Gustavus 2026

What we Need the Most

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The muskegs are too crunchy. Softly frozen, slightly squishy. Squelching and squeaky. I may as well be banging a tambourine and shouting for a buck to come within rifle range. I think my luck has run out.

Yesterday was the best day I’ve had in the woods. It started before I’d left the beach. A three-year-old buck with spritely forked antlers had been grazing the tideline when I rounded the bend. My rifle wasn’t even loaded. Larry Landry’s skiff wasn’t even anchored. He kindly puttered over and got the buck to camp. He was even generous enough to sound happy for my good fortune.

Back along the beach. Into the woods. I hike for an hour, turn, and find another buck 30 yards away. I feel a little sheepish, and drag the buck along the beach instead of asking Larry or Bill to scoop me up. I’m dripping sweat by the time I reach the cove’s three-sided shelter. My body protests from dragging the buck over basketball boulders and around townhouse erratics.

The way it should be. I want to hurt, to feel the muscles stiffen and for there to be no comfortable position when I lay down. A penance of sorts, a show of respect for the animal that gave its life so I can savor backstrap medallions on dark December days.

I’ve wanted to hunt Pinta Cove since I picked up a rifle. The place holds special meaning. Tucked into Chichagof Island’s northern shoreline near Point Adolphus’ whale-rich waters, I’ve led kayaking trips here and camped in its old-growth trees. When I made my solo paddle to Sitka, it was Pinta Cove that welcomed me after crossing Icy Strait. I’d stood exhilarated and empowered on slippery tidal rocks, savoring the control and freedom that came with my little wooden kayak.

It has exceeded every expectation. Stately old spruce trees lead to swathes of muskeg with plenty of hidey holes in between. This perfect deer habitat vibrates with the mid-November rut, and neighbors Bill and Lewis also drag bucks from the woods. We secure the shelter’s opening with a tarp and crank the wood stove. It’s not cozy, but there’s enough heat to take the edge off our shivers and coax some moisture from our dripping clothes.

Talk centers on the deer we saw, the ones we didn’t, and if the weather is good enough to justify another full day of hunting. We’re running in 16-foot skiffs, sturdy enough as long as the weather stays moderate. Anything more… and the five-mile crossing home starts to feel real big real fast. Larry suspects his skiff has a hidden leak, but I’ve never seen someone so blasé about a slowly sinking boat.

“I’ll check it in the middle of the night,” he says, tucking a headlamp over his neck and under a long white beard.

I’m riding with Bill, and he needs no convincing to spend another day in deer-quiet woods. No one savor the solitude of the forest better than he does.

“Are you going for a third, Dave?” he asks.

I shrug, feeling greedy and a little proud of my double buck day. “I may as well take the rifle for a walk. What else am I going to do? Sit in the shelter?”

I stretch my barking hamstrings and shake some warmth into my toes as I burrow in my sleeping bag. Elated and exhausted as I am, something keeps me from drifting off.

***

When I asked Teanna her favorite meal, she’d answered, “canned venison,” with no hesitation. I’d swooned, and fallen more head over heels for the girl born in Ketchikan and raised on Haida Gwaii. International borders and archaic flight schedules meant it took four flights and four (dollar) figures for us to see each other, and neither of us were interested in a long-distance relationship that required a night in Vancouver’s airport.

So I’d asked if she’d ever consider moving to a swampy glacial outwash in the traditional homeland of the Huna Tlingit. She’d teased me about a Haida girl moving north and glowed when I mentioned the strawberries that carpeted the beach meadows every July.

Haida Gwaii would always be her home, the place where her ancestors lived and flourished for thousands of years, and she brought pieces of her home with her: tight coils of cedar bark, skeins of wool, and multiple looms that required custom packaging to get safely through customs. I watched spellbound as she split dried cedar bark into strands thinner than hair and deftly spun them into wool. From the wool came dainty Chilkat designs, and she could sit for hours, fingers working patiently down the loom until shadows filled the room.

We harvested garden carrots in September, and I dragged her to my favorite Bartlett River fishing holes. I want her to know how much it means that she’s uprooted her life and ventured geographically and emotionally from her comfort zone. Desperately, I look for any sign that affirms the colossal jump she’s taken and fidget at anything that resembles a bad omen. I panic when she hooks her first coho only to have it spit the hook a foot from shore. As if that could somehow undo all we’ve already done.

But beyond the garden and cohos and cranes and introducing her to a never-ending parade of neighbors and friends lies the hurdle I have no power over. The woman I’d taken to calling my Haida Princess may love venison, but her relationship to the animal that gifts it had become contorted and painful.      

***

Crunchy muskegs. Falling moisture that isn’t rain but not quite snow. Thunder clapping footsteps alert deer to my position. Deer wish to see and hear, but be neither themselves.

“So why,” I ask, “would they be in the muskegs?”

I veer right, ducking beneath scraggly devils club and into open forest. Here the ground is soft and unfrozen. My Xtratuffs don’t make a sound as I step over roots and around fallen trees. Blueberry and menziesia bushes fill the space between stoic spruces. These woods feel, “deery.” I can’t say exactly what it is, but something in this open forest sharpens my senses and tenses my muscles. I pivot from feeling lost and helpless to convinced that deer hide behind every hemlock.

Two go bounding past, and I catch rusty antlers rising high over tawny fur. They’re gone as quick as they come. Adrenaline resettled, I swallow disappointment. Every deer feels like the last. A happy accident that will never happen again.

I keep moving. Over a small drainage and up a mossy hillock. Light pierces the forest from a muskeg the size of a baseball diamond. My GPS’s satellite imagery shows bigger woods on the far side, but I’m nearing the limit of my range. Approaching noon and two miles from the beach, I calculate how long it would take to field dress and drag a deer to Pinta Cove.

My window is closing, and I fight the urge to tramp past the muskeg and into newer territory. A deer trail winds into the muskeg. I step into the clearing and freeze.

Holy shit. That’s the biggest deer I’ve ever seen.

He dominates the tiny space. Gargantuan antlers stretch like fingers toward the sky. He’s broadside, frozen in surprise at my appearance. He must’ve been following the same trail from the other side. Preposterous luck brought us here at the exact same moment.

Seconds feel like hours. Reflex is to blow the call, but there’s no need. I glance down to find the safety, and fully expect him to be gone when I look up. He may as well be a boulder. Unflinching, he gives the fumbling hunter every chance.

Scope to my eye. I don’t aim, but muscle memory centers the crosshairs above the shoulder. Lung, heart, lung. They say you should slowly squeeze the trigger as you exhale to keep the shot from pulling. I never remember. See deer. Hit deer. I squeeze with everything I have.

I watch with ringing ears as he stumbles, gathers himself, and flees the way he came. Branches snap and bushes crack as he goes tearing through the trees. Everything shakes. I stare at the place he disappeared, commit it to memory, and start a timer.

A wounded deer may continue to flee if it hears you approach. But if he’s allowed to rest nearby, he may peacefully pass feet from where he’s been hit. I vow to wait ten minutes, marking my location and scanning the tree line. I wait for my heart to settle and feel it elevate instead.

Five minutes is all I can take. I cross the muskeg and pick up the trail. Pinpricks of blood stain the snow amongst snapped blueberry bushes. His footsteps are easy to follow in the scattered snow, and the blood trail becomes stronger and stronger. I find him resting in a stand of devils club 100 yards from the muskeg. The shot wasn’t perfect, but it had been close enough.

Fat, wet flakes fall as I soak my knees and grip his fur. I let out a hoot of amazement as I marvel at the gigantic antlers. The buck is built like me. Tall and lanky, he doesn’t fit the typical profile of a stocky blacktail deer. His beautiful antlers are longer than my forearm, and I admit to coveting them. I munch Clif Bars without tasting them and shiver in the wet snow. I have a long way to go with a heavy, heavy deer. My mind turns to Teanna.

Three deer in two days will be something I always remember, but bringing home burger and backstrap will force her to confront a grief she hasn’t told me that she’s ready to face. Two years previous, she’d been bent over a leg of venison when the phone rang. Before her aunt picked up the phone, Teanna knew what news was coming. The smell of raw venison, the feeling of cold flesh on her hand, became synonymous with the news that her mother was gone.

I would bring that memory to our door. I feel guilty, as if I have cruelly forced her to recall her saddest and darkest moments. I crouch beside the buck, and some of my elation melts with the falling snow. The smell of the rut clings to my sweater and rises through the gathering fog on a gentle breeze.

Wings rustle, and a raven lands above me, looking down on devils club, dinner, and a man who is coming to understand how little he knows. I gaze at the charcoal black bird and search the dark face for darker eyes.

“Shanteh?” I ask.

Haida culture is matrilineal, children inherits their mother’s moiety. Teanna is a raven. Like her mother, grandmother, and every other of her mother’s female ancestors since time immemorial. A raven of the brown bear, wolf, double finned killer whale clan. 

I think back to the ravens that followed me on previous hunts, or paused to watch with quizzical eyes as I walked the docks or explored the forests. Was she watching me? Keeping tabs on the man who would one day tell her daughter he loved her? Perhaps more than one Haida woman now resided in the Icy Strait corridor.

Words fail me. Whatever hero complex that once inhabited me has long been purged. One of the hardest truths I’d learned was that there are things my love and affection cannot fix. There are times I can help and perhaps make hard days a little brighter, but sometimes there’s nothing to be done but hold her tight, hear her tears, feel her pain, and accept that’s the best I can do. It’s a helplessness I struggle to swallow, but am learning to choke down like a child eating vegetables. Trying to fix what I cannot only makes things harder.

My knife slide across the deer’s belly under watching eyes. I clutch the heart in my numbing fingers and savor the warmth. I still can’t speak, but I lift the heart skyward. The raven’s call echoes through timeless trees, and she takes to the air, leaving me with a lonely drag and conflicted heart.

***

Lewis drops me and my three deer off in the driveway. I give a wave and stamp warmth into my toes. The work begins now. I’ve never processed a deer at home, let alone three and I’m really not sure how to begin. I arrange the deer in what I feel are respectful poses because I don’t know how else to start.

