OFF MY DOCK
Where the men are strong and the mosquitoes voracious.
If you want to go on a big boating adventure, you might consider a trip to Alaska, a place where everything is big. And every place is far away. And the easiest way to get to any faraway place is often by boat, or with an airplane that lands on water, which is sort of a boat.
The Yukon River bisects Alaska, roughly east to west, and serves as a highway to backcountry settlements, which are supplied with fuel, lumber, beer and other essentials via barge. The Yukon is also the pathway to adventure, as my good friend Chuck Larson discovered this past summer when he joined an expedition led by Uncle Fun, my brother-in-law. I’ve heard the stories of previous outings led by Uncle Fun, so I know better, but Chuck could not resist the call of the wild, and so he flew to Alaska with my family. The rest of us went fishing and hiking after I dropped off Chuck at Uncle Fun’s place near Soldotna, where this modern-day Meriwether Lewis was busy hanging a pair of rough-looking Suzuki 175 outboards on the transom of Tsunami III, a 26-foot aluminum johnboat with a number of fresh welds. The boat has a house around the helm and an open foredeck that can hold four 55-gallon drums of fuel and all the gear for a long week on the river. And Uncle Fun packs a lot of gear. It’s not exactly glamping, but there are folding chairs in the kit.
The four-man team put in at the bridge where the Dalton Highway crosses the Yukon. The mission: Head downriver several hundred miles to the Nowitna River. When the Nowitna becomes too shallow for the big boat, the team would set up camp and explore farther in Tsunami IV, a smaller tunnel johnboat with a jet outboard that was towed along. The goal was to find agates and mastodon fossils, both of which are scoured from the river banks each spring by ice.
Space does not permit me to recount more details of the trip: an encounter with Francie, the owner of the fuel depot in Tanana, who was floating the river in a pink vinyl Flamingo; running hard aground at full throttle on the Nowitna; the unexpected heat wave that rotted much of their provisions; or running out of fuel 10 miles short of Tanana on the return leg.
And the mosquitoes.
“We needed three drums of fuel and one drum of DEET,” Chuck said. “And I wished I was constipated.”
For all that trouble, the boys did not see a single agate. The banks had been picked clean by collectors seen filling 5-gallon pails with the stones. The scenery along the river was monotonous. The droning of the outboards was mind-numbing. The mosquitoes were relentless. Chuck did come home with a mastodon tooth and many great stories to share this winter over a warming libation at the Lake View Inn bar.
“Would you like to see my mastodon tooth?” Chuck asked. “I’ve got it outside in my truck.”
That’s the perfect North Woods pickup line.
The goal was to find agates and mastodon fossils, both of which are scoured from the river banks each spring by ice.