Quiet Kinda Day

-NON-FICTION - Never ends up how ya think. Nice calm day, so we three, piled in

to the Mazda Pickup, Diane got stuck with the jump seat in the

Xtra cab. It was a compact truck with an extra seat, just no door.

Doll and I were up front and it took about 30 minutes to get up to the

Chena River Salmon Counting Ramp.

July 4^th, and the salmon counters were working. A civilian concrete footbridge spanned the painted concrete footers underneath the footbridge. Three foot wide stripes of white paint made each fish visible as it powered up against the current going to the spawning shallows upstream. Seniors from the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, were busy clicking away on their counters. This spawning run was for Chinook Salmon, known colloquially as KINGS. A minimum number of salmon to escape into the spawning beds was established by the Fish Biologists at Alaska Fish and Game each year for each species. By the calendar dates of the runs, a go or no go decision was determined to extend seasons for commercial or sport fishing of a particular species.

So if by, say, Jul 15, the requirements were met, the seasons continued till the run ended. Failing to meet the requirements closed the seasons.

It was a good year and so far on this branch, the counters were 90% of their requirements, so there were a lot of fish around. Good ? Bad ?

Our daughter Diane was visiting us for two years, going to school

at West Valley High, on Geist Rd, in Fairbanks. A big brand new world for her.

Ya only can watch fish swim for so long, right? We were just north of the Chena Lakes Recreation area, so in a five minute run we hit the snack stand. Paddle and rowing boats were available, and the winds in that area were always negligible and calm, so big strong, manly me decided to take one of the aluminum rowboats out down the lake. Nice day to be out there, bright sunshine but something felt weird. Diane in the front looking out, Doll in the back, tracking my steering by dragging a rope, kinda like an old time log line.

Having your basic light lunch of hot dogs, sodas and chips we had not a care in the the world, rowing downlake towards the Tanana Relief

Channel. The Chena Lakes Rec.Area was in fact a relief channel to bring the flooding Tanana River away from Eilelson Air Force Base and the Town of North Pole. I was surprised to feel a light breeze blowing in from the West. No matter I thought. Well sorta maybe... . NOT because this North Country has a million ways to kill you, new ones all the time. Pay attention Nick ! Now !

Two miles out of the boat rental. Good twenty minutes row in calm winds. Yeah, everything is cool. Sorta. Was that a lighting bolt that flashed South of us over the Tanana River? Now I an concerned.

We never see lighting. Sky darkening to the West, more lightening, and now the thunder starts in. Us three puny humans in a metal boat in the middle of a flat lake, this is getting ugly, scary and I am supposed to be the guy who knows what to do...... Small island straight off our bow and I am bending my back to the oars, and now the rain starts pelting us, hard. We got a problem, lightening bolts licking the picnic area about three quarters of a mile South East of us on the access road, and emergency vehicles pulling up, flashing lights on.

Not to waste time gawking at that, I beach the boat hard and Diane agile as she is, jumps to shore. Doll its and looks at me, I hope out and Diane pull the boat halfway up on the short and I grab Dolls hand and we steady each other as we hurry up the island into the big timber to shelter from the hard pelting rain, felt like the drops were the size and weight of marbles. Probably because they were driven by a forty plus MPH wind, likes we never see up here..

Retreating behind a big pine, into the brush, and with a flash and a crash the pine is not there, its knocked flat landing just short of the boat, and we look at a big flat root plate. No tap roots, they cant grow into the permafrost. Without windstorms, they do just fine. But they blow over with branches like sails and no anchor roots. And we have two cotton hoodies, so the three of us are huddled into a ball as far down in the brush as we could squat. It wasn't a half hour more like ten minutes. The temperature had dropped dropped from 70 F+ to maybe 55F, made a lot colder since were wet, and windblown. Quiet kinda day, sorta kinda. Shaking from borderline hypothermia and a liberal dose of fear we watched for the next few minutes as this freak storm blow around us to the North and disbursed into the subdivision

(known as the SteamBoat Development)(more about that later).

Figuring we were cold and shivering enough not to wait for

a clearer window, we pushed into the water and Diane shoved us off, as I took the oars. Rowing with a sense of dispatch and as much vigor as I could muster we were back at the boat rental. The shoreline was littered with rental boats just left where they beached. We were the last ones out. Diane and Doll hustled back to the truck and I stepped inside the trailer to pay the bill.

The proprietor, familiar to me said to me: “You saw them, did ya ?”