Teanna pads down the trail. Despite the fact that she knew what I was coming home with, I feel the instinctive need to shield the deer from view. Her jaw is set, and amber eyes shine with defiance and strength. One deer at a time, we share the long hours of cutting, grinding, canning, and wrapping the emissaries of the forest that will feed us all winter long. I watch her out the corner of my eye for signs of distress or pain, but Teanna stands by my side as butcher paper flies and the smell of deer sinks deeper into our home’s hemlock paneling.

I thought I’d given her no choice but to face her grief head on.

“It’s mom telling me that it’s time,” she says. “Those 3 deer finding you was a sign that it’s time. I will always associate the grief and heartache of losing mom when I see, butcher, and eat deer. But now, you’ve shown so much respect and care for me and everything around us, it puts my heart at ease knowing those memories can become synonymous with ceremony, rather than violence.”

I see ravens all the time. Hopping along the roadside and standing sentinel in the trees. Teanna has taken to leaving salmon scraps for the mated pair nesting by the house. I don’t know how many of the ravens Shanteh is watching through. The mystical and magical don’t need explanation. It’s enough to feel that every raven watching me is a reminder of the person I love and the long, winding trails we took to each other.

“Hi Shanteh,” I call to the dark flapping wings. “Good to see you. Your girl is happy and loved and safe.”

The New Chapter

Chop Wood and Haul Water

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You don’t hike through salal; you swim through it. Buried in an acre-sized grove, I stand on tiptoe, gazing at the island of hemlock ahead. In my mind, salal was just a hybridized version of discount alder. A nitrogen fixer thriving wherever sunlight poked through the clouds.

I breaststroke another few feet, struggling against the plant’s willowy but strong branches. The individual plants weave together like plywood, forming dense barriers that feel like drowning. I try a few more desperate strokes, pause, and look around. There’s supposed to be a trail somewhere.

I plunge beneath the surface, crawling under branches instead of through. Things look clearer down here. Something resembling a deer trail cuts through the maze. More tunnel than path, it’ll have to do. I reach for my phone and stare at the little orange triangle. GPS tells me the Hanson Island summit is just a few hundred feet ahead. I wiggle a few more feet, wondering why I didn’t do this long ago.

I’d be lost without my phone. It’s hard to admit, even by myself, without so much as a raven to judge me. The salal thicket blindfolded me, the small drainage spun me, and the few windows of sky reveal nothing. I follow the crutch in my hand, allowing it to guide me up one more embankment. A trio of big cedars with intertwined limbs shade a clearing festooned with deer beds. I push through one more wall of salal and gaze from the summit at Vancouver Island’s distant ridges. The hillside steepens, leaving just enough room for a viewshed and a clearing of rocks and lichen. I squeeze fatigued legs to my chest and stare at undulating greens and blues.

***

Harlequin ducks squeak in protest as I paddle by. They take to the water, necks bobbing forward and back as if to give themselves the illusion of more speed. Their rubber ducky chatter conceals their daredevil hobby of surfing southeasterly waves seconds before they break on the rocks. They dive like seals and fly like puffins, frantically beating their wings centimeters above the water. Every tidal rock holds another cluster of them, chattering away and admonishing the yellow kayak gliding past.

(C) Oregon Department of Fish & Game

Hanson Island crawls by. Every beach beckons to be explored, and twice, I slide into cobbled shores and poke into the woods. I’ve boated these waters dozens of times, always in too much of a hurry to pause. Always hustling either to Alert Bay or back to Orca Lab, usually in fading light or racing the next low-pressure system barreling up Johnstone Strait.

I’m hell-bent on savoring; I linger in non-descript woods for no reason other than they exist. At last, I swing into a narrow bay with steep shores plastered with ochre stars. A lone white buoy bobs at the head, and I pull into a small beach pockmarked with softball-sized rocks.

There’s the trail, just as I’d left it, through stands of alder and up a single-lane logging road recolonized by hip-tall hemlocks. I follow the steady incline under fallen trees and around puddles. A smattering of fish cut from plywood marks the trail with engraved names like “Bobby ‘Sparkplug’ Joseph” that demand exposition.

Past a slippery “bridge.” Clear-cuts glare at me—old ghosts rotting in choking shadow from dozens of same-aged hemlocks racing for sunlight. I stop at one such graveyard and try to remember. Had I noticed these old fallen trees in 2015? ‘16? ‘17? Had I been too naïve and unencumbered? Did the umbrella of protection now stretching across the beloved island somehow nullify the millions of board feet already removed?

I continue past spindly young cedars and gurgling streams, stopping at a fence woven with alder and salal. The gate swings open at a touch and the rusty old bell rings. A cedar shingle sign with weathered words welcomes me to “Earth Embassy.”

Trees sway in the wind, but it’s peaceful in the small courtyard between the old ramshackle buildings. Amongst the weathered old shingled walls, fraying tarps, and a bulletin board tacked with water-stained pages stand two new metal signs.  

“Respect this property,” the first sign commands, going on to recognize the site as the home and resting sight of one, David “Walrus” Garrick.

I wait for the creak of a wooden door and Walrus’s long gray beard and mischievous eyes. I listen for the echo of his dog Kessler’s booming bark or the rattle of the steller Jay fed peanuts every morning. But it’s just me in this quiet shrine with the work of one man’s lifetime.

The closest thing we had to a neighbor, I frequently made the hour-long hike from Orca Lab to Walrus’s. Equal parts Gandalf and Dumbledore with a liberal sprinkling of Original Trilogy Obi-Wan, Walrus would crack beers and tell stories he’d undoubtedly told a million times.

Wide-eyed, I’d listen to this living oracle talk about the founding of Greenpeace, protesting seal hunting in the Arctic and working as a cook on the first anti-whaling vessel before the Discovery Channel and Sea Shepard mainstreamed it.

The stories culminated in this place. His final act. The one he’ll be remembered for.

“The longest active roadblock in Canadian history,” he boasted, gesturing at his uninsulated cabin with a leaky vapor barrier, no insulation, and a smoky woodstove.

As Swanson, Cracroft, Parson, and Vancouver Island were stripped clean of timber, Walrus crawled sans-GPS through the salal to document the one thing that could spare the island known in the Kwakwaka’wakw language as Yukusam (‘shaped like a halibut hook’).

***

Red cedar is more than a sweet-smelling, rot-resistant wood that burns hot. Christened the ‘Tree of Life’ by the B.C. Coast’s First Nations, the tree was both canoe, house post, clothing, and basket. Centuries before the idea of forestry was an Anglo-Saxon fantasy, a natural ethos of conservation was a mainstay in Indigenous culture.

Life may have revolved around salmon, but cedar was the tool. Young cedars growing straight and true were set aside. They could be a basket today but, in a few generations, may be large enough to become a canoe, totem, or a corner house post.

Other trees were selected for bark harvesting. Outer bark was collected by making long, skinny incisions, which could then be dried and weaved into water-resistant clothing, baskets, even hats. The same oils that make cedars rot exceedingly slow even served as a natural bug repellent.

Instead of killing it, the harvesting increased the growth rate as the tree covered the exposed area. A cedar could rebound, survive, and even thrive if not too much was taken. The most formative and compelling case for conservation. The best argument that sometimes the word “enough” is the most important.

Prospective logging companies brushed aside the importance of Yukusam’s, “culturally modified trees” (CMTs), claiming that their in-house research showed there were only a couple hundred. Walrus and his team lived out of their active roadblock and pushed into every unlogged nook and cranny, documenting over 2,000 CMTs. For a region and people that had endured disease, assimilation, fish farms, potlatch imprisonments, and the heinous era of residential schools, CMTs are one of the remaining cultural touchstones. Carpet bombing Yukusam would be akin to nuking one of the few remaining strongholds.

Lawyers lawyered. Judges judged. Juries… juried?

And in the end, the remaining Yukusam old-growth was set aside. Walrus continued to live on his active roadblock, building gardens, cultivating shiitake mushrooms, and befriending the local steller jay population. The next generation of Kwakwaka’wakw filtered through the homestead, where elders taught cedar bark harvesting techniques.

Photo courtesy of Sharon Eva Grainger

These same Alert Bay residents pushed fish farms out of much of Kwakwaka’wakw territory, spurring returns of chum and pink salmon not seen in decades. It would be foolish and irresponsible to credit Walrus with this local revolution, but I wonder if seeing the power of a small team of forest-dwelling activists was another dry piece of kindling on an already growing fire.

***

For three winters, Walrus told me to climb the trail to Yukusam’s highest point. I’d smile, nod, and instead would walk back down the abandoned logging road for Orca Lab, unable to ascertain why. As my final winter as caretaker came to a close, I hiked to Walrus’s for the last time with a backpack laden with groceries. A nasty cough was making it harder and harder for him to lug supplies from sea level to 350 feet. Every couple of weeks, I’d arrive with a loaf of bread, eggs, and a couple beers.

“Did you get up the hill?”

I shook my head, feeling his disappointment, before grasping his hand and wondering if I’d ever see the sweet, eccentric Jedi Master again.

The cough forced Walrus to leave the longest active roadblock a few years later. In 2023, he took his final breath, finally able to breathe deep again.

***

The trail back to Walrus’s is easier to follow on the way down. I tour the old garden and study the pages clinging to the bulletin board. There are maps of the island showing the arterial trails he used to get from one CMT grove to another. Pictures of trees in mid-harvest and cross-cuttings of felled cedars, their age measured in centuries—quotes and documentation of Springer’s homecoming (another story for another day).

Near the front door is a notebook tucked safely in a Ziploc. Inside the little guestbook are the words of those who have visited this place since he passed. I clutch the little memento and stand before his resting place.

Before enlightenment, chop wood and haul water.

After enlightenment, chop wood and haul water.

I open to the next blank page and stare for a long time at the empty lines beneath my scribbled, “Dear Walrus,”

 It is somehow lifetimes and seconds since I was here… the longest active roadblock remains intact.

I finally made it up the hill. You were right, it is beautiful. I should’ve done it sooner, but I’m thankful I could return and make it happen.

I’m not who I am without Yukusam. It was orcas that drew me, but that’s not what brought me back. This place is green because of you. Cedars stand because of you, though I’m sure you’d brush that aside with a laugh and a cracking beer.

Chop wood and haul water.

The phrase catches my heart; no five words better summarize my post-Orca Lab life. Wood for a fire, wood for 2x6s, and rafters and plywood. The promise of a warm house.

