Saturday, September 01, 1990

Chena Tales


September, circa 1990

The First Time

Tonight I find myself camping on a lonely gravel bar. Its bed of dark, igneous stones scratched out over eons from the hills to the south by the fabled waters of the East Fork making their way towards the distant sea. The waters originate deep inside the tangled spine of granite ridgelines separating the Chena and Salcha rivers. Long before the first woman walked these valleys, the backbone’s jagged knuckles jabbed angrily upward at cobalt skies, propelled by turbulent upwellings deep in the earth’s raging mantle. This battle of mountain and sky raged unwittnessed for millennia, the mountain leaking blood of gold while the sky pummeled it with an arsenal of water and ice. By the time woman arrived to sooth the wounds, the battle was nearly complete. The backbone lay slumped over with age, its golden blood dribbling away into watery rivers. Some defiant bones still poke upward several thousand feet, and the beast’s hot subterranean heart continues to pump sulfur broth from a few pores, hinting of a possible counter attack, but for the most part it seems the war has moved elsewhere. The flesh and gore of this archaic battle make up my bed tonight. Upon this bed nestled beneath dark September skies swirling with colors from the earth’s pole I contemplate the landscape, its history, its smells, its future. I ponder my past, my future and yes, even my smell. Most of all, I contemplate the welcome warmth of my sleeping bag as my eyes drift off into the beckoning “other world” called sleep.


Burnt coffee floating on misty morning air wakes me. The warm, womb of my sleeping bag begs me to slumber but thoughts of moose and tangled antlers call to me louder than any alarm clock. The world outside the womb is cold and wet, still untouched by the warming fingers of dawn. Jeff Harrison, a coworker and friend, hands me a steaming mug of the bitter brew. Hot coffee stings my tongue and brings this world back into focus. My eyes clear and at long last behold the majesty of the East Fork country. Until now this landscape had been an ever-changing sketch in my mind’s eye. Its lines etched and tinted by panoramic storytellers wielding word-dipped paintbrushes. Stories of a land uncut by road, accessible only by boat, plane, or soggy boot. Stories of clashing antlers, claw-raked trees and clear, deep pools of finning grayling. Tales of crumbling cabins sinking into frozen forest floor graves, guarded by ghosts of gold seekers, bootleggers and fiery wolf eyes drifting among the fog. The East Fork, the least accessible of the five tributaries that come together to birth the Chena river.
Jeff had been here before so he is a bit less awe struck at being here than I. He and his cousin had taken a nice bull from the hillside directly behind this very gravel bar last hunting season. He owns a 16-foot johnboat with an attached jet unit outboard. A vehicle suitable in providing transportation into this country if also equipped with an adventurous heart and kindly river spirits. The river had treated us kindly last night, allowing us to steak through her snaky twists with mere inches of water cushioning our aluminum hull from the can-opener bottom. No logjams hid behind her many curves and no “sweepers” decapitated us as we sped through her narrow channels. Riding a jet boat in these “skinny” waters is a balancing game between speed and control. Speed is needed in order to plane over the shallowly covered rocks while control is necessitated by narrow curves and ever changing fields of obstacles. Ah, but the river smiled on us last night, sending an eagle to screech directions from above and an icy blanket of water to cool the jagged edges of her soul. Like a virgin she called me to enter but also like a virgin she will never allow me to forget the trespasses I commit in so doing!



June 22, 2001
Reunion

Like a seafarer of old returning to his young bride after a long voyage I return to the East Fork. My ventures have carried me to distant ports and I have cavorted with other lovely ladies, some even sisters and cousins of my bride. I have fought battles, looted king’s castles and spilled blood and tears on distant seas. Seas thrashing with the concerns of modern life, roaring with job responsibilities and shimmering with family intricacies. Through the best and worst of it, the East Fork’s deep, clear water eyes and the sweet singing of her riffles have echoed through my thoughts and dreams.

I present the East Fork with treasure and gifts won during my wanderings on these far off seas of complexity as I cross into her waters from that of her sister’s, the North Fork. I present to her a newly obtained air boat, the Sinful Cindy, which trembles briefly as the two sisters pause to mingle and bicker in swirling counter currents. However, I also bring a gift far more precious than the aluminum and steel of the Sinful Cindy. I bring the universe wrapped in the flesh and blood of my youngest daughter. Like a diamond Leah’s golden hair glistens in the river breeze. Her hair contrasts sharply with the black, oily hair of the stranger seated beside her. It is the hair of a sinewy man of 30 plus years, which we met while refueling my truck about and hour earlier. His name is Bill Bohan, a prospector by trade, and a school bus driver and substitute teacher by necessity. He comes to the East Fork to dig the golden blood from the river’s mucky veins. He lays claim to the portion of her bank where Otter-tail creek slices into the river’s flesh from the north. Bill attempted to reach his claim several days ago but the fickle river rejected the advances of his small jet boat with an angry logjam. His hard won knowledge of the river and offer to attack the impeding logjam with a chain saw earned him passage on my boat. He travels with his Husky mix, Joe, who bothers my dog Scrub with his persistent humping for dominance.

