By Steve Ulvi
Journal contributor
Dredging up invigorating memories for those who love being on the water is easy. Some think of their “here” more about water than land. Lately, I am saddened that my decades as a waterman are fading out.
There is unfathomable magic in water; the relentless shape-shifter, a bulldozer of landscapes, incessant grinder of mountains to beach sand, inundating 70% of Earth. The voluminous base of the primordial soup in which early life evolved.
A wondrous fluid — reflecting ever-changing light, enlivened by wind, tides, gradient and rain — at every conceivable scale, but most thrilling as a free-flowing river in wild country. Freedom of movement, adventures with a capacity to carry enough stuff for bush comfort. Best done far from the desecration of roadways.
Tent camping and fishing were our summer family vacation. Creeks and lakes in the Sierras. A maze of sloughs in the Sacramento delta. Northern coast and wave-splashed coves. Those were the golden weeks of summer in my troubled youth because my lively imagination was unleashed. Campfires under a starry dome. Horsing around. Humbled by the immensity and mystery of things.
Power boating here, salt chuck trolling for salmon or jigging for lingcod or elusive halibut, prawning at bug-eyed depths, as well as informal charters to investigate the flora of diminutive islets, has been rewarding. But I suffer the paucity of rivers. I profoundly miss untamed northern waters where, at 23, my youthful dreams expanded for decades in vast subarctic and arctic landscapes and intact ecosystems. As an outdoorsman and conservationist, I have had the great fortune to work hands-on to preserve wild rivers coursing hundreds of miles through millions of acres of new unroaded national parks.
Living and working along the fabled Yukon River naturally involved many thousands of miles of boating, canoeing and rafting in every weather condition until freeze-up and a happy switch to skis, dog teams or a snowmachine for the dominant season.
A few vignettes.
Dozens of whitewater Peregrine falcon banding floats after gravel bar plane landings on the gin-clear Charley River. Dall sheep on canyon slopes, grizzlies, nesting Harlequin ducks, unsuspecting wolves along the bank. Rappelling or climbing into cliff eyries, chicks huddled, adults swooping and vocalizing. Some aggressive females striking my pack. Crashed aircraft and lonely cabin ruins of forgotten trappers and miners. Wildfire!
Rafting the treeless Killik flowing north out of the central Brooks Range; 17 grizzlies, a shaggy muskox bull close by, 1,500 caribou splashing across toward us, all transporting us back to the Pleistocene in a dank Arctic Ocean breeze.
The Kobuk by canoe. Catching several species of fish from one bar. Twenty-pound fighting Sheefish. Native burial sites. Bears at night, spawning chum salmon splashing nearby. Native families subsisting.
Boating the fabled Copper, surging in grey whirlpools. White-knuckled through The Canyon to dipnet dozens of bright sockeye, roped on scant ledges, until cramped and chilled.
Weeklong moose camps, frosted fall colors on the fabled Kantishna, Yukon and Tanana.
Campfire comradery. Meat hanging. Spring bear hunts, ice-clogged shores, greening south slopes.
After 33 seasons, my last solo riverine moose hunt, camped on the silty Tanana. A familiar crescent slough. Last light, a bull noiselessly emerged to step into shallow water just steps behind me. Butchered in shallow water by headlamp, frosted breath, and many half-hour pack trips. Bears?