But the words are not simply literal. I repeat them like a mantra, a meditation, a reminder that some things must not be forgotten, no matter where in the journey we are. Ways of life that tether us to place and home and earth. Edicts as sturdy as a cedar house post.

Chop wood. Haul water. Climb the hills. Get dirty knees. Paddle the beaches. Drink the beer. Smile quickly. Laugh loudly. Forgive easy. Let go of anger.

A raindrop hits the page. I bend over and try to say goodbye.

Thank you for all you taught me. It took a while for some of it to sink in; I’ll never be done learning, never be done making mistakes, but I’ll never stop trying. I chop wood and carry water because of you. Rest easy, my friend. The beer is on me next time.

(C) Globe & Mail

I return the journal to a house built by trees to protect trees and retreat down a forgotten logging road that will never continue, forever stymied by a fence woven with sinewy salal and shaded by cedars growing in dignified defiance.  

The New Chapter

Sights and Smells

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I wonder what’s different.

The transportation for one. Greyhound no longer brings their gargantuan buses this far up Vancouver Island, and as we careen down the narrow two-lane road with six inches of shoulder, I can see why. The playlist blasting in my ears has changed, though I brought back some classics like Death Cab for Cuties’ Bixby Canyon Bridge and Snow Patrol’s Make This Go on Forever.

A myriad of greenery blurs outside the window. I watch these forests differently, too. Oh, my heart still flutters at the boughs of red cedar hiding secret pathways to 6,000-foot peaks. But I also see acres of young hemlocks scrunched together like matchsticks in neat little packages. Phrases like “stem exclusion” and “30-year harvest cycles” whisper with sullen voices. Countless watersheds line the east side of Vancouver, but the Tsitika River I just rumbled past is the only one that hasn’t been logged. Tsitiaka winds through the tallest mountains on the Island and reaches saltwater at a little place called Robson Bight.

Orcas. It always comes back to orcas.

For two days, I have ferried, flown, and ridden from Gustavus to Juneau to Seattle to Victoria and am now just an hour from Port McNeil. Despite my evolving playlist and old-growth forest opinions, it still feels impossible that my first trip to Port McNeil was 17 years ago. Surely it was just a couple of weeks ago that I hopped off the Greyhound. Wasn’t it last weekend that I drove a Nissan Pathfinder up this road with a cat and rabbit in the back seat?

These roads, islands, and waterways hold a lot of the stories and experiences that explain the evolution from basketball boy to kayaker, guide, naturalist, bum, redneck-hippy, writer, conservationist, and whale aficionado. I’m counting on it providing a few more.  

Ferried. Flown. Ridden.

I count the number of petroleum-driven vehicles that propelled me from Gustavus to the footsteps of Port McNeil, Johnstone Strait, and my precious Hanson Island. All to go on one more monkish retreat in the woods and waters of my youth. All to catch one more ride on a boat powered by an outboard motor or go paddling in a kayak made of, you guessed it, fossil fuels.

Too small to tip elections in favor of Mother Earth, I run to my favorite hiding place, sheltered by, you guessed it, Mother Earth.

Blackfish Sound

If the trees are passing judgment on my life choices, they keep it to themselves. If those replanted hemlocks are packed like matchsticks, what happens if one of them lights? I woke to the news that California was burning during the wet season.  A world getting drier, warmer, crazier, more unpredictable. Surely, it would be the earthquakes that doomed southern California. We beat San Andreas Fault to the punch.

***

Don’t cry. Whatever you do, don’t cry.

All those old names:

Blackfish Sound, Pearce Passage, Weyton Pass, Blackney Pass, Queen Charlotte Entrance.

Bold Head and Cracroft Point. Blinkhorn Peninsula and Kaikash Creek.

I know them all, have stared covetously at their little faces for eight years, promising I’d see them again. I’m sure they’ve been getting on just fine without me.

I confess I left my guilt on the Port McNeil dock, catching one more 45-minute ferry ride to Cormorant Island and the town of Alert Bay—the end of public transportation. I wait two days for a weather window that finally comes as low pressure turns to high and the wind pivots from southeast to northwest.

Every town run from Orca Lab to Alert Bay took me past Double Bay, its long boardwalk, floating dock, and cherry red rooftops. I shoulder my pack and follow the other caretaker, Laurene, up the dock. She directs me to a cabin on the right side of the horseshoe-shaped boardwalk, perched on the rocks with a view of Blackfish Sound and the first layer of the Broughton Archipelago’s islands.

The door opens, and the pack thumps from my shoulders. The cabin is bigger than my Gustavus design, with a half-loft upstairs, a functional shower, even a flush toilet. I would have settled for half-a-shabin and a cot. It’s not the high-end amenities that made the pack fall.

Don’t cry. Whatever you do, don’t cry.

Next to the kitchen table is a shelf. On it rests a radio receiver that looks all too familiar. Whether donated or purchased from Orca Lab, the ocean blares from the speakers—water gurgling, a distant boat engine, crackling shrimp. I swear I hear A pod.

“We have a hydrophone at the mouth of the cove,” Laurene explains, unaware I have been transported back in time. “There’s a volume knob on the right—”

“I know,” I interrupt. Not the best first impression.

I cross the room and crank the volume. How many nights did I fall asleep to this? She leaves me to unpack. I move quietly across the floor as if I’m in church. Clothes upstairs, tortillas and cheese in the fridge. Curry paste in the cabinet. I open the wood stove and smile. A pile of ash has calcified on the bottom and shrunk the stove’s space in half—a chronic problem with burning wood soaked in saltwater.

I pry the ash free and grab a handful of piled kindling. With eyes closed, I bring a stick of red cedar to my nose and inhale like an addict, listening to the hydrophone as my head spins and heart palpates. Our sense of smell pales in comparison to most mammals. Yet its ability to conjure memories is undisputed.

There is a smell to Hanson Island I have found nowhere else. Something in the ground, the water, the trees. Perhaps it’s as simple as it remains one of the few islands in the region that has not been clear-cut. Old-growth smells for a land that measures lifespans in centuries and seasons in seconds.

***

I weave between cedar and fir, balance on fallen skyscraper hemlocks, and plunge through salal undergrowth. I squish deer scat between fingers and spy on harlequin ducks perched on rocky beaches. Rumor has it a wolf has taken up residence on Hanson Island. I scan the hills with blind optimism for hazel eyes, ears cocked for the howl that proclaims that there are still things green and wild and true on this burning planet.

The rising northwesterly brings the forest to life with creaks and cracks. I settle against the hollowed-out trunk of a cedar, its innards charred from a long-ago lightning strike. Yes, even here, there can be fire from time to time. The stubborn cedars simply refuse to rot and fall, standing even in death in defiance of the decay and rebirth that comes for all.  

I scratch at the charred bark and sniff. Any smell of fire is gone. The forest around me vibrant and healing. I watch the treetops, content to let the afternoon crawl away. There will be time tomorrow to check in and learn what is expected of me here, how I can give back to this place that dreams of becoming a sanctuary and educational retreat. It took enough petroleum to get me here. I will live, write, and eat in a shelter made of wood. I’ll try to leave this place better than I found it.

Wet earth soaks into wool pants, a pleasant shiver travels up my spine. Ravens cackle, eagles retort. Somewhere, an orca explodes to the surface. I feared two months wouldn’t be enough time to find what I was looking for. But as eyes close and my soul rises to the island’s tallest canopy, I know it’s already been found.

The New Chapter

Jello Shot Edicts

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Sparks fly into inky sky, and the fire burns just bright enough to sharpen the pine tree’s silhouettes. Little tea lights in clear little buckets and mason jars lead the way down the road and through the trail like scattered jelly beans.

Breanna and I ping-pong between the cabin, shabin, and fire pit, toting folding tables, food, and tequila. I don’t remember what year the ‘Wassail’ tradition began in the Good River neighborhood. In essence, jolly residents travel from house to house for cocktails and food to celebrate the winter solstice and the promise of returning daylight. It’s the closest we get to a bar crawl around here. The tradition has steadily grown as friends from other Gustavus Neighborhoods make the pilgrimage down our meandering roads that this year are covered in an inch of ice.

The last time I hosted, the cabin had a single floor and no insulation. The wood stove was in place but not ready for installation. Everyone crowded on the plywood floor and gazed at exposed rafters, slapping me on the back and promising me it was going to be a beautiful home. I smiled and tried to imagine the place in some semblance of completion.  

***

Christmas lights complete the trail to the bonfire. Headlamps filter through the trees, laughter and song precede the incoming revelers. We’ve filled two tables with venison sliders, chips, cookies, punch, and lime-flavored Jello shots.

“I’m pretty sure we’re the first people in Wassailing history to serve Jello shots.” I say as we high-five.

We sample our handy work.

“Damn,” I wince, “we made’em strong.”

“Too strong?” Breanna asks.

“Nah. Perfect.”

Breanna pours cocktails while I dispense food and keep stealing glances at the cabin. I love how it looks from this angle, with the soft glowing lights peering out the windows.

I missed this tradition last year, choosing to spend Christmas with my folks in Eagle River. I needed distance. Couldn’t wake up December 25th to Minerva and a quiet home. I listen to everyone’s laughter and watch the Jello shots steadily disappear. I was afraid we made too many, now it’s looking like we’re gonna run out before demand does.

The majority of the people slurping Jello and munching potato chips have picked me up in some capacity over the last year. Checked in on me, invited me to dinner, or simply listened. I breathe through a knot in my chest and join the crowd clustered around the fire.

Don’t get me wrong, I love these people. And man, does it feel good to be a part of this rambunctious neighborhood. I remember growing up and hearing some version of the phrase, “The holidays can be a difficult time of year.” That never made sense for a guy who never had much reason to be sad; it makes more sense now.

I crack a beer and chatter about where to find deer when the weather turns cold and windy, my favorite fishing spots on the Bartlett River, and if the rain will ever turn back into snow. Food and drink exhausted, the crowd rambles on. Breanna and I shove the remnants in the cabin and follow the footprints toward the next house.

