CHAPTER 1

GETTING STARTED

The roar from the gun was deafening, even with the ear protectors. The punishment meted out, however, was only to my shoulder. Downrange, the third small hole that instantaneously appeared in the paper touched the previous two holes, and all were just a tad high, within an inch of the center ring.

"Enough paper shooting for me," I said. "God wouldn't have put blood into a critter if he hadn't intended 'em to bleed. Th is rifle is ready to go." With the task of sighting in the guns completed, we were on our way.

Gus and I had been planning for two weeks. For us, that was a long time. The usual trip, whether it was for hunting, fishing, or trapping, was planned with nothing more than a short phone call the night before. We had been on some foolhardy outings before, but for two over-the-hill sheep hunters, this one was big.

In years past, we had chased after with gun, rod, trap, or snare nearly every species of animal that Alaska had to offer. All outings were successful; a good percentage even netted meat for the freezer or furs to be sold. Success shouldn't be measured by the size of the trophy, but by the good times and memories that the trip produced. Born of a deep respect for the animals and the land, Gus and I had developed a kinship that had lasted solidly for the past two decades.

My forty-seven years made me the youngster on the trip. Gus never called me Charlie, but rather, "the Kid"; but he himself would never fess up to an actual age. If I had to guess, I would have said sixty when I saw him in his behind-the-desk, oil executive role during most of the year. A vastly different guess would have been warranted when I was with him in the mountains. He was transposed from a serious and efficient administrator to a twenty-five-year-old happy-go-lucky hellion, full of practical jokes, wry humor, and an ever-present Copenhagen bulge in his lip. Most trips on which we spent more than three or four nights, Gus would develop a brown stain on his graying whiskers from the tobacco spittle that he never quite figured out how to eject fully past his chin. Actually, he was probably no more than ten years my senior. I would never know.

Twenty or twenty-five years old was probably a safe age for Dall sheep hunters. Much past that, and most of us aren't willing to bust our asses to get "just one more drainage over" to find that forty-inch ram. Gus and I had each taken four rams; and those sheep hunts, whether we punched our tags or not, had always been the ones most talked about over the frequent poker games, campfires, or midnight drives to the nearest salmon stream. Because all sheep hunts entailed long packs over pretty serious terrain, neither of us ever brought along a camera. It was regarded as a two-pound luxury, and when every ounce was critical, we always opted for a plastic flask of Wild Turkey in its place. That way, Gus always argued, we could vividly describe the glacier-covered mountains, the snow-covered tents, and the awesome size of the rams; and nobody could dispute our claims. With pictures, it was easier for someone to point out all the bullshit we were shoveling out.

It was morning of the eleventh of September. A few fall days had hit the Anchorage bowl, but the Chugach Range above town had an inviting skiff of "termination dust" coating the upper three thousand feet. We knew we were pushing the weather, but Gus and I'd both had professional commitments that we had somehow let interfere with our hunting season. My minerals exploration business kept me and several employees busy during the short field season of Alaska's summers.

We were finally loaded up and on the road in Gus's big Ford. A Subaru wagon went scooting past us on the Glenn Highway, and Gus made some profane remark about the truthfulness of the guy's bumper sticker: "Happiness Is Anchorage in the Rearview Mirror." Gus claimed he disliked bumper stickers but, nonetheless, had a couple of his own. One was actually a National Rifle Association membership sticker, the other a bona fide bumper sticker that his wife had covertly plastered there in response to another hunting season she spent alone: "Nuke the Unborn Gay Whales."

We had made arrangements with Mica Meyers, a well-known sourdough and hunting guide, to provide us with air transportation to a remote area near the head of the Matanuska Glacier in the Chugach Mountains. Gus and I had flown with him on many previous hunting trips and were more than comfortable with his knowledge of his planes and the country. Gus always referred to Mica as Mr. Time, not because of his seeming ability to never age, but because of his ability to always be a day or two late picking us up. Gus always remarked that he always showed up in the nick of time, just before the last of the freeze-dried food was forcing us toward suicide.

Three hours later, and still an hour early, we pulled in to the Myers' driveway. Gus was expounding on the certain desirability of Mica's twenty-five-year-old daughter, when he suddenly jerked the pickup off the dirt road and into the pea-gravel borrow pit. An abrupt stop was punctuated with an even more abrupt expletive, as the high-pitched roar of a SuperCub drowned out the string of adjectives flowing from Gus's spit-stained lips. The Cub had lifted off the driveway no more than thirty yards in front of us, and the oversized tundra tires of the plane had missed us by less than the antler spread of a yearling bull moose.

I reminded Gus that the hand-painted "Caution — Aircraft" sign was not to be taken lightly, as Mr. Time's driveway was also his landing strip under certain wind conditions. Gus's only reaction was to step out of the truck then drop his red long handles to moon the airplane as it circled back over us to see if we were still alive. Gus drove the remaining four hundred yards in the borrow pit, reluctant to chance another encounter with a propeller.