The Sinful Cindy slices through the ice clear waters, sometimes skimming black, white and green poke-a-dot gravel beds and sometimes sliding through dark pools where shadows of grayling scurry for cover. I recognize it as the gravel bar on which Jeff Harrison and I had made moose camp many miles and years ago. It looks strangely familiar with only a few wrinkles cut into its face by the passage of time and water. Does it still recognize my face? Have I endured the years with as much wisdom? Grayling still rest among the spruce shadows in its pools along the northeast cheekbones. Do they remember my hook? Their iridescent purple and green spotted dorsal fins swim through the years of my dreams with the scent of fresh cut sage. Familiarity begs me to stop and stay but the howl of unknown land drags me further into the East Fork’s dark embrace.

The river splits. The channel to the north is wider but has little current while the south channel spills through a narrow winding, gash in the forest floor. Bill signals to stay to the south and I oblige, picking my way through tight curves studded with spruce pongee sticks waiting to impale any unwary traveler. I learn later that the channel in which we now travel was born two years previous, after the spring flood jammed the main channel with so much dead wood that the water was forced to cut a new path through the forest. The channel narrows even further and the waters scream obscenities at the confining banks. We encounter the first serious logjam along a spiral twist in this forest-eating torrent. Our port side scrapes grooves into tangled stumps gurgling with heads of angry froth while the starboard side rasps against the clay of a cut bank. I mash the throttle to the floor and jam the rudder to port. Sinful Cindy roars in anguish and pops free like a champagne cork. Three more curves and we find ourselves hovering below “log jam point”, a narrow finger of land jabbing into a boiling broth of ice water and spruce corpses. Opposite the point lies a vast expanse of gray and white gnarled tree parts entombed in ever accumulating river silt. This is the distal edge of the logjam that diverted the river two springs ago. It is birthing new land as it strains silt and gravel through crooked fingers of branch and root while the East Fork gnaws hungrily at the old earth beside it to reclaim her channel. Oceans of water and anything caught in their icy grip hideously pile into the upstream buttress and then seem to disappear into the shadow world beneath the pile of broken tree bones. Three towering spruce trees stand guard over this tumultuous, life sucking portal, watching with wooden faces as the world below swirls to its cold, wet fate. I steal a glance backward at Leah. Her young face is tight with tension but her eyes reflect total confidence in Dad. I wonder if my eyes betray the bile in my belly and fear in my mouth. At that moment I realize one decision made too hastily or one made not hastily enough could sacrifice her beautiful, young spirit to this hungry, lonesome place. I ease back on the throttle and let the boat slip slightly back from the boiling maw and then gently nudge the nose into the quieter currents swirling in indecision behind the finger of land. Bill jumps ashore and secures the bowline to a birch and I kill the engine.

“You think she can make it through?”

I look at the angry froth pouring through the white teeth of the jam and then at the weathered form of Sinful Cindy resting in the backwater. Just a few miles previous, her throbbing 383 Chevy engine had been ripping the twin 78 inch wooden propellers through the river’s silence with adolescent abandon. Now she seems tethered with uncertainty amid her adversary’s roar. The numerous scratches in her rust, red paint and the occasional imperfections distorting her once smooth curves speak of wisdom won from previous battles fought under the command of previous captains, but I have no way of tapping this reservoir of knowledge. I am her captain now; a privilege paid for by months of toil, and a distant uncle’s inheritance. Sinful Cindy is a dream birthed into stark reality after years of yearning pregnancy. A pregnancy conceived between my own hard work and the life of my uncle, which I know too little about. She is also a liability, which no insurance company underwrites. Her name stems from a playful combination of my Lutheran feelings of guilt about spending the money to purchase her and my wife Cindy’s encouragement to do so anyway. (She used to be Catholic so there is no guilt as long as you pay the required tithes) Yes, I am now her captain, no matter how blinded by inexperience I may be, and she will gladly follow me to whatever fate I command.

“I think we should lighten her load. Off-load all our gear except for the ropes and chain saws. Then we can scout the upstream side and figure out what we want to do.”