“Saw what ?” I asked puzzled. “AST (Alaska State Troopers), Fish & Game and North Pole Cops” Puzzled again I looked at him. “Oh they found the bodies.” Bodies? My mind races . “ You mean those four people the grizziles drown the other day ? That's what the EMS and PARA's were there, to transport the bodies?” 'Yeah the News-Miner ran the article but I hear nothing if they found the griz, a mom and three cubs. The folks backed into the water, and the griz just ate what they wanted, and the people succumbed to hypothermia and drowned. Damned shame, no one would have thought the griz would have been that bold. Unofficially, officially, those bears are outlaw in the Park and Rec. Area but I bet with all the ruckus we never see them again.”

I gave him a $US 20, that included a tip, and I was out of there, shook up some.

Wasn't until we unloaded for ice cream at the Dairy Queen in North Pole that it come up. Doll spoke up: “ You paid him? He fill you in about the picnickers ?” “Ya” I said, glancing at Diane in line for cones.

“Yes the lady parked next to us at the lake filled me in. Unpleasant.

Glad I didn't see, bodies don't freak me out but their situation did.”

I hugged Doll, both of us soaked, and Diane hollered at us, about coming to help her carry the cones. “Diane know ?” “ Yeah I don't know what's with that girl, didn't faze her a bit.” “Hey, you know its the country, everyone knows someone who has lost someone. If I remember she lost two chums at West Valley last year in a vehicle crash in the fog at the Rail Crossing on the Richardson Hiway. No real surprise to me she didn't react much. I remember where I know the rental guy, he was the former Range Master at Eielson I met there a few times.”

Doll, and I walking up to Diane and taking our cones. “Here we are still shivering. No different than Hot Licks Ice Cream parlor when its (-) forty below F, in January. Lemme get the truck warmed up and we can smell of hot wet hoodies on the way home.”

Doll continued: “ You know, people here are weird. The lady in the truck next to me acted like she felt compelled to tell me what happened !” Glancing at Doll, momentarily as I back out of the parking space, I went on: “ Up here, knowing what is on the boil is key to saying healthy and safe. She probably would have wanted you to tell her the same if she had not known. Some people are nosy, some are neighborly, you kinda have to take your pick. Rather someone that is aware and tells you rather than lets you stumble into a bad situation.”

Blue sky. “Ya know in eighteen years in Northern Alaska, I had not seen a storm like that till now. The fact that we are so high in the latitudes makes storms allows storms to spin out and come at you one hundred-eighty degrees off, due to the Coropolis Effect, but I have never seen one burst on us that intense nor ever get me that wet.” Shook my head. I asked Doll: “ No names of the drowning victims ?” “No, they said they were not from here.” Shook my head again and said: “ Wonder if that is why they picnic'd over on the far side of the lake, for privacy ? No one could see them from there, and apparently no one heard their shouts, as the mom bear backed them into the water, thinking she was protecting her three hundred pound cubs. So much food around I guess they thought those folks brought the food for them.”

I glanced at Diane in the jump seat with the 12 gauge pump in the

back window gun rack. Sixteen and two years into being Alaskan she says: “ Shame if there were new here, no one travels without guns.

I've never seen it that we went anywhere without some.”

Doll said: “ It all seemed so strange when I first got here four years ago, but seemed normal when you were aware of how many incidents were avoided . I remember the time the moose chased me over the snowmachine buzzing between her and the calf. Almost but we made it to the truck in time. Any closer and we'd have been kicked into dog snot, she was really angry.”

We all were still coming down from the stress of our near miss with lightening on the lake and the huge pine coming down where we had been standing. Back at the cabin hot dogs or not we felt famished by the energy we burned experiencing the stress our near miss with lightening on the lake and the huge pine coming down where we had been standing. Mosquitoes were annoying enough, even up in timber where out cabin sat, we did the burgers in propane stove inside. Energized by the food and the 23 hour sunlight, I set to splitting wood, after unhooking the propane tank and giving it to Doll to take down to Ester Truck Stop, to refill since we'd run out tomorrow morning making porridge breakfast. Cold cereal, no where near as good as hot porridge with heaps of brown sugar! Eleven PM by this time, and the sun would dip below the horizon by half, we turned up Ester Dome Road, to go to the top. Thirty-four hundred and fifty feet up, we had a panoramic view all around We ogled the colors, and we could easily see Denali, striking in its gold from the low angle sun, about one hundred and twenty-five miles to the south and to the west, the Three Peaks, Hayes, Hess, and Deborah standing out red and purple in the evening alpenglow.

About this time fatigue set in, the cabin was cozy as I had laid and started a small fire before we left to go up Ester Dome. We took down the wet hoodies we'd hung on our makeshift indoor clothes line.

And we all slept even though someone suggested a few rounds of UNO, none of us could hold the cards or our heads up so off to dreamland we went, sun light or not. Tired enough you fall asleep.