We were met at the house by a scruffy black mutt who bore a slight resemblance to a shepherd. He stood up and emitted a hoarse bark but seemed to be looking several degrees to our left. He hobbled down off the porch, limped over to an equally scruffy black spruce, and slowly grabbed a branch in his mouth. He shook the branch a few times, and getting no response, he plopped back down. I knocked on the door; and the black mutt staggered to his three feet, gummed the spruce a few more times, and drooped his head. No response came from within the house. Scruffy headed back for the porch, bumped smack-dab into Gus, raised his leg, and pissed on Gus's boot, before he stumbled back up the stairs. I pointed out that the dog had more excuse than some people who treated Gus with as much respect. The old cur's eyes were the color of milk; he had one foot missing, probably lost to one of Mica's traps; and the fleshy end of his nose was a jumbled mass of wet scar tissue. That old boy could probably attest to the rigors of bush life better than most of this country's so-called sourdoughs. Being blind in one eye and not able to see out of the other, the dog had probably mistaken Gus for the spruce. The puddle of piss that Gus was standing in wasn't meant as a gesture of disrespect.

Over the next two hours while we awaited Mica's return, Gus and I wandered around the several outbuildings Mica had accumulated over the past half century. A screened meat shed held several moose and caribou quarters, hung in neat rows and enveloped in individual cotton meat sacks. The strong smell of black pepper hung in the air, an often-used method to repel blowflies from aging meat.

The airplane hangar door was open, and parts of at least twenty different planes littered the surroundings. A Federal Aviation Administration certificate proclaiming that Mr. Mica M. Meyers had twenty thousand hours of logged flight time was thumbtacked above the workbench. It attested to the fact that all the wrecked aircraft were probably salvaged by Mica, not caused by him. The date on the certificate was 1971. Gus and I wondered just how many hours old Mr. Time had accumulated in the intervening fifteen years.

On the hangar wall next to the FAA certificate was an old black chalkboard. A neatly hand-printed table listed departure dates, number of people, drop-off location, and pick-up dates and times of about eight hunting parties that Mica had out. Since few of the air taxi operators in Alaska outfitted all their planes with radio equipment, it seemed like a good system for keeping track of all the clients and was, in effect, an informal flight plan should anything go wrong.

Charlie Lander/Gus Harms, 9/11/86-noon, Futility Landing Strip, and 9/21/86-noon were all neatly printed as the bottom entry. All departure and pick-up times were listed as noon. This was Mica's way of saying he'd be there when he got there, and noon was easy to write.

"Futility Landing Strip" was our listed destination. For some reason that didn't sound overly inviting. Gus insisted, however, that Mica's spelling was probably not too good; he thought it was called Fertility Strip. Gus had a humorous way of squashing any remnants of doubt I had.

Mica pulled the mixture knob stopping the prop, and the Cub coasted to a stop alongside the plywood hangar. He dropped the airplane's door and backed out of the small cockpit, hopping to the ground. With a broad grin and a boisterous howdy, he climbed the pole ladder, retrieved the gas hose, and hopped up on the plane's grossly oversized, mushy tire. He inserted the nozzle in the wing tank and spryly hopped back to the ground. As he walked over, the old black mutt limped toward us too; and at the sound of Mica's voice, I could almost see a wag of the scraggly tail.

"Ol' Smokey's looking pretty tired!" Gus shouted.

"If you'd been chewed on by a grizz, frostbit on the face, spent three nights in a wolf trap at 50 below, and not had any female companionship for three years, I 'spect you'd be a bit testy too!" Mica hollered back.

I would have bet a month's wages on what Gus would say next. He always said it.

"Hello, Mr. Meyers. By god, you're just in time. I figured the full moon I flashed you a couple hours ago would keep you flying for the next three days!"

Mica laughed as we all shook hands and went through the "how are ya" formalities. We immediately got down to the business at hand.

Gus asked Mica about the sheep populations and the weather forecasts. As we helped transfer more moose quarters from the back of the Cub to the meat shed, Mica filled us in on the particulars.

"You boys know the weather could change anytime, and chances of tipping over a sheep are a bit lower'n poor should a storm hit. Findin' a white critter in a snowstorm's harder'n findin' a virgin in a whorehouse," Mica yelled. Mica always yelled. Twenty thousand hours in a small airplane doesn't result in acute hearing.

According to Mica, Flight Service was predicting that the big low pressure moving in from the Gulf of Alaska would boil over the Chugach Range and into the Copper River Basin by late afternoon. They were forecasting winds aloft that would produce some moderate to severe turbulence, and some snow was expected above three thousand feet. As far as I was concerned, that wasn't necessarily bad news. Flight Service was almost always wrong, so chances are it would be good weather for a while. "Katie, bar the door" when they predicted clear skies and unlimited visibility. Tie down the planes and get ready for a storm.