The lines of Leah’s face visibly relax on hearing this decision and she jumps from the bow into the reassuring arms of dry land. I begin handing gear to Bill, 40 gallons of gas, a cooler of food, 5 gallons of water, dry bags of clothes and Bill efficiently stows it among the trees. The final item, an oddly shaped black leather case, I gently hand to Leah and she carries it like a baby far from the water and lays it on a soft mossy bed.

The dogs are already ashore. Scrub protectively keeps one eye on me as I finish securing the boat and one eye on Leah as she arranges the piles of gear. Joe bounces on spring loaded legs among the trees, sniffing at the myriad of new, forest scents. I discover the spit of land we now occupy, has been used in the recent past by others. A triangular plywood frame has been erected between the three large spruce trees guarding the river’s swirling abyss. These sentries don’t seems quite so stern when standing at their feet beneath the shelter of their sweet smelling needles. The platform is about six feet above the ground with equidistant sides of about eight feet.

“ That’s Ron Richard’s bear baiting stand. He put that up a couple of years ago and hunts it in the early spring. You’ll probably run into him sometime if you come up here very often. He runs a big silver airboat called the Mothership. He seems kinda arrogant…first time I met him I was walking up the ‘cat’ trail that runs behind Munson’s Creek up to Van Curler’s bar. He asked me where I was going and then told me that he had some stuff ripped-off from one of his caches up near Van Curler’s. It almost sounded like he thought I might know something about it. I think he was involved in law enforcement somehow. He’s a bailiff or something now. Anyway, I’d like to sit down and talk with him sometime…try to get off on a little friendlier foot with him if I can. This isn’t good country to share with an enemy if you know what I mean.”

Pondering Bill’s words I quickly scan the forest floor for fresh bear piles but see none. A few trees do seem to show claw scars but nothing too fresh. Still the hard weight of the .44 on my side is reassuring. I glance down at Leah but she seems unaffected by the conversation. Perhaps she missed the part about this being a bear hunting stand or maybe she is just reassured by my close proximity. Either way, this point of land which minutes before seemed a reassuring refuge from the river’s sucking throat now seems haunted with unseen danger. Is it the spirit of the bears, which spilled their lifeblood into these soils, which I feel? Or are other spirits tethered to this piece of land by ropes of hardships endured in more distant times? Ah! It’s just my imagination, perked by the knowledge of this being a bear hunting ground…yet somehow, deep in my gut, I know that this hunk of land is somehow book-marked in the index of my fate.

The three of us make our way through the forest under story towards the roar of the logjam. The hulking forms of upended spruce and birch trees litter the bank. Their bone-white trunks knife into the snarling current while their hairy root balls grip the torn shoreline with black tentacles. Deep pools swirl with crystal ball images of the icy depths between root ball boulders. A large grayling vertically paces in the water column of one pool waiting for the next insect morsel to be delivered by the current. A 10-foot wide channel of froth bumps a path over the backs of most of the logs, curving between islands of tree limbs that forever scratch and grasp at the air with bony fingers. The channel snakes it way to the tail of the jam, where it gushes between the dead torsos of three huge spruce trees damming its path. The ends of the trees are jammed beneath the tentacles of two truck sized root balls stationed on opposite sides of the river. These are the “king-pins;” the locks imprisoning all that lies upstream; very literally the “root cause” of the river’s rage.

“If the boat can get over that dam she should make it through the rest of the shit. We’ll need to watch her rear end though… if the bow gets hung up on those damn trees the back end might get forced down and it will be all over. If it looks like we can’t climb up over them I can idle her right at their face and maybe you can try to cut through one side so that boat can push them below the surface.”

“Do you want your daughter to wait on shore or in the boat with us?”

Decisions, they’re both the reward and the curse of adulthood and what a wonderful set of choices I have from which to choose! My first instinct is to leave Leah on the shore away from the dangers of the river but what happens if a bear materializes out of the woods while we’re battling the river? What if something happens to us in the boat? She would be up the proverbial “Shit crick without a paddle,” a flesh and blood Little Red Riding Hood lost in the deep, dark forest. I suppose I could just give it up and head back down river like a whipped puppy to camp on the same gravel bar that I had hunted several years previous. It is a beautiful spot. A place not haunted with the foreboding spirits that linger here. But I have already told Bill that I would try to help him get his supplies to his claim. What would he think? Hell, I really hardly know him other than the little he has told me so far, that he is an ex-marine, a school bus driver and a prospector. Still, I told him I would help him and I don’t want to wimp out now.

“She can stay on the shore with the dogs.”