It took a while to accept that someone else wasn’t going to fix this, share the weight, or better yet, remove it entirely from my shoulders. Grief and hardship don’t work that way. Contrary to Hollywood and countless musical tracks, burdens can’t be lifted by outside sources. But friends, family, laughter, jokes, hugs, and, yes, Jello shots make it a hell of a lot lighter. You’re not alone if the holidays feel a little heavy. It’s okay to ask for help, to lean on loved ones, it’s okay if you’re not okay. Believe that one day you will be.

***

“Slippery out here,” I mutter as we shuffle down the road for Tim and Katie’s.

There are no street lights in Gustavus. Stars and northern lights pop when the clouds allow. On overcast nights with little snow, the roads are just a different shade of black. Small candles lead the way, providing just enough illumination to see one foot in front of the other.

Darkness is the theme of the solstice, a celebration not of the lack of light but of the promise that brighter days are on the way. It may be imperceptible at first. What differences can a few seconds make? But those seconds add up, they turn to minutes, half an hour, an hour. Sometimes life emulates the pivoting sun: impossible to discern the longer days or if the sun is getting warmer. But those long, sun-kissed days are coming. Until then, there’s nothing to do but follow the candles down the road. May they lead you to a warm home.

The New Chapter

Risk and Living

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The tender splashes over the side, and the southeast breeze tugs at the bowline. I tie it to a cleat and give the anchor a firm pull. Find me a boat owner who’s more paranoid about their anchor than me.

Boat anchorages for this forecast don’t get much better than Lemesurier Island’s Hooter Cove. Tucked on the island’s west side beneath a steep hillside, it’s insulated from all but the worst southeasterlies.

Lemesurier Island on a nicer day

I wiggle into the little inflatable and paddle awkwardly for shore. I can’t imagine the designers of the Seahawk 2 had this in mind when they marketed her. Judging by the photo on the box, their grand plans included two full-grown men squeezing into this glorified raft for a magical day fishing on their favorite lake.

The raft zigzags at a glacial pace, and I keep glancing at the trees to confirm that I am indeed making progress. Even if I didn’t have my pack, rifle, and long legs, there doesn’t seem to be room for another dude in this thing, and I have no clue where you’d stash a fish bigger than a goldfish.

I nudge into the barnacle-coated rocks. Seahawk’s already sprung a pair of leaks, and we’ve agreed it’s a good idea to always take the hand pump. Despite the comical marketing and questionable durability, Zach and I have become strangely attached to the goofy inflatable that fits neatly in the back of our 20-foot skiff. I stash Seahawk above the tideline and, for the countless time this fall, pull my rifle from its drybag.

It’d be nice to have one more deer. The weather and daylight window for the day are tight, made worse by me forgetting my deer call on the bedside table and delaying our departure another 15 minutes. The ride to Lemesurier is just bumpy enough to remind me that the evening forecast calls for 20 knots and growing to 25 by Thanksgiving morning.

It’s mid-morning by the time I drop Tanner and Zach at their hunting spots and anchor. Four hours in the woods can vanish with astonishing speed. Depending on where you find deer and the difficulty of the drag, sometimes the day is done just as fast as it began.

I pause in spite of the tight schedule and look skeptically back at the skiff.

“It’s not drifting, is it?”

“No, it can’t be.”

“In your head. It’s all in your head.”

Some grow bolder the longer they tramp the woods, climb the mountains, and cross the straits, but I am not one of them. The more time out here, the more whitecaps and steep scrambles I traverse, the more cautious I’ve become. Too many close calls. Too many stories about boats with capable captains caught off guard by a rogue wave or experienced hikers disappearing on trails they’ve hiked dozens of times. I think about some of the stuff I got away with in my 20s and wonder how many of my nine lives remain.

Yet, here I am, boating across aptly named Icy Strait in weather that could best be described as “iffy,” and tramping down the beach after buck tracks in freshly fallen snow.

“Well,” I reason as I brush aside foliage and step into the forest. “There’s a balance between risk and living. Why live here if you’re going to be inside all day?”

I blink in the dim light and look around dumbfounded. I’ve never walked these woods despite passing this island dozens of times. This is Hank’s refuge, his go-to spot to hunt and shelter in a small, off-grid cabin. I’d heard him talk plenty of times about how much bigger and open the Lemesurier forest is compared to the Inian Islands, but I had to see it to believe it.  

Stately hemlocks with just a smattering of spruces tower high above an open floor devoid of menziesia, huckleberry, and devil’s club. The trees are spread wide, a myriad of deer trails weave hither and thither.

I look up the hill. I can see forever. So many great perches. I gain some elevation and settle on the soft moss, the rifle propped on a rotting deadfall.

I scan the full 360-degree view. This may not be as advantageous as I want. I can see forever, but so can the deer, and they’re a whole lot harder to see at 200 yards than me.

The big old trees give the impression of being watched. This place feels familiar, comfortable, like I’ve been here before. Not here exactly, but on an island pinned between the British Columbian mainland and Vancouver Island. A place I’ve thought about – for better or worse – every day for more than a decade.

It is no slight to Juneau, Gustavus, or southeast Alaska to say that the sweetest moments of my life came on Hanson Island, British Columbia, where I sat up nights starring over inky Blackfish Sound while orcas called from Robson Bight.

These Lemesurier trees echo Hanson Island’s mega old growth, where wizened red cedar and chunky fir trees persevere. Instead of looking for antlers, I daydream about magical harbor seal encounters and lugging batteries.

I can’t quit this place, and when I vowed to return, I had no idea it might happen so fast.

***

I had every intention of going somewhere warm for the winter. Hawaii sounded good, and I trolled the usual “workshare” websites and pestered my Hawaii friends for job opportunities. Something kept getting in the way. Schedules didn’t line up, the timeline either too long or too short (or too expensive).

Eventually, I did what usually happens when I have a new search engine open. I typed in “orca.” I scrolled through the workshare, and my heart skipped several beats when I saw Orca Lab’s profile staring back at me. After several minutes fantasizing about going full hobo and returning for the summer, I kept moving, scrolling past several opportunities along the B.C. coast that toted the chance of seeing “wild orcas.”

I stop at an overhead drone shot of red-roofed buildings and a floating dock. Orca Lab isn’t the only site of human habitation on Hanson Island. Double Bay is on the opposite side of the island in an appropriately named bay that cuts deep into the shore. It had been an inactive fishing lodge during my Orca Lab days and snapped up by a philanthropist some years ago with the ambitious idea of bringing Corky home. While far too old to ever go full ‘Free Willy’ and return to her pod, living out her final days in a large net pen adjacent to her native habitat seemed the least humanity and SeaWorld could offer after decades of imprisonment.

Help us Create an orca sanctuary. Caretakers needed for January and February.

***

Deer-less and cold, I hustle back to Hooter Bay, hoping Zach and Tanner saw more than my single doe/fawn pair. Knots of anxiety bend my stomach as the water comes into view. Terrible scenarios fill my head, including a broken anchor chain, a punctured Seahawk, a shifting low front, a chilly night, and a long walk to cell phone service.

But the skiff is there, and Seahawk is reasonably inflated. I paddle out and have to admit that the wind is picking up.

“There’s a balance between risk and living. Why live here if you’re going to be inside all day?”

The anchor pops off the bottom—big pull. Reset my grip—big pull. Reset. I pause, catch my breath, and look back at Lemesurier. It’s been several weeks since I reached out to Double Bay Sanctuary, and I’m dragging my feet on my final answer. Two months isn’t a big commitment, and it’s not like sitting in the middle of nowhere is some monumental life change. There’d even be two other people there. I wouldn’t have to go full hermit this time around.

Snow swirls around my head, and my fingers go numb. The anchor comes into view, and the skiff sways in the growing chop. I stare at the anchor, considering the balance between risk and living.

“Why do this?” I ask the cove.

“Why not do this?” the forest answers.

“Because… I don’t want to chase ghosts. I don’t want to be Uncle Rico.”

There’s no question who my celebrity lookalike is. While there are times I’d prefer to be comped to Damon or Pitt, at least Napolean Dynamite got to eat tater tots and dance. But it’s Napolean’s antagonizing Uncle Rico I’m scared of becoming.

Yes, I’d dreamed of going back, of cruising up Highway 19 in time to catch the evening ferry from Port McNeil to Alert Bay. Yet, if I was going to do this, it won’t be to relive some glory day or a feeble attempt to recapture my Orca Lab magic – the rambling equivalent of throwing a football over mountains or wondering what would have happened if coach put me in during the fourth quarter. After 18 months trying to look forward instead of backward, the last thing I needed was an excuse to relapse.

***

The anchor clangs, the boat drifts free, engine in gear. Choppy waves meet me at Lemesurier’s northwest corner. Low gray light and fog hide the setting sun. Tanner is right where he’s supposed to be, a marvelous 3×3 buck resting on the boulder-strewn beach. I abandon the helm and help lug his prize over the hull, trying to keep covetous envy out of my voice.

A deer of comparable (but still smaller) dimensions.

“Where’s Zach?”

Tanner drops his pack and checks the stern for rocks before we pull away.

“Just heard him on the radio, says he’s on a beach east of here.”

I shake my head: fading light, growing waves, temperature below freezing. We may find what our skiff can do on this 15-mile run home.  

I wouldn’t have given the crossing a second thought ten years ago. Invincible and drunk on life, I took Orca Lab’s teeny boat into all sorts of weather, tying it to the rocks off Cracroft Point and hustling to replace a battery or restart a generator while the tide fell and waves pounded. I took green water over the window and felt the hull wobble under an overloaded cargo of groceries, laundry, water, fuel, and batteries.

We cruise just offshore. Water sprays the windshield, and I taste salt.

“Where’d you find’em?” I ask, trying to take my mind off the weather.

“In a muskeg just a few hundred feet above the beach,” answers Tanner, not taking his eyes off the shore. He points towards a pebbly beach below a cliff. “There he is.”

Zach leaps aboard the lurching skiff with the ocean roaring in our ears. Spinning towards home, the bow dips unnervingly in the stacking four-footers. Tanner’s buck receives a dose of salt brine.

“We could use a little more weight in the stern,” I say grimly.

We shelter behind the little windshield and bounce like pool toys. I glance west into fading light. It’s gonna be close.

The boat goes quiet as we stare over sooty seas. My fingers go numb on the wheel, and we crawl forward. Home looks far away.

“There’s balance between risk and living. Why live here if you’re going to be inside all day?”

