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

4 страница из 60

They settled there, cut off from the rest of the civilized world by a 1,500-square-mile icefield and a wilderness archipelago. It was late fall, the nastiest time of the year in Southeast. Having nowhere to live, they pitched a tent at a campground and slept with their dogs for nearly a month before they found a small rundown trailer. Their slate-gray rainy world was a hard adjustment for my mom, and a lifelong love-hate relationship with Southeast Alaska began as she watched snow creep down mountains and stared at a glacier in her backyard.

It was one thing to read about Alaskan hunting adventures and another thing to make your own. The forest and mountains, tangled and shrouded in constant storms, were nothing like the Sierras. My dad was armed with an ancient rifle with a bolt that was clunky and problematic. On one of his first ventures, he wandered through walls of alders, clawing brush, and gloomy old-growth forest to the top of a mountain to look for mountain goats. His excitement of finally going hunting in Alaska was not dampened by his inability to see more than a hundred feet in the foggy alpine. After spending the day sitting in the rain and snow, hoping a goat would appear out of the gray, and watching ravens glide in and out of view, he hurried down with an empty pack. After his being chilled and lightheaded from low blood sugar and wandering through a dark, dripping forest, a respect for how quickly even a day hunt could go awry was born.