“Leah, I want you to stay here in this clearing. We’ll be able to keep an eye on your from the boat and you’ll be able to catch a rope from us if need be. You could tie it of on that birch if you have to.”
Bill made his way to the boat while I linger with last minute instructions for Leah.
“Don’t worry…but if something does go wrong…If you were to end up here by yourself… there is an old trail back in the woods behind us. It would probably take you about a half- hour to walk back to it. Once you get to the trail turn right, towards that hill over there. The trail leads down river and will eventually lead back to the road but it would probably take more than a day. The flare gun is in this box. If something does happen and you loose sight of us, stay here for today and tonight. There probably will be an airplane coming over by evening because I noticed it heading up river this morning towing some kind of magnetic mapping device beneath it. You could use the flare to signal it…”

I give my daughter what I hope to be a reassuring hug and climb into the boat. Sinful Cindy’s engine sputters to life and Bill releases the bowline. I let the current carry us a bit down stream and work the throttle and rudder to set a clear line towards the 3-foot high dam of spruce bones. Having a good line of attack I increase the throttle and a violent whirlwind of mist streams from the dual props and races down river. Sinful Cindy shudders under the load and begins fighting her way up the ever-increasing current. The three “king pins” seem to rise up to meet our attack. The first one disappears beneath the bow curve and I feel Sinful Cindy lurch upward. The second log grabs her underbelly sapping our forward momentum. I floor board the throttle and the engine screams above the river’s roar. We begin to lift even higher but then the third log grabs our chin and halts our progress. I work the rudders among the maelstrom of propwash trying to break free. To our aft trees dance and shake under the force of our man-made hurricane but it soon becomes apparent that our attack is thwarted. I ease off the throttle and current propels our retreat. Sinful Cindy slides down to a more horizontal angle, resting atop the first log. Still wearing his ear protectors Bill scampers out onto the bow and secures us with a line.

I join Bill at the bow to size up the situation. Water is pouring through the logs with a turbulent roar along both sides of the boat making conversation difficult. The boat is resting on the first log and is in no immediate danger. The second log looks as if it could be mounted without too much trouble if it were not for the third log sitting just high enough above and behind it to prevent the bow from rising up over it.

“ I might be able to make it through if I hit it faster but I am afraid that the last log might catch the front and drive it under.”

Bill wipes the sweat from his eyes with a callous hand and yells above the roar, “Do you want to drift back down and give it another try or do you want to try to cut some of this out?”

“ I think we should see if we can cut some of it…If I do get past, it might be a real bitch to get back through on the return trip. I won’t have your help then and since the boat doesn’t have any brakes or reverse I’d need to hit it just right the first time. Going down stream is always scary enough.”

“I think we should cut the bow line free before we start cutting. If you can hold the boat up against the jam with the engine I might be able to cut that third log from the bow. We’ll want to keep the boat out of its way when it comes on down.”
I start the engine and Bill releases the bowline and secures his Stilh chain saw to it. I “goose” the throttle a bit trying to position the bow at an angle that will put the log within reach of the saw bar. I gray puff of exhaust shoots from the side of the saw announcing that it has started though I can not hear its scream above the roaring water and throbbing boat engine. Bill climbs out to the very end of the bow but can’t quite get a good angle on the log. He carefully steps one leg off into the swirling currents and finds a footing on the second log lying in the froth beneath the bow. His second leg hangs over the tip of the bow. With his butt pressed against the leading edge of the boat for leverage he begins cutting. Wood chips stream into the air like snowflakes driven from a ridgeline by a gale. I hold Sinful Cindy steady in the current, nervous but I am sure much more comfortable than my partner hanging over the icy currents with a roaring saw in his hands. Leah anxiously watches the endeavor from her clearing on the shore while scrub paces at her side. Joe, upset at not being in the boat, scours the jumbled logs along the shore, determined to find a path out to us.