Lemesurier disappears in fog. Glacier Bay comes into view. I replay the route again and again. Lemesurier to Point Carolus. Across Sitakaday Narrows to Lester Point. Lester to Halibut Point. Halibut to the Bartlett Cove dock. The chop subsides near Carolus. Push the throttle down. 10 knots. 15 knots. 20 knots. The outboard purrs. We’re gonna make it.

I forget the weather and cold as my mind retraces another marine route that’s burned into my memory. A path that scoots across Cormorant Channel and through the Pearce Islands before hitting Weyton Pass at the slack. It meanders through the Plumper Islands and past a sea lion haul-out before navigating the tidal islets off Hanson Island. But instead of continuing down Blackfish Sound for Licka Point, I turn into a bay with two heads cutting deep into the island that will never let me go.

Hanson Island

***

Carolus’ rocky reef goes whizzing by. Sleet pelts our faces, but it seems that the worst is behind us. We breathe a little easier, our nervous jokes a little funnier. It’s impossible to always know where the line is between risk and living. The line moves without warning. A sunny day can be overrun with fog or variable seas replaced with small craft advisories.

We sprint across Sitakaday, and comprehension hits harder than the iciest salt spray. I cannot let fear stop me from loving the places that resonate. There are challenges around returning to Hanson Island. Memories and nostalgia would wiggle into my heart and try to drag me down—that oscillating line between risk and joy.

Bartlett Cove dock pokes out of the fog. Did I let the fear of a snapping anchor line or bouncing waves stop me? No, I tied the line tight, double-checked the weather, and trusted my skiff and friends. We cannot sit at home in fear of what may happen.

I am an unreliable narrator still learning the quirks and priorities of a reborn 36-year-old who stresses about his boat and runs after every report of orcas. Some things just won’t change. For 18 months, I looked forward, reclaimed home, and fell deeper in love with Icy Strait. I want the same for Hanson Island, for it to be part of past, present… perhaps future.

The skiff slides into the dock. The motor goes silent, and I flex my throbbing fingers as the blood returns and numbness fades. Did it—a bit of risk for another day in the woods. The sensation and payoff are inescapable, makes me thirsty for more. We walk up the ramp, keenly aware that we forgot to call for a ride home.

I pause against the railing and look across the water. Lemesurier and its big old trees peak out of the fog, and I give them a solemn nod, thankful not just for home but the opportunity to live a life that permits me to fiercely love two places. There is room for Hanson Island in this new life. Room to write a new chapter and make it part of home. I clap my stinging hands, heart filling with cautious excitement.

A great blue heron lands on the railing and stares with prehistoric eyes. The same bird that flew over the Shabin on my first visit and whose vestige now adorns the kitchen. I am not one for signs and imagery, but I take his presence as positive affirmation.

“Thanks,” I whisper. “It’s good to be going home.”

Hanson Island
The New Chapter

Feed Me Twice

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Time stops when antlers fill the scope. This muskeg looked empty before I crept behind a mossy tussock, blew the wooden deer call swinging from my neck, and summoned a doe from her hidden bed. I watch her unseen; a rare privilege to see a deer that doesn’t see you. A grunt grabs my attention. Forked antlers pad up the mossy hill.

“This is how it’s supposed to work,” my brain whispers. “Blow the call, attract a doe, and watch the buck come trotting in.”

The buck disappears beneath a slight depression and reappears at 20 yards. Either he doesn’t see me or doesn’t care. He’s full-grown – five years old in blacktail society – and lord of this expansive muskeg. Mature bucks aren’t supposed to show their faces in the middle of the day, but all bets are off when the rut is on. I have tricked him by imitating the call of a fawn in distress. Bleating fawns bring does, does bring bucks. As if a bolt-action 30.06 loaded with copper-tipped shells wasn’t enough of an advantage.

***

Yet, there is no moral ambiguity. My rifle misfired an hour ago when a large buck trotted past in pursuit of a pair of does. I can still see his startled expression when he looked up the hill. I reloaded in a panic and pulled the second shot. That had been enough. He’d bolted the way he’d come, and no bleating fawn would bring him back.

Hunting is challenging, even with a rifle, Google Earth, tide charts, and hand-carved deer calls. Blacktails camouflage beautifully into the brush and rarely move when the sun is high. Infinitely better ears and noses, they melt into the woods long before our primitive eyes spot them. I had patiently waited above their trail for that exact moment. It’s hard not to feel cheated. That life isn’t fair.

***

Minerva lays sprawled on the carpet. Her expression matches mine. Limp, apathetic, beaten, and lost. I refresh the New York Times, watch Wisconsin turn a little redder, shake my head, and close the laptop. I scratch behind her ears and pick up the guitar with an apology. Her eyes widen, and she bolts for her favorite hiding place beneath the bed. If I ever think my guitar playing is improving, I can rely on her to keep me humble.

I strum the opening chords to Brand New’s ‘137,’ a song about nuclear weaponry and destruction. Perhaps still a tad hyperbolic, but it feels appropriate at 9:00 pm on November 5th.

We’re so afraid. I prayed and prayed when God told me to love the bomb.

I want justice.

I want clean water, clean air. A habitable planet. For quiet spaces and open places to take precedence over fear, greed, and hatred. I gaze out the black windows toward the invisible willow sluice where moose nurse their calves and snipes build their nests. Closeted away on this swampy glacial outwash makes it hard to articulate or understand how people could choose profit and bigotry. I once yearned to understand. To comprehend and seek common ground with a sect that claimed Christ as lord but slammed their doors against anyone who didn’t look like them. Who chose to worship manifest destiny and convicted felons over the simple edict of “love thy neighbor” and “do unto others.”

Let’s all go and meet our maker. It won’t matter whose side you’re on.

I will not get justice. Any environmental or conservation progress has been reduced to fantasy. The best we can hope for is a fighting retreat. The Helm’s Deep culvert has been breached, and I don’t know if we can count on Gandalf arriving at first light on the fifth day.

***

Zach and I silently crack beers. Two days later and he’s still sporting the camo-tinged “Hunters for Harris & Walz” ballcap our buddy Sean made. There’s no reason to rehash what we already know. No need to talk about carbon levels, alternative energy, or the sixth extinction. What hope we had at reversing them has melted like so many glaciers.

We try to cheer each other up and allow one another to be angry. To curse and chuck an empty beer can at the hemlock paneling. It’s impossible not to think about Zach’s 18-month-old boy and what kind of world he’ll inherit. I feel guilty and selfish at my childless existence but thankful my parentage extends no further than a cuddly ragdoll cat.

Our vision narrows to the world we can comprehend: Icy Strait, Glacier Bay, Cross Sound. The mountains waiting to be explored and quiet mornings in the muskegs. Living at the north end of an ecosystem that runs from Alaska to northern California has some advantages in a warming world. Southeast Alaska is projected to receive more rain in the coming decades. A bit soggy, perhaps, but better than the well running dry or having the remaining reservoirs snapped up by corporations.

Mellower winters and protected old growth will be good for deer. Perhaps the salmon runs can persevere in the rivers free from clearcutting. We yearn to escape. To go on a wilderness bender. To return to one of the few places that makes sense. We pull up YouTube and watch videos of Sitka blacktail deer, counting the days until our turn to walk in the woods.

***

The buck fills the scope. Ten yards away, yet I receive only a sideways glance. The doe meandering up the hill has all his attention. He turns broadside. Crosshairs settle on his chest just behind the front leg. My finger flexes. The gun clicks. Panic returns. Another misfire. How old is this ammo? How many times have I taken it into the field? Even bullets have expiration dates.

Work the bolt, the dud flipping through the air and nesting in the moss. I didn’t reload after the previous mishap. I chamber my last shell. The buck takes an uncertain step towards the trees. Crosshairs on his heart.

“Please, please, please, please.”

The barrel recoils. I don’t hear the shot or the dull pain in my shoulder.

The doe glances over. There’s no fear in her face, only polite curiosity. Acrid smoke fills my nose. My heart pounds and my hands tremble. I’m no longer cold. No longer wet. A red mist envelops his chest as he collapses on the moss. Blood stains his soot-colored coat. His final breath escapes through the exit wound. The cloudy vapor hangs like a whale’s spout. But there is no arching back, no flipping tail, no pronouncement of life.

I collapse into the moss with ringing ears. My breath comes in tiny gasps, feeling relief more than anything. It’s only a few strides to his resting place. I grip the thick fur. My forehead touches his. Empty eyes, a pale tongue pokes from his mouth.

The doe saunters away, oblivious to the exchange that has taken place. Not comprehending or not understanding. She blissfully nuzzles at a the moss and comes up with a strand of something green and leafy.

I want my whole world to be this steep mountainside clinging to the north end of Chichagof Island, for every need and desire to be filled in the spaces between treeline and tideline. To watch the seasons come and go until the day I can no longer rise, and the snow gently covers what remains.

I guess I want to be a deer.

My knife slides across the belly’s white fur. His fading heat warms my fingers and steadies my hand.

I whisper my Deer Prayer, “You are the forest made flesh. I promise to think of you whenever I eat. To honor your memory. May wherever you are be peaceful and free of pain.”

I cup his heart in hands covered with blood and slippery with fat. My bullet pierced the aorta and pulmonary vein, but some of it may still be edible. The organ goes into a Ziploc along with the liver. Our hunting culture has few commandments, but one is to eat the heart and liver that evening while the story is told.

Field dressing complete, I sit on my heels and rub my hands clean. The doe has finally moved off, but I can still hear her rustling in the brush. There’s something eerie how, once a shot has been fired and a deer has fallen, how tame they become. In normal circumstances, the doe would have fled when she saw me. Now, she lingers. Paying her last respects? That sounds better than being oblivious.

There is contradiction in my hunting. Snuffing life from the very creature that represents all I crave and value. Their innocence and gentleness, self-sufficiency, and quiet beauty. The desire to get closer and closer, to reach out and almost touch this forest talisman and then decide which dies and which survives.

I stare into the dark eyes, already glassy with death.

“This isn’t fair,” I tell him. “Little in this life is.”

The muskeg faces the Fairweather Mountains. The Inian Islands and Hobbit Hole bow before them like fiefs declaring fealty. I grip the broad antlers and take a few unsteady steps up the hill. How can I feel enthralled and guilty at the same time?

