Fishing the Ribbon of Time

The polar sun bakes Fairbanks like a roasted salmon. Its rarified light is just as unrelenting as winter's cold darkness. I grew up living amid the humid haze of Chicago’s summers but the savagery of the high latitude sun still drains the energy from my soul like no other. It's late Sunday afternoon when I wipe my sweat stinging eyes and head into the shadows of my house. A cold glass of water dripping with droplets of condensation; a cool shower; wonderful antidotes for global warming I think. I have spent the last two days turning wrenches on my boat engine and plowing seeds into the warm earth of my garden. Now it's time to cool off , relax and to enjoy the remaining hours of my weekend.

I emerge from the shower refreshed and enlivened by the cool sensation of water evaporating from my still wet hair to find my son, Jeremiah, standing in my kitchen. I learn he is in town because his new wife had to come into Fairbanks to attend a bridal shower of a friend. I take one look at Jeremiah’s bored face and instantly realize what must be done. Twelve hours remain of the weekend, my favorite son is visiting with nothing to do, while swarms of Arctic Grayling are calling from the nearby Chena River begging us to come entertain them. "Lets go fishing,” I mutter as I reach for my fishing cap and head out the door. Jeremiah is a good boy and knows better than to argue with his old man on such matters. Scrub, my prehistoric golden retriever lying in a state of deep coma on the kitchen floor, over-hears the word “fishing” and instantly springs back to life.

The three of us sink into the squashed seats of my 1985 Berretta and head out of town. Jeremiah’s house is about 25 miles out Chena Hot Springs road and we need to stop there so that he can retrieve his fishing gear along with his two black labs, Jezzebel and Duke. The Berretta bounces along the frost-heaved highway slicing through heat-snakes writhing above the hot asphalt. Jeremiah turns to me saying, “ I found a new place along the river. Its back along those trails behind HIPAS. There’s a nice deep run along a hillside and then the river breaks across a long gravel bar. The Grayling were splashing the surface pretty good when I was down there the other evening.”

I think to myself, “Twenty-three years of teaching the boy how to read the waters of life are beginning to pay-off….Now he is finding places for me to fish instead of the other way around.” but my only verbal reply is, “Sounds good to me. I’m always up for trying a new piece of water.”

We pull into Jeremiah’s gravel driveway to the excited greetings of Jezz and Duke dancing about their chain-link kennel. Scrub raises his head off the Berretta’s back seat with an expression that tells me he is both happy to have some canine companionship but also dreading the frenzied ruckus that his younger companions will inevitably cause in his life. Jeremiah immediately sets to the task of locating his fishing gear while I quench my dusty throat with an icy bottle of Alaska Amber Ale retrieved from his refrigerator.

“Dad, you know those trails down to the river are pretty narrow…maybe we should take the dirt bikes. I don’t really want to risk scratching the new truck's paint all to hell on the brush.”

I take one look at Scrub’s tired, cloudy eyes and arthritic gait and reply, “I don’t think poor Scrub will survive the run and I would feel too guilty leaving him behind. Do you think the Berretta can make it?”

“Hmm…It’s not very muddy but there are some pretty bad bumps. I’m not sure…. wouldn’t want you to ruin your car trying.”

The gauntlet had been laid. How could I refuse such a challenge questioning the fitness of Bertha the Berretta? “Of course old Bertha can make it! Her shocks have already conquered a couple hundred thousand miles of Alaskan pot-holes. I don’t think another five miles will cause her any trouble” And so the decision was made.

Jeremiah throws his fishing gear into Bertha’s trunk along with several more bottles of icy beer. I hold the passenger door open and call the dogs to pile into the back seat. “Dad, you know Jezz is in heat. Maybe you don’t want her riding back there.”

