I forgot the bear spray. The realization makes me pause, mud squelching around the 2×12 boardwalk. It’s ten minutes after seven in the morning, the trailhead parking lot empty. There will be no two-legged company on the Bartlett River and I’m hoping any four-legged anglers will be okay sharing. For a wild minute, I consider the thirty-minute round trip home for a peppery can of security.

There’s no reason to fear bears, there are plenty of reasons to respect them.

Vowing to be extra respectable, I brush past devil’s club and barrel down the well-worn trail. 25 minutes to the river mouth. Another 20 to the first fishing hole. Moisture hangs in the air from last night’s drenching and the forecast signals summer’s conclusion. Inches of rain are promised in the coming days. All the more reason to get that final cast in before the river washes out.

The trail curls around shaded hemlocks and punches past thick spruce trees in their prime – subtle markers that bulldozing ice covered this place a few centuries ago. Far from stasis, the forest pulses towards old growth, patiently grinding house-sized boulders and thick clay layers the glacier left behind.

The same pattern that happened here centuries ago are now occurring in Glacier Bay’s upper reaches where silty rivers are steadily clearing as alders dig into the gravelly outwash. Salmon will find those streams the second they’re suitable for spawning. Maybe a generation of the coho battling up the Bartlett will someday stumble across those milky rivers.

The trail leaves the forest near the winding river mouth. Sweeping curves like paintbrush strokes cut through a soggy meadow of cow parsnip, willow, and the occasional spruce trees. Any semblance of path disintegrates into a slippery “choose your own adventure” of mud that never dries. Furrows in the grass lead to the woods like on ramps from the frequent forays of bears, moose, wolves, coyotes, and river otters. Fermenting pink salmon line the stream in various scavenged states, and a rising gale can’t mask the smell of decay.

Watching the cow parsnip for transiting bears, I slip and slide along the riverbank with the eagerness of Christmas morning. I’m dying to feel a probing tug on the hook of my pink skirted Kodiak Custom and hear the high-pitched whine of line as the water explodes with silvery bolts.

I pause at the final turn to wipe the sweat away. Heat rises from my wool sweater despite the thickening rain. I squat. Both knees crack once. Not bad two days shy of birthday number 38.

There are easier ways to do this. I could take the skiff out, invest in a gill net, finally figure out the paperwork for a subsistence license. Despite her family rarely wielding the “gear chuckers,” Teanna has already canned, frozen, and eaten more salmon than I will in my entire life. It’s a lot of sweat equity hauling out six fish at a time in a 100-liter backpack. Back in August, I’d picked a mountain three miles inland for an alpine hunt; lugging my tent, sleeping bag, and 45 pounds of venison back to sea level.

Two weeks ago I’d coerced Teanna into carrying fishing poles through the muskeg along Chichagof Island’s outer coast because I had some harebrained fantasy of catching coho near some tidal slough that wound up being filled with gulls, a pair of brown bears and, to her delight, dozens of eagle feathers.  

I bounce on my toes and feel my twitching leg muscles. That alpine hunt beat me up, but I’d felt like myself again after a good night’s sleep. To the shock of the high schoolers (and myself), I’d dunked at open gym last week.

Everything feels okay. Knees continue to hold up despite the beating I gave them in my teens and early 20s. The back feels alright. There’s some healthy grays coming in around my temples, but I’m not pulling it out by the handful.

I glide the final paces to the first fishing hole. Maybe that was the reason I resisted the gill net and accessible mountains. My body still gave autonomy over those choices, permitting me to beat it up in the name of deer and salmon.

I give the meadow on the far bank a glance before casting. A mama black bear and her cub have been hanging out on this stretch. Teanna, the one person not carrying bear spray on our camping trip last weekend, naturally saw those two plus a brownie and cub on the quarter mile of river she walked alone and with a backpack full of coho. When I marveled at how non-plussed she seemed, she’d only shrugged, given me the mischievous smile she saves for such occasions, and reminded me that the brown bear is one of her crests.

There’s no reason to fear bears, there are plenty of reasons to respect them.

First cast, alone on a river lined with yellowing cottonwood and watching eagles. The pink-skirted lure sinks behind a submerged boulder. Seconds later there’s a flash of silver, the line pops, and I hear the euphoric whir of line being pulled through the water.

“Thank you, fish.” I run my hands over cold scales, the smell of river and life around me. The promise of fillets on dark winter evenings.

But nothing else grabs the Kodiak Custom. I move on after ten quiet minutes, and at the next bend again feel the line run on the first cast. The rain now falls in sheet; the heavy wool jacket I’d promised to cover in fish scales and deer hide soaked through. It’s absurd to carry fish up the river only to bring them down, but far be it for me to leave free lunch lying around.

 At my third spot, I plunge into the river until water crawls above the knees of my waders. Surely I can’t expect a bite on my first cast again. But there’s the streak of silver. A coho rockets from the water with my pink lure in its jaws. Perhaps the river is telling me something on my final trip. One fish from each hole, a chance to feal my creaking joints and say goodbye to every foot of precious river.

The narrative dies 100-yards upriver. Here I find the mythical “bite.” Coho tickle the lure on every cast. Soon I’m placing the fifth fish on the bank and feeling an ache.

One more.

My friends and I wait all year for these magical weeks. Last night at Kyle’s birthday, all anyone talked about was salmon. We chatted salmon while we ate salmon, and schemed ways to catch more salmon. Today ensures that the freezer and canning jars will be full. There’s no more reason to cast. I remind myself that the hardest word for us to say is, “enough.”

Fish number six takes the lure on the next cast. I look up from the fight and drink in the world. The rain lessens to a drizzle. Ravens call from the forest, and a squadron of seagulls waits to scavenge whatever I leave behind. I want the fish to spit my lure and give me the pretense to linger.

But is this not the day, the moment I’ve waited for? One of the pillars that has kept me rooted in this place? I picture driving home, of Teanna looking up from her weaving with a smile and a wave. How she’ll wrap her arms around me no matter how wet and stinky I am and listen to me recap the morning’s every step.

The fish slides across mud and rock, and I whisper the same benediction.

“Thank you, fish, for giving your life to feed mine. I’ll think of you every time I eat this winter. Please go peacefully into the next life.”

I open the stomach, remove the heart, and watch the pulsing nerves. The river swirls, its wisdom mixing with cries of impatient gulls and the splashes of coho swimming up, up, up.