Perhaps that’s why these muskegs and animals enthrall me but insist that I carry a rifle. The contradictions force me to examine my connection to place and attempt to comprehend it.

To understand how an easterly breeze catches my scent and how a northerly outflow bites the skin and sends deer running for cover. To examine the fairness in my own life and, most of all, escape. To connect with a part of me that pumps with vigor independent of elections, divorces, and frayed friendships. Because out here, deer or no deer, things make sense in a way they don’t where there’s cell phone service and wi-fi.

They say heating with wood warms you twice. Once when you split it and again when you burn it. If so, then deer feed me twice. Once in the woods and again on the plate. We depart the muskeg and dip into a small ravine. Sweat drips, and quads tremble. Hoof tracks crisscross snowy patches, ravens call on the wind, and squirrels chatter from hidden towers. Across another muskeg and down the mountain I wish I called home.

The New Chapter

Why Would I Watch

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Smoke pours from the double doors. A fire lights up the dim interior of the Alert Bay Big House. A pair of totems adorned with thunderbirds glare from the far wall. Cedar logs crack and sparks lift skyward toward the hole in the roof.

I step away as the doors close and the thunderbirds disappear. I know what I’m missing: 60 minutes of the Northwest Coast brought to life through the songs, dances, and regalia of the Namgis First Nations. To the shock of no one, my favorite is the “Salmon Dance,” complete with a carved wooden orca that chases sockeye across the dirt floor with remarkable authenticity while nine community elders pound in unison on a booming drum.

 A steady mist falls. The muffled voices inside the walls go quiet. I turn and walk across a vacant soccer field and down a dirt road. I can see the islands beyond Cormorant Pass. All those names that make my heart pound and ache.

Plumper Islands. Weyton Pass. Robson Bight. Blackfish Sound. Hanson Island. Johnstone Straight. I am back where it all began.

I was born on the northeast coast of Vancouver Island, where the tides bottleneck through archipelagos and ancient fjords. Alaska may be home, but my dalliances with this place will never end.

Blackberry bushes infest the roadside ditches and stretch to the beach. Stacks of cedar and fir abandoned on the full moon tide guard a pebbled shore. I navigate the logs and turn left. I doubt what I’m looking for will still be there. I can’t decide if I want it to be. I glance at the note on my phone dated two years previous. Something kept me from exterminating this little artifact.

End of the road. Turn left. Approximately 100 paces. Look for a cedar tree with a split top. It’s a large piece of fir bark resting on the trunk.

“98… 99…100…”

There it is. The tree must be half a century old. The most precious commodity on the coast was and is an old-growth cedar. House posts, canoes, hats, clothing, baskets. It can be lived beneath, paddled, worn, and carried. No wonder Indigenous cultures revere it. I try to imagine a world older than this cedar. When the banks of the nearby Nimpkish River swelled with sockeye and the Namgis butterflied their fillets before cooking them over open fires. It must’ve felt like a miracle: food arriving at the front door every summer as the Tree of Life grew abundantly. The resources seemed limitless until we tried to feed and house the world instead of a community.

I put a hand on the cedar and stroke the sinewy outer bark. There aren’t many 500-year-old cedars left. This tree was a sapling when Columbus sailed the ocean blue. The forked trunk split as Washington crossed the Delaware. It listened to the chainsaw’s ceaseless roar as the forests of Cormorant Island fell in the name of siding and firewood.

I peer around the trunk and feel the familiar tugs of anxiety and longing. My teeth dig into my lips until I taste iron.

Pick it up. You’ve come this far.

I bend over and grab the slab of fir bark I placed here two years ago. It holds memories, just like everything on this coast. I can’t look at a fir tree and not remember combing Hanson Island’s shorelines for this bark known as “fisherman’s coal.” Stacked on top of a woodstove’s roaring flames, a couple of large pieces kept our cabin at Orca Lab toasty at night.

Memories domino: padding down the dark, narrow stairs to check the fire. The rabbit cage in the corner tucked beneath the windows. Penny nestled in her litter box, soft brown ears twitching. The hydrophone speaker above the bed and the ocean sounds bubbling through the cabin. Wind and rain on the roof. Deer on the beach. Harlequin ducks in the cove. The boat runs to Alert Bay to resupply. A hot bath. A sandwich and beer with my hero Paul Spong.

I pull myself from the past like a diver breaking the surface. Stalling, I look across the water at the islands I hold dearly. Hanson Island hovers on the horizon. Orca Lab, that cabin, is just a few miles away. I could be there in a few hours if I stole (excuse me, “borrowed”) a kayak.

The hypothetical brings me back to the slab of fir bark. I flip it over and run my fingers across the smooth brown surface. Someone has scrawled an untidy message into it. The penmanship is mine, but that’s where the similarities end.

I had vowed we’d return here and finish what we’d started. The Orca Lab caretaking era was supposed to be nothing more than a kayaking trip until it grew into so much more. But we never did get that paddle trip. Two years ago, when I returned to Alert Bay for the first time in five years, I scribbled this vow that we’d paddle here. I’d imagined finding this piece of bark and celebrating before we walked the familiar road to Paul and Helena’s house to laugh and reminisce.

The unfulfilled message has stuck in my mind like a sliver. Something insisted on finding it, making peace, and sending it on its way.

“Now what?” I ask the falling tide.

There’s no answer. No divine sign, magic rainbow, or miracle dorsal fin. I don’t expect one. I don’t need one. I flip the wood into the water and walk down the beach without a second glance. Not everything needs a proper burial.

***

Three hours later, the National Geographic Venture cruises east in Johnstone Strait, Hanson Island’s shoreline gliding past. I am giddy. My eyes ping pong between the spotting scope and my phone. I’m cheating. Thanks to Orca Lab’s streaming camera, I know orcas are swimming south towards Blackney Pass from Blackfish Sound. I watch them on my phone’s tiny screen before pushing my eyes to the scope. I find them at the east end of Hanson Island. Dorsal fins. Right where they’re supposed to be. One, two, three, four, five. I reflexively catalog them. Three females, one juvenile, and one adult male.

I should say something. It’s the only reason I’m on this boat. But I savor it a beat longer than I should. For 60 seconds, it’s just me and these five whales. They split the surface, the male raising his tail and slapping the surface. I permit a moment of anthropomorphism and tell myself he’s waving at me. Perhaps I am looking for that divine sign.

“Hey guys…” I radio to the bridge team. “We found them.”

A flurry of activity. An excited announcement rings through the boat. An orderly rush of binoculars and baseball bat-sized lenses arrive on the bow. But as the Venture turns into Blackney Pass, the orcas turn toward the Hanson Island shore.

I gaze across the pass toward Cracroft Point, remembering the dead wolf pup we found there. Off the bow is Parson Island, solar panels and remote camera visible on the cliff where I lugged eight backbreaking batteries, savoring every step and stumble.

We round the point… and there it is. From here, Orca Lab looks just as it did when I pulled away in April 2017. I think of that piece of fir bark floating in the current, reconciling memories, joy, and grief. How does one savor memories without drowning in them? And if those memories lead to stark regret, why would I watch?

The clicking of cameras fades into the ether. It’s still just me and those orcas. The Lab in the background with its observation deck and recording studio where I spent sleepless nights staring across a black ocean with chattering whales in my ears.

I step away from the scope, and my spot is immediately filled. The soothing bass of breathing orcas pirouettes across calm water and floats over the bow.

“If we’re quiet… we can hear them,” I say to no one in particular.

Why would I watch? Why do I watch? How long will I continue to watch?

The calf rockets from the water and hovers briefly before sending white water geysers high. I couldn’t stop watching, even if I wanted to. Couldn’t look away if my life depended on it. And if these animals, these places, these memories… if they bring a twinge of heartbreak syndrome from time to time… then that’s the bargain I’ll strike.

My fingers twitch, grasping at an invisible kayak paddle. The fir bark promise doesn’t need to go unfulfilled. The only thing keeping me from retracing these shorelines is the person rooted to the deck.

The New Chapter

Trails

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Golden light through golden leaves. Cottonwoods fluttering in a fall breeze are punctuated by random squalls that vanish before I can grab my raincoat. My fingers are greasy with salmon skin and stained with creosote. Sweet-smelling alder smoke billows from the smoker’s open door. I slide racks of salmon between the shelving and nihilistically rub stained hands on stained pants.

I close the door and watch the temperature tick towards 90 degrees. The smoked salmon recipe is as familiar as a warm blanket. Dry brine. Equal parts brown sugar and salt. Soak for four hours. Rinse. Let rest overnight. Into the smoker for four hours at 90 degrees. Bring to 180 over an hour. Hold for another hour. Eat the river.

I plop against a spruce and nestle into the mossy layers coating the ground around Hank Lentfer’s house like a Tempurpedic mattress. I walked past this spruce exactly one lifetime ago, drunk on the prospect of going full homesteader. With covetous eyes, I drank in Hank and Anya’s house and overflowing garden, convinced that this could someday be ours. Nevermind that I initially mistook the smoker for the outhouse.

“Rule number one,” Hank laughed as we walked by, “don’t shit in the smoker.”

So no, I haven’t shit in the smoker, but I have pulled racks of succulent salmon and one luscious deer leg from its innards with the overeager enthusiasm of children on Christmas morning. The temperature hits 90. Six hours begins… now. The stopwatch squeaks, and I set to work peeling bark from a waiting pile of alder.

There are easier ways. Electric smokers exist. Set it and forget it. I could fashion a hot plate and plywood box, eschewing the careful dance between wet and dry alder. Keeping the smoker at 90 degrees locks in the flavor. Slowly raising it to 180 keeps fat from bubbling to the fillet’s surface. I could stop there, slide them into an oven, and let them slow cook to completion. I’ve already hiked miles up the river, fished for hours, and shouldered them to the trailhead. It’s not cutting corners; it’s just practical.

Cottonwood leaves whisper on the gusts. The old rusting stove pops and cracks. Smoke escapes from the shiplap siding. I wander through the woods, sampling high-bush cranberries and following moose trails that terminate in dead ends as if their users apparated on the breeze.

Even in sleepy Gustavus, it’s easy to get wrapped up in the rat race.