I look at the piles of paper and other debris littering the back seat and ignore his warning. The three dogs pile into a heap of excited, slobbering fur and Jeremiah and I climb into the front. Bertha settles into a low stable stance under the weight and growls out onto the road. We drive the few miles to the signpost advertising HIPAS (High Power Auroral Stimulation observatory) where Jeremiah works and turn left onto the gravel road leading to the facility. We pass the bunk-house and the field housing the antenna array before we turn left onto the tractor trail which leads to the river. The trail looks pretty tame with well defined tire ruts carved into the sun baked silt along either side. Feeling confident I place Bertha’s wheels in the tire tracks and accelerate slightly. “Schree-bang-crunchhh!” Bertha’s low hung under-carriage immediately begins plowing through the high ground centered between the ruts. Instinctively I jerk the wheel to the left and Bertha drags her wheels up and continues forward straddling the left tire rut. Unfortunately this position places the left bumper well within the surrounding brush. We press on snapping birch, willow and spruce limbs off with little regard. I roll the window up to prevent my face from getting whipped by the passing brush but as soon as I do this a particularly nasty birch branch snags the chrome molding above my door and peels it half off Bertha’s rampaging frame. I roll the window back down and pull the dangling piece of chrome inside. “ Its not much further now.” Jeremiah reassures me as I whip the wheel back over to the right to avoid a confrontation with a particularly large birch tree.

Within twenty minutes the dense underbrush gives way to a small clearing over-looking the clear waters of the Chena. We pile out of the car, the dogs heading straight to the refreshing water while Jeremiah and I go directly to Bertha’s leaf covered trunk. Popping open the trunk we snatch up the can of bug dope and spray ourselves with a liberal mist of Alaskan perfume in hopes of deterring the cloud of winged, black, blood-sucking devils forming around us. Next we struggle into our chest waders which for some unknown reason have shuink a size since last year’s fishing season. “Damn things might not keep the water out but at least they should keep these friggin bugs from turning our legs into hamburger.” I huff as I stuff a beer into the chest pocket of my waders.

We assemble our fly-rods and tie on some fresh tippet material. “What fly are you going to use?”

I look out at the river. A spring green hillside rolls out along the opposite shore and sunlight dances along the bumpy currents of the intervening water. Squinting through my polarized sunglasses I discern an occasional dimple of feeding fish among the currents but am unable to make out any insect activity above the surface. “ It’s probably the wrong choice but I think I will start out with an elk-hair caddis. It just seems wrong to catch the first Grayling of the summer on anything else.” I tie on a #16 tan caddis but fail to take note of Jeremiah’s selection. “Whatever we use, we better be quick about it. That looks like a pretty nasty thunder cloud sneaking up on us from the North East.” As if waiting for this cue the sky rips with a streak of blue-white arc-light and the ground shivers at its thunder.

We huddle among the dense under-brush while initial clouds of approaching storm pour buckets of water and jolts of electricity upon the earth. The dogs seem oblivious to the storm and romp through the nearby spruce, returning to us every few minutes to deliver additional mosquitoes to the already thick clouds blurring our eyes and buzzing in our ears. As the rain drifts into a light drizzle we realize that the dogs have been absent for a bit longer than normal and thus set out to find them. A short distance away we spy them, rolling about in a small clearing, paws waving vigorously at the passing clouds while they ecstatically scratch their backs on the ground. “Oh Shit!!!” Jeremiah and I lunge forward towards the mutts knowing full well that such canine ecstasy can only be induced by the most vile of aromatic evils. We stumble out of the brush and the mosquitoes drop off our face, vomiting their blood meals in hopes of escaping the scorching stench. The three mutts look up at us with intoxicated eyes as they wiggle and giggle atop the long dead moose carcass. Scraps of fur, splintered bones and dried viscera boogers lie scattered about the grizzly killed moose. How nice of the bruin to leave some of his springtime dinner for the enjoyment of our delightful pooches!

We hustle the happy hounds back to the river in the hopeless hope that maybe its clear waters will remove enough of their stink that we will be able to venture within a few hundred yards of them without having maggots infest our noses. “Holy shit….do you see that Dad?” I look up in time see broad splayed wings swooping out of the spruce on the opposite bank. In seemingly slow motion the eagle turns its white head and yellow eye towards us before screeching a warning at the dogs and drifting up the valley against the steel gray sky.

The sky continues to spit rain on us but we decide to fish anyway. I have learned over the years that Grayling seem to dislike rain as much as I, which is one of the reasons I love them so. We work our way slowly down-stream, with Jeremiah lagging behind me by a couple of hundred yards while the dogs frolic in the shallows between. I pause when I reach the head of the gravel bar. The waters pour over a ledge and swirl into a promising looking pool. I see a fish working the surface just off the point of a beaver chewed birch lying off the far shore. Up-stream I watch my son, waist deep in the rushing water, fly-line looping in the air above his head, connected to me by this ribbon of river and time.

