting songbirds. A sooty grouse flew up into a small hemlock tree then looked down just feet away. I followed a well-used deer trail into the subalpine of a mountain I’ve hunted for two decades.

Fifteen Augusts ago, when I was seventeen and my little brother, Reid, was thirteen, we followed the same deer trail along the edge of an alpine slope. I spied a deer through the maze of underbrush. Hearts hammering and skin tingling, we belly crawled to the edge of the bushes and peered up. A beautiful fork-horn grazed above three does. I passed Reid my rifle. He crawled a few feet forward. As if he’d done it a thousand times before, he chambered a round, took a rest, and shot his first buck.