I don’t sit in traffic or attend budget meetings, but the “to-do” list never seems to shrink. A sliding scale of my own tolerance dictates the project list. Tyvek siding is acceptable until one day, I can’t stand to look at it another second. A kitchen faucet emptying into the same bucket for months is now intolerable. The cast iron tub that sat uselessly in the yard needs a home. A trail of washed rock appears and connects the driveway to the front steps. I returned in September, shocked to realize I’d been home less than four weeks since May. The house and property felt neglected. I set to work finding a place for the tub and slapping siding over Tyvek (kitchen sink bucket TBD).

But everything orbits around coho. A sunny day demands a journey up the river. The return of a birthday tradition of camping in the Bartlett River high meadow so I can roll out of my sleeping bag on the first day of my 36th year and cast into the river before I’ve sipped my coffee. It crescendos with this smoker that must be babied and attended to all day. It forces me to slow

All

The

Way  

Down

I kneel beside a well-worn trail traveling through the moss. It’s no wider than my forearm, but the moss has turned black and muddy from constant use. The trail connects two spruce trees. Their trunks covered with the shells of spruce cones. I don’t know how many squirrels ping pong between these two trees, but I’ve stumbled into somebody’s critical home. At least a couple of these chattering critters orbit their entire lives between these conifers. Up and down, back and forth, again and again. The patience, the time, the metronome-like consistency to make this trail speaks to a tradition no less significant than migrating cranes and howling wolves.

I run a hand down the trail. Is it possible to envy squirrels?

I think of the dozens of backbreaking trips with a wheelbarrow laden with rocks to form my own pale imitation. My attempt to reinforce the claim that I lived on and loved my swampy bit of land. But there is no substitute for time and the necessary pilgrimages between two trees that give these fast-twitch residents everything they need.

Hour number six slides by. I pop the door with poorly contained glee. Zach and Laura have arrived with their own tote heavy with brining salmon. Together, we shuttle the finished fillets to Hank’s porch, where their toddling son, Salix, is waiting. The door opens, and Hank appears with a quartet of Rainiers. He scoops a chunk of bronzed coho with one hand and flips a squealing Salix over his shoulder with the other.

The cooling salmon are irresistible, and we shovel handful-sized bites into our mouths. Salix takes some of us first uneasy steps, light brown curls reflecting the last of the day’s autumn light. Perhaps my trails will never be so defined. But this place has other sorts of worn and loved indentions to reinforce my connection to home. Spiritual footpaths matter more than worn footprints.

I take a final walk through the enchanted forest, gathering my things and trying not to forget anything. The universe dictates that I must always leave something behind. This week’s victim is a pair of rain pants.

“I’ll try not to tell anyone you left your pants at my place.” Hank texts.

“Appreciate that. That’s how rumors start.”

I pause at the base of the Squirrel Spruce and nestle a piece of salmon in the moss amongst their spruce cone pile. The forest breathes, bracing for a winter as inevitable as a sunset or falling tide. But not yet. We have a few more golden weeks to walk our trails, harvest food, and watch cottonwood leaves fall.

The New Chapter

Heart Medicine

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“Anyone here going to Gustavus?”

We cluster around the Carhartt-clad pilot, ballcap pulled low over short brown hair. He glances at a single sheet of people – the closest we get to a boarding pass around here – and calls last names like it’s the first day of school.

“Taylor, Taylor, Higgins, Parkins… Cannamore?”

We acknowledge our presence with nods. The paper disappears into a back pocket, and a key card opens the sliding doors. This is what amounts to security at Alaska Seaplanes. No TSA. No separate bag for your four ounces of liquids. No random bag checks or standing with arms above your head. Hell, you can carry your rifle onboard and barely get a second glance. It is almost moose season after all.

We ramble across the tarmac and squeeze into a plane with plywood floors and one giant propeller.

“Safety kit is in the nose hatch,” he calls over his shoulder as seatbelts click. “The back door has two latches. Open the top door by flipping the latch and turning the bottom handle like a car door. There’s a fire extinguisher under my seat.”

Flying to Gustavus costs as much as flying to Seattle. A fun piece of trivia that delights tourists until it’s time to drop their credit card on the table. After three weeks ping-ponging across southeast Alaska on the National Geographic Quest, I’d pay just about anything to be home.

The prop catches and roars to life—earbuds in my ears, volume up. The Lonely Forest belting out an anthem that speaks of home.

“Give to me miles of tall evergreens, the smell of the ocean, and cool mountain breeze.“

Juneau disappears beneath my feet. It has been several lifetimes since I called this place home. I still want to love and cherish it, for it is a beautiful place. How many other communities have more miles of hiking trails than paved roads? My stomach gives a little lurch that has nothing to do with the turbulence and confirms I still have some healing to do with that particular place.

The plane swings west, and Admiralty Island rolls past, wingtips level with the 3,000-foot peaks clad in September fog. Hank has teased the Admiralty Island alpine for years, describing an alpine so lush that the deer cluster in numbers too tantalizing to comprehend. I trace ridgelines, nose pressed to the glass.

Next year. It’s always next year.

Fatigue creeps in. I am tuckered and worn out. How many days off have I had since May? I replay the summer as Lynn Canal whitecaps replace Admiralty’s muskegs. The season’s workload looked reasonable in February. I said “yes” to everything I could, locking up weeks as a naturalist for Lindblad and multiple kayak trips. I added the paychecks in my head, stared at my bank account, shook my head, and added it again. I wanted to reach November feeling financially secure(ish) with the freedom to run somewhere warm if the opportunity allowed. Mission accomplished. I think.

Point Couverdon. Past the south end of the Chilkat Mountains. Porpoise Islands. Pleasant Island. The runway beckons. A little community hidden in the trees. Millions of tons of glacial clay beneath our feet and crisscrossed with the prints of bear, wolf, moose, and crane. Come January, a sunny beach may be preferable, but right now I want to drink coffee on my couch and watch the rain fall.

“I just wanna live here, love here, and die here… Give to me miles of tall evergreens…“

Breanna left the house spotless. I didn’t know a sink could be that clean. Minerva scurries down the ladder, and for a wild moment, I think it’s because I’m home. But it’s 5 pm, and niceties can wait until after dinner. I toss my backpack upstairs and collapse on the couch. Deep breath in. Deep breath out. This space hasn’t felt haunted in a while. I hear faded laughter echo off the walls and can feel that the space has been lived in and loved. Minerva licks her lips and permits me the honor of scooping her up and putting her on my chest. She purrs and nuzzles, wet food breath in my nostrils.

“You’ve had quite a few tenants this summer,” I tell her.

A consequence of the packed schedule has been I’ve been gone more than I’ve been home, and a rotating cast of house sitters have rolled through, spearheaded by Breanna, The Shabin’s current caretaker. Minerva has been the star of Swamp Castle Estates as Breanna and I have christened these four soggy acres.

“I didn’t know I liked cats.”

“I don’t like cats, but she’s the coolest.”

“Can we reinstall the Shabin’s cat door so she can come visit?”

I squeeze the ball of fluff. Three months together at the Hobbit Hole certainly knit us together, but it’s sweet to see her growing fan club and watch her adapt to the rotation of people who have occupied this space. We lay there for a long time, savoring the absence of anything pressing: no questions to answer, no hikes to lead, no presentations to give. My mind drifts to the potatoes in the garden, the cranes winging their way south, and the buzz of a fishing reel’s drag as spritely coho zip across the Bartlett River.

***

We tramp the familiar trail in a steady rain. If Gustavus held a fantasy football-style draft for the best Bartlett River angler, I might take my hiking companion with the first overall pick. Kyle Bishop’s chest waders are stained with mud, clay, and fish blood. Every year, we promise to spend more time together and carve out room in our schedules for dinner, drinks, and Mario Kart tournaments.

Next year. It’s always next year.

But come September, we’re inevitably drawn to this trail, this river, those coho. We can go months without exchanging a word or text and then chatter like squirrels when the cottonwood leaves turn yellow. We badger each other for life details and snigger at the passing out-of-towners lugging a five-gallon bucket to hold their theoretical catch.

Fifty minutes to the first decent fishing hole, but the place we really want to hit is further up. We weave past a well-mannered brown bear and drop our lines into a long, deep channel the coho favor. My rod tip bends, line runs out, and I see the beautiful flash of silver for the first time. The salmon breaks the water and thrashes. The hook sinks deep—elation skyrockets. I guide him to the shoreline, and the fillet knife ends the fight. I run cold, wet fingers down the scales, marveling at the miracle that is home.

The one place that offers the life I want happens to be where I can afford to live. Rain runs down my face, and the river’s cold presses against my waders. Kyle hoots, and white water materializes 30 feet in front of him. The season’s just beginning. The first of many pilgrimages to this spot. The first of many benedictions and prayers to the animals that feed us and bring us together.

I place the coho in the grass, reset the line, and let the hook sing across the water.

The New Chapter

Why Do This

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Ice. It always comes back to ice. Jagged, narrow inlets filled with saltwater hundreds of feet deep. Hills and mountains sculpted and rounded thousands of feet above the lapping waves. Humpback whales feed near the inlet’s shallow moraine, where the currents of Icy Strait and South Inian Pass meet. All because of glaciers that churned through thousands of years prior. The icy deserts have been replaced by a bounty of life that feels limitless in the calm August sunshine.

Our skiff glides down Idaho Inlet, cruising mid-channel and on course for the dogleg turn a couple of miles from the head of the inlet. Our heads crane upwards, eyes probing glowing green ridgelines and the hypothetical routes that lead to them. A few of these green fingers run towards sea level, a deceptive and alluring path that, in reality, is thick with salmonberry and alder. Better to take the wooded (albeit still thick) forests to reach that seductive alpine ridge.

Zach noses the boat towards a salmon stream and Seth leaps from the bow with a nod as he gives the boat a hearty shove. He disappears into the grass before the forest swallows him. I take the wheel, and Zach shoulders his own pack and rifle.

He points at a long rocky beach. “That one.”

I glance at the ridgeline. Sure. If I blink, squint hard enough, and imagine enough switchbacks, I can see a route through the trees to that coveted alpine. If Zach has any questions about the validity of his chosen mountain, he’s decided not to show it.

The keel scrapes the rocks, and he leaps clear.

“Good hunting.”

He waves in response. “See you tomorrow at noon.”