Fairbanks to Nenana Canoe Trip

The following is an excerp from an email I wrote to a friend describing my May 14-15 2005 canoe trip from Fairbanks to the village of Nenana. While this excerp presents the trip as if it were taken by only my friend Gene and I, In reality Gene's son Anthony, another friend also named Gene and his son also accompanied me. Perhaps I will add to it in the future to make a more complete record of the trip:

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times........well. O'k, it wasn't really the BEST nor the WORST but it did have some of each extreme as any good adventure should. The day prior to our departure I informed my friend Gene that I was not going to go if it is raining. He accepts this statement with a grunt implying that I am a sissy for making such an assertion but I know he is secretly relieved. Many years ago Gene, my then 6 year old son and I had embarked on a similar expedition but ignored the bellowing rain gods. That trip involved great misery, a near child sacrifice, hauling a canoe and 20 tons of supplies up a cliff, and almost a helicopter rescue, but I diverge from the topic at hand.


This time, the rain gods hide behind sunny skies and unseasonably warm temperatures at our departure. As I scramble around getting my stuff together before leaving, my wife asks me if I packed any sun screen. I know that I have not but wanting no further delay I make some unintelligible mumbling as I often do in such situations and run out the door. The first few hours are great and it feels wonderful to be riding the mysterious currents again. The Tanana river is fed by glaciers living in the mountains to the south and the river has carved out a hundred mile wide valley in which the city of Fairbanks lies nestled. The water is moving along at a good clip, about 5 knots, but when we are in the middle and no longer have a close visual reference to land, it seems we were floating atop a placid lake. Occasionally we find ourselves traveling one of the river's narrower braids and then we notice the swiftness of our progress and need to take a little care in avoiding obstacles. As the day drifts on the sun is a relentless companion. It is odd to feel like a basted turkey while surrounded by 35 degree ice water. The glaciers birthing the river pulverize the granite mountains in their labor so the waters carry a heavy load of silt and run the color of skim milk. The silt particles slide along our canoe like rosin on a violin bow, playing a constant, barely audible river song. The sun scorches my winter pale flesh and cracks my lips.

"Damn...why didn't I take my wife's advice and bring some sun-screen? Oh well, be a friend and hand me another beer, will ya Gene?"

The above statement pretty much sums up our first day on the water. We see a half a dozen bald eagles, drink several cold beers and let the river provide its musical accompaniment to our many stories of old. At about 5PM we come across a flock of Trumpeter swans sunning themselves on a gravel bar. We pull our canoe up on the rocks across from them and set up camp. There are some tracks which we can not identify in the sand near our camp. Straight lines of track run directly from the surrounding brush to the water. No distinct footprints can be seen in the tracks because the drag marks of a rough haired body obscure them. Gene thinks they are maybe the marks of a porcupine or wolverine, I think maybe a beaver dragging brush to the river but there is no sign of beaver gnawing on nearby trees. There are also tracks left by moose and a lone wolf. There are no human or bear tracks, always a nice omission from a campsite. We start a fire of driftwood and soon are enjoying New York steaks smothered in mushrooms, onions and roasted red peppers and washing it down with river cold Guinness. Life is good!

That night, lying in my tent I sense the approaching rains. The skies are dusky with twilight as the birch leaves begin to rustle under a breeze........................

There is more to the story of course, but I am afraid I am out of time to write about it. The rain gods found us of course, and the next day was quite the opposite of the first. A head-wind buffeted our canoe with no remorse. The temperature lolled around the 40 degree mark, and conflicting currents formed whirlpools where the river braids came together, causing some consternation among the occupants in our canoe. We made it to our destination with no real mishaps. Gene suffered mild hypothermia which was accentuated when he performed a perfect backward swan-dive into the river while dismounting the canoe. ( his legs were stiff with cold and unexpectedly malfunctioned when needing them the most) Even the bad weather couldn't ruin the day. At one point we drifted by some tall cliffs and were engulfed for a time by hundreds of iridescent bank swallows performing a great show of acrobatics. At the village of Nenana we found comfort in eating a Monderosa burger at the traditional road house.