The work continues for the better part of a half-hour before the log succumbs to the chain’s bite. The victory is rather anti-climatic. No loud crack of defiance proclaims the event. The severed trunk simply bobs under the strain of the river rather than stoically resisting with rigidity. Bill shuts down the Stihl and soothes his hot face with a splash of the icy water. He signals for me to ease the boat to the other side of the channel where he can begin attacking the opposite end of the now decapitated spruce. This side of the tree rises higher above the water and is even bigger in circumference. I angle the back of the boat away from the main current in hopes of keeping clear of the massive corpse when it’s sucked to its grave down river. This time he doesn’t need to climb half way into the river to commence with the duel. However, the added girth of his adversary combined with the current’s death grip at the severed end make for a technically difficult cut. He begins with a stress-relieving wedge cut on the underside of the trunk. This necessitates cutting with the topside of the saw’s chain bar, a practice warned against in chain saw manuals because of the increased risk of “kick-back”. To make matters more difficult, the cut had to be made well beneath the water’s surface. I make a mental note of where the first aid kit is stowed; not that I relish the idea of attempting to treat an amputated limb under these or any other circumstances. The Stilh roars to life and in an instant the atmosphere becomes one of stinging liquid icicles as water jets back from the saw bar into my face and boat. Bill slides his torso to the right, intercepting the frosty geyser and is instantly soaked despite the limited protection afforded by the rain jacket he wears. This battle of chain-tooth, log and water continues under darkening afternoon skies. The smell of gasoline fumes infused into atomized river blood nauseate my gut while the screaming of saw blade and water pound at my head, threatening to distract my attention from the dangers of the task at hand. I glance to the shore and see Scrub bothering Leah to throw a mossy stick. Joe is still scampering like a cat along all the shoreline logs looking for passage to his master at the head of the boat. No mass of fur, claw or teeth appears to be lurking in the shadows behind Leah’s shoreline lair. A water muffled groan vibrates from the place where saw meets kingpin log and I notice the kingpin’s opposite end begin to swing under the force of the relentless current. The river erupts with a loud “crack”. The huge log, along with several attached islands of mud and debris, slowly swings into the river’s flow and accelerate past the boat’s port side. I wiggle the rudder and tenderly increase pressure on the throttle.

Sinful Cindy shudders and begins moving through the newly opened channel, sliding over subsurface logs and bouncing between small islands of silt glued spruce bones. Soon we are around the end of “Logjam Point” and out of sight from Leah and the dogs. I nose the boat into a current swept clearing along an inside curve and Bill jumps ashore and ties the bow to a white birch. Joe comes bounding through the underbrush as we begin our trek back to where Leah and our gear awaits.
Lunch consists of a menagerie of crackers, gorp, sausage and cheese, all of which tastes like the finest gourmet cuisine. The tensions of the previous hours drain from our souls as we munch down these treats while the dogs beg food and frolic about the shoreline clearing. The summer sun adds to the festive spirit, parting the clouds and smiling upon us with golden rays.
Lunch ends and we begin the murderous task of humping our gear through the underbrush to the boat. Bill has cached several heavy boxes of camp supplies in the nearby brush and we drag these, as well as the gear we had already barged to this point, through the tangles of Logjam Point. Despite Bill’s rather average size, he displays surprising strength and tenacity throughout this labor. I wonder about the time he spent in the Marine Corps (or simply “the Corps” as he calls them). He strikes me as being a man I would not care to fight. A man with a calm surface hiding a knife hard inner edge. The type of man who often is pushed to the outer fringes of modern civilization to either thrive or whither on its ragged frontier. I wonder if he did time in Vietnam. He seems much to young to be an artifact from that national “cluster-fuck” and he doesn’t have the hollow look common among so many of the Vietnam ghosts haunting Alaska. No, something else is driving him to the solitary months of labor at his gold camp. I choose to be a good Alaskan and not probe this matter too deeply. A man’s past is his own to build or stumble upon, and besides, we all have a “gold camp” of one kind or another.

Bug dope stings my eyes, carried by the sweat dripping from my forehead as I load the last box into the boat. Sinful Cindy lies low in the current under the heavy load. This is a worry but Bill assures me that the worst water is now behind us so I fire up the engine and continue our easterly voyage. The river is much happier now and I feel as if I am now sliding through a universe apart from time and its companion, mortality. Logjam Point is the portal between this universe and another. This portal relentlessly sucks both river and life into time’s reality. On this side, time exists only in the crystalline present tense with clarity equal to the waters flowing through it.

We glide past the mouth of Munson Creek, a tributary known to me through stories passed to me by renowned fly-fisher and friend Guy Lee. Stories of huge, beautiful grayling eager to devour a variety of dry flies. I also know this creek by its obscure meanderings inked on well studied, topographical maps. Maps which communicate great mystery shrouded in the upper reaches of the creek with terse symbols labeled simply as “ruins”. A few miles further to the east the sharp bulk of a granite bluff guards the entrance to Delmare Creek which I know winds its path into the hills to the north which separate us from the road’s end at Chena Hot Springs. A substantial sand beach lounges opposite the granite cliff, looking quite enticing in the warm late afternoon sunlight. We travel still further east and I am surprised to see a dilapidated cabin hiding among the trees on the right-hand bank. An oxbow lake graces the cabin’s side as if painted there by a master artist of old. A bit further upstream another creek tumbles through quartz boulders into the north side of the East Fork. I learn later that his is the Otter-tail and Bill is soon signaling me to pull up along a steep cut-bank. We’ve made it! This is Bill’s camp of gold.