With a shout of, “Hey bear!” He vanishes into the trees.

I spin the skiff towards a small cove on the other side of the inlet. It’s an ideal anchorage in the shadow of another 2,000 peak that culminates in a long, straight ridge glowing in the setting sun.

For a third time, the skiff bumps the rocks. Out goes my pack and rifle before I putter away to lower the anchor. The anchor strikes bottom at 20 feet, and I spoon out several more feet before sliding the boat into reverse and feeling the anchor teeth dig into the soft mud. I brush my teeth and spit over the side, suddenly feeling oh so small.

It’s approaching 9 in the evening, and the mountain looks steep and foreboding. It will be disorientating in the woods. I pray for a game trail devoid of fallen trees and devil’s club. Idaho Inlet cuts into the north side of Chichagof Island, home to one of the largest brown bear populations on earth, and I left my bear spray sitting on the counter at the Hobbit Hole. I’d sooner wrestle a bear than rely on a round or two from a 30.06. It only makes me feel smaller.

I squeeze into a pack raft and splash for shore, shoulder the pack that feels too heavy, and crash into the darkening woods. Sweat soaks my sweater, and my breath comes in gasps as I hop from one deer trail to the next, yelling for the bears to keep clear every couple of minutes.

Why do this?

I pause and look at my GPS. 400 feet above sea level. 1600 feet to go. I’m not going to make it tonight. I look at the forest’s collection of blueberry, skunk cabbage, false azalea, and rotting tree trunks. Nothing looks remotely campable.

“Hey, bear!”

The words disappear with nary an echo. I am over my skis. A wanna-be Alaskan cosplaying as a hunter and homesteader. Discomfort wiggles in my mind, and whispers of self-doubt grow a little louder. I glance at the thickets below and, for a moment, consider retreating. I can camp at sea level and try for the alpine in the morning.

Why do this?

I tighten the pack’s belt and bush upwards. I can’t answer my own question, much less discern where I’m going to camp or how I’ll bear-proof my food while I sleep. Something keeps me climbing, keeps me gasping and sweating and pushing.

Tomorrow is Christmas morning. The allure of fat deer foraging on the cabbage that bears their name. The never-ending ridges of the island in the background. To stand where no one has stood for years (maybe longer). A reminder of the joy of public lands and wild places. The good health and fortune that lets me push higher and higher, one sweat-soaked step at a time.

At 800 feet, it’s too dark to climb any further. I cast around for anything resembling a campsite. I cram the tent against a hemlock perched on a ledge. At least the tree will catch me before I tumble should I roll over in the middle of the night. I’ve worn too many layers, and the bottom one is soaked through. I crawl into the tent without bothering to put on the fly. It’s been a soggy summer, but the last few days have been hot and dry, a forecast projected to continue tomorrow. I hear a stream tumbling down a gorge and murrelets returning to their nests. I brace against the hemlock and fall asleep.

Alarm at 4 am. I don’t bother packing the tent and hustle up the mountain with just the essentials: trail mix, rifle, extra shells, hunting knife, plastic bags, and Wild Berry Skittles. I pop out of the woods and into a mix of muskeg and yellow cedar, greeted by the rasping call of a doe.

My muscles tense as I slide rounds into the Springfield and watch the last one lock in the barrel. I squish through the muskeg, eyes trying to see everything at once. I am faced with the hunter’s dilemma, forced to choose between covering more ground or moving silently. Despite the doe’s call, the ground around me is sparse on sign, only a few trails and dry piles of scat. Discarding stealth, I bolt for the summit, already feeling a warm breeze as the sun inches towards the shady peaks. Idaho Inlet spills beneath me, a sinewy waterway that looks no bigger than a river. A jolt of anxiety runs through me as I imagine a poorly set anchor line and what it would be like to step out of the woods and into an empty cove. That’s a problem for Sea Level David hours down the road.

I bring the scope to my eye and work the ridges and meadows with as much patience as I can conjure. Two deer pop against the ridge 200 feet above. They weave through the rocks and grass, velvety antlers evident on the one in the lead.

My heartbeat quickens, but another peculiarly warm gust brings disappointment. The pair are traveling downwind, and the only approach for a biped is upwind. With no other deer visible, I begin to climb, hoping for a change in the wind.

I pause at the summit. The Fairweather Mountains explode from the other side of Icy Strait. Even from this distance, the 14,000-foot sentinel’s tower over my quaint little hill, blinding white peaks stretching north. Again, I feel small, but not in the diminished, intimidated manner of the day prior.  The wildness of my home reverberates in my chest, and I barely mind when I realize the deer have disappeared around a steep and wooded point.

There’s no chance of following them without creating a ruckus, and the wind won’t stop blowing their direction. The ridgeline is a deceptive mix of mountain hemlock and yellow cedar the consistency of a hedge grove. I quietly push through them and feel the temperature drop. Minutes before 6 am, the promise of a sweltering summer day is already palpable. Too much sun means sheltering deer and poor hunting. The clock is ticking as I step out of the hedge on the west side. If I were a deer, this is where I’d be. Three mountains rim a bowl of alpine and sub-alpine habitat still sheltered from the rising sun.

I give the distant muskegs a scan, but a lip in the hillside keeps me from seeing the ground beneath me. I re-enter stealth mode, every step deliberate as I try to watch my feet and the emerging muskeg. I glance right, take another step, look down, and freeze.

A deer’s winter coat is grayish-brown and melts into the old growth, but its burnt orange summer one pops against alpine green.

The rifle jams against my shoulder. My god, he’s huge. A belly full of summer forage swings back and forth. He stands broadside to me, but when he raises his head, I can see broad, illustrious antlers culminating in three points on each side. The sort of deer Zach and I talk about after our fourth whiskey while snow falls on a gray January evening.

I take a breath, squeeze my eyes, and am overjoyed when the buck is still there when I open them. My mind freezes, and time slows to a halt as exhilaration mixes with the pressure not to blow this. He hasn’t seen me, but at this angle and distance, I’m not comfortable taking the shot without a brace. I can’t lay prone on this steep hill.

The pack slides from my shoulders, eyes on those antlers. The safety clicks. When I first started hunting, I anticipated some sort of moral conflict to play out inside me during these deliberate, pre-mediated actions. But there’s never room in my head for that. Once the safety is off, I’ve made my choice, my brain and heart acknowledging that we’re taking a shot. To take a life to sustain life. My inner monologue is filled with the same trite phrases:

Don’t blow this. Don’t blow this. Don’t blow this. It’s too hot. This is your one chance. The next 30 seconds will decide this.

I rest the barrel on my pack and kick my legs to the side. It’s awkward, but the rifle feels manageable with the pack holding the weight. I shift, and the buck looks up the hill. He fills the scope, and I stare covetously at his antlers. Ten minutes earlier or ten minutes later, and I would’ve missed him. I’d never claim to be a good hunter, but luck has been with me more often than not the last couple of years.

Deep breath, let it out. Wait. Wait. He keeps staring. Crosshairs split those beautiful, perfect antlers. Downhill shot, 200 yards. The bullet’s gonna drop. Compensate. I raise the barrel slightly just as the buck turns away to look at the alpine bowl beneath the mountains. The clock hits 6 am. A finger twitches. The blast echoes off peaceful peaks.

I unbolt the shell and catch the spinning casing. Another slides into place. Before I can stand, I know another shot won’t be necessary. His twitching slows as the nerves fire.

“Yes,” I breathe. “Oh, thank you, deer. Thank you.”

The safety clicks on. I fall more than run down the hill. The adrenaline letdown means everything is shaking. Balance and hand/eye coordination have become optional. My knees and hands tremble as I grip the fuzzy antlers that so filled my mind.

I mumble platitudes, take a deep breath, and get ahold of myself. As crucial as the last five minutes were, the next couple of hours are just as vital. The buck is too unwieldy to drag to sea level. The meat will need to be harvested here, the bones and fur left for scavengers. But not yet. I let the contradictions of my life run wild.

I’ve grown to fiercely love deer, finding them beautiful, gentle, charismatic, and, yes, delicious. To introduce violence and death upon a creature I treasure is something I fail to fully comprehend. Nothing is stopping me from climbing a mountain and simply watching these animals. No one would think less of me. I am not participating in some blind race for masculinity and affirmation.

Why do this?

I bury my fingers in his fur and bow my head. Because to eat of deer is to eat of the forest and mountains that make up my home. Because few things bring more pleasure than sliding a burger across the counter to a neighbor or loved one. Because there is something prehistoric and feral braided into my DNA that wants to hunt, catch, gather, and grow instead of blindly tossing deli meat in a shopping cart.

“I won’t call this a sacrifice,” I whisper, forcing myself to look into his empty eyes. “Because you didn’t wake up this morning set on giving your life. No, you were in the right place at the right time.” I pause, “or the wrong place at the wrong time. I hope your passing was as painless as it could possibly be. I promise to honor this gift and use as much as I can. I’ll think of you and this day every time I eat. I don’t know what the afterlife is like for a deer, but I hope it is peaceful and quiet and free of pain.”

I press my forehead against his. Velvet antlers rub my temples. The flies begin to buzz. No words can excuse the violence and bloodshed. But if my gratitude and respect can find a way into the calories I harvest… it matters how an animal dies. How it is treated even after it draws its final breath.

The muscles in my leg cramp, the plastic bags steadily filling with meat bound for canning jars. When the bags are bulging, and the work finished, I drag what’s left of the buck to a large rock, spreading the pelt across the top and resting the head to overlook the mountains he’d been watching. From behind, he could be sleeping.

I shovel Skittles into my mouth and wrestle the pack into position. My knees ache as I reach the ridge and appear in blinding sunshine. I glance back at the burnt orange fur and give him a final nod.

Why do this?

Idaho Inlet waits below. The Inian Islands and Hobbit Hole obscured from this angle. There will be stories to tell, beers to drink, a life to thank and remember as the pressure canner rattles. Tradition dictates that the heart of the deer must be eaten that night. The sort of meal that needs to be shared. Must be shared.

I take an uneasy step down the ridge. 1,998 feet to go. I may not be able to articulate how or why this has become the most integral part of my year, but there’s no going back . Home lays before me, rolling ridges behind, the biting straps of the pack a blessing in disguise.