The aviation gas was splashing into an ever-widening puddle behind the right wing of the Cub when we returned from the meat shed. Mica calmly climbed up on the landing gear, pulled the hose from the wing, and walked around the front of the plane to reinsert the nozzle in the other wing tank. After a few minutes, the second tank was full; but instead of putting our gear in the Cub, Mica yelled that we should pull the truck over to old Delta. From previous trips we'd taken with him, Gus and I knew that Mica named his aircraft based on the last letter in the plane's identification number. Gus and I glanced over the assortment of planes Mica had lined up opposite the hangar and found an old Cessna 180, number N2065D.

While we transferred the backpacks and rifles from the truck to the airplane, Mica and Smokey teamed up to piss in the puddle of spilled avgas. This certainly seemed a bit odd. "What the hell you doin', Mica?" I shouted while Gus stared openmouthed.

"When I was just a pup in this business, I found one day that I was in dire need of some 80-87 avgas. I'd used up all the storage tank had to offer, but I didn't have enough to get to the Oshetna River and back to pick up a hunter. Like a fool, I used the floatplane hand pump to suck up a big overflow puddle I'd made an hour earlier. Well, I drained it through a chamois and into a wing tank. To make a long story short, the gas was bad, the engine quit, and I had to make a forced landing on the tundra where I spent three nights freezing my ass. Since then, every time I spill some gas, I piss in it just so I won't be tempted to use it."

Gus muttered something about the Iranians doing the same thing in their oil but how it still always brings a better price than Alaskan crude.

Mica primed the engine a couple of times and hit the starter button on the old Cessna. In conjunction with a labored whine, the propeller made a half revolution and quit. Three more attempts produced similar results. I hopped from the plane; and with both hands on the prop, one quick downward spin produced a few coughs, some black smoke, and then a blast of air from the prop. As I climbed back aboard, Mica was working the throttle knob back and forth and, at the same time, yelling about the damned "new" battery that he'd just installed in 1975. They apparently didn't make them to last anymore.

We taxied up the road, spun the tail around, and roared back down the road. I hoped anyone else driving down the lane was as quick as Gus at taking to the ditch. We were airborne just after three, plenty of time to get where we'd planned and set up a quick base camp before dark.

Despite Mica's seemingly nonchalant attitude about his equipment and the apparent questionable airworthiness of old Delta, I had no reservations about flying with him. I'd spent a few hundred hours at the controls of light aircraft myself and had flown hundreds of additional hours with some of the best of Alaska's bush pilots. Mica was unquestionably one of the smoothest and safest pilots in the business. The engine purred as he twisted the fuel mixture knob toward lean.

We were cruising at an indicated one hundred and twenty knots at about eight hundred feet above the stunted spruce forests. Below us, the taiga undulated gently with the now-eroded moraines that forty-thousand-year-old glaciers had left behind. The impossibly green spruce was polka-dotted with low swales where permafrost lenses had warmed and melted, leaving untold thousands of catchment basins too wet to support evergreens. These boggy areas nurtured colonies of birch, now blazing with orange and yellow punctuation marks. The low-lying eroded ridgelines had better drained soils where even the spruce thinned out to a scattering of sentinel-like leftovers. Dwarf birch and blueberry filled in most of the gaps, and from our altitude, they lent an inviting carpeted understory. Where the soil was too rocky to support more substantial vegetation, ancient hoof- and claw-scarred trails were the only bare earth showing through carpets of lush caribou lichen, lending an appearance of off-white snow to the ground. This was the land of dreamers. The land of silent awe. This was Alaska.

Periodically, we saw moose in the boggy lakes that dotted the taiga. Trumpeter swans, once on the verge of extinction but now quite common, nested in the area and were beginning to congregate into loose groups of twenty or thirty individuals. The big white adult pairs were usually accompanied by three or four blue-gray cygnets. Countless thousands of ducks dotted the shallow lakes. In a few short weeks, the annual migrations in this country would be over. The ponds and lakes freeze quickly in the short daylight of autumn, and temperatures of fifty to sixty degrees below zero would push the ice deeper and deeper into the lakes. By February, some lakes would have their waters and occupants temporarily entombed by ice over five feet thick.

Caribou bands numbering from a dozen to fifty animals materialized before us then were gone in a flash beneath our slipstream. Following the "crash" of 1972 caused by overhunting and a few severe winters, the herd now numbered over thirty thousand head. Conservative management by the state Fish and Game Department enabled a timely comeback, while still allowing a controlled harvest. Gus and I had enjoyed some spectacular hunts a few miles west of here in previous years.