Alaska

I have traveled to most of the fifty U.S states and to many countries around the world. I have seen some fantastic places. My recent excursion to western Alaska, however, ranks as one of the most memorable journeys I’ve ever taken. I had never been to Alaska before this trip. As you fly in over the landscape you get a sense of the wondrous natural beauty and the vastness of the space. From Anchorage we flew further west into the interior near Katmai National Park, which sits on Bristol Bay at the top of the Alaskan Peninsula, leading out to the Aleutian Islands.

The purpose of our journey was to catch fish, specifically monster rainbow trout that live in the rivers and go after the eggs of spawning sockeye salmon that are swimming upstream in prodigious numbers. First a word about the sockeye. Millions of them return each summer and go up the same river in which they were born. See how they teem.

One of nature’s incredible mysteries: how can each salmon remember the exact river where it was spawned, especially among the hundreds of streams and rivers that crisscross Alaska? If one were fishing for sockeye, they are so thick it would only be a matter of taking a net and scooping them up.

This brings me to the bears. Alaskan Brown Bears feast on the sockeye.

On most every river where you fish you can see dozens of these bears, in some instances coming to within twenty yards of you. But they pay no mind to the fishermen. They are so focused on the salmon on which they will gorge before going into hibernation that they literally ignore your presence. At one point a mother with three cubs came sauntering up to us when we had beached our raft on a sandbar. The guide had to throw several rocks in their direction before they noticed us and then turned away to look elsewhere for their salmon.

Each morning, we boarded a small float plane and were flown from our lodge near Lake Iliamna—Alaska’s largest lake by area and volume, and one of the biggest in North America—to one of any number of rivers, teaming with bears and salmon in our search for the crafty trout.

Overhead bald eagles were a common sight, and one day we heard a pack of wolves barking and howling nearby. You fish with a plastic red bead as a lure on a fly rod. The trout range in size from twenty to thirty inches, sometimes even exceeding that. Because the trout attract so many dedicated sport fishermen to the region and they are a prized part of the local economy, you release any fish you catch. And if your specimen exceeds thirty inches—a true giant—the guides are loath to even let you handle it for a photo op.

Another fascinating aspect of the trip was the local population. On our first day fishing along the Newhalen River, I caught a glimpse of a huge church on the outskirts of a small village. As we drew nearer, I recognized it as a Russian Orthodox Church (having lived in Russia myself).

I asked the owner of our fishing lodge if there were any Russians left in Alaska. He explained that the native tribes of the region—the Yupik, the Kijik, and the Dena’ina—were all converted in the late 1700s to Christianity by Russian orthodox missionaries, who had taken the time to translate Christian scripture into the native languages. Though the Russians left or intermarried over the next few generations, the orthodox religion has remained strong around the Bristol Bay region and other regions of Alaska. One of the young ladies working at our lodge is Russian Orthodox, and as we began to speak about the role it plays in the local community, she rolled up her sleeve to reveal a tattoo of an orthodox cross on her forearm.

It took me almost sixty years to get to Alaska, and I am so glad I did.

#austinauthor #jodyferguson #alaska #newhalen #kitmainationalpark #fatbears #journeys

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