It’s my third day in Alaska visiting my cousin Jason. I landed at 8:30pm (which is 12:30 am EST) on Thursday night but the sun doesn’t set until 11:30PM so you very quickly lose any concept of time here. Day one was beautiful: and it began with an email from one of my best friends announcing that she got an engaged: Congratulations Amy and Trey!!!!! OK back to our regularly scheduled programming: It was an incredibly warm, blue-sky day and we took Josie, the mooching wonder dog, and hiked Flat Top Mountain in Anchorage. Green hills, purple flowers, dark blueberries – where was the Lucky Charms Leprechaun I wondered. That night his roommate Justin grilled salmon (that he caught) and many of their friends came over for dinner. So for a first day, pretty great.
The second day was quite a ride. I’ll begin by saying I started Harry Potter on the flight from Dallas to Anchorage. My nose was buried in the book and Jason and Justin, having both read it, understood completely. The morning of day two was gloomy and I was finishing the novel, went to sit on the floor by the sliding glass door willing the sun to appear. And within moments it did. (Jason thinks I have the Shining.) We were going to hike some other mountain but Justin invited us to come hang out, fish and picnic by a creek and hopefully catch some salmon.
Justin drove with Meghan, a doctor doing her residency here, and I left with Jason. After spending more than an hour in a Fred Meyer (super center grocery store like place), getting fishing licenses and some food, we set out to meet their friends Alex, Sarah, their son Ian Shennanigan (a contest was held to choose his middle name), Sarah’s sister visiting from San Diego, and Lea an immigration attorney.
After about two hours Meghan and I went for a walk searching for a ladies room at this particular park. We didn’t find one. But we did find an enormous Moose just wandering around. At first I thought he was a horse. He was huge and could have easily stepped over the fence that provided pedestrians with a false sense of security and is most likely there as a visual prop to line the path to the what turned out to be a closed visitor center.
After snapping off a few photos, with Meghan whispering don’t get too close he looks like he could take the fence, we went back to our picnic site and the fisherman of the group, Justin, decided it was time to move on to the prime fishing spot to catch silvers and pink salmon.
The first place we drove to had no fish, but Justin found a huge hook in the water. We drove to another location, Lea attempting to fix her brand new pole which became tangled in wire immediately after her first cast. We had cut the wire and it was still a jumbled mess as we arrived at our next location. As we hiked down to the waters edge, through mud, around giant leafy itchy stinging plants, Lea stopped short and looking down, we could see the recently cut line and hook was now planted in the back of her calf. She had hooked herself.
Typically, if something like this were to happen on one of my trips, I would be the injured party. I have a SchlepRock tendency to get maimed, injured, dislocated, or neurologically damaged in stellar fashion. And I felt especially bad, because about ten minutes earlier I had a vision of the hook getting caught in her leg. I think it was less a Psychic Hotline moment and more a “Hmm, that hook is just dangling and isn’t latched onto anything. That is going to hurt.”
Fortunately, we had a doctor with us. Unfortunately, she had a broken hand and the hook was planted pretty deep and although the barb was small, it was sufficient. Justin and Dr. Meghan went back to her house to get provisions. Lea tried to remove the hook herself – but the barb made it too difficult and painful. Jason, uncorked a bottle of wine, and began to sedate the patient.
Dr. Meghan returned with gauze, Band-Aids, cuticle scissors and Vicodin. Shortly after administering the second form of sedation, and icing the area to numb it, surgery began.
It felt at times like being on a wilderness show – like ‘Man vs. Wild’, or in pioneer days when surgery was performed with little or no anesthesia. After basically cutting her skin away with cuticle scissors, and Lea feeling everything, the hook was safely removed.
Not to make the entire day a loss I jokingly said to a rather dejected and fishless Justin, “Well, you might as well fish.” He tried to repair Lea’s tangled rod but it was shot so he used Jason’s instead. One cast in, and the line yanked. He caught a fish. On one cast. In a basically empty creek.
Although I have fished as a kid, I have no memory or knowledge of what happens to a fish after it is caught and reeled in. I generally passed the rod off to my dad and next thing I new the fish was dead and in a bucket or thrown back into the water. But I was on a wilderness show today and even though I spent the next few moments with my fingers in my ears, facing the other way and saying ‘La La La La La La La’ very loud, I did catch instances where I saw my cousin, the mild mannered ACLU attorney, bludgeon the fish with an empty bottle of wine. And when I say bludgeon, I mean blood drenched-wine-bottle -whack-the-bajesus-out-of-this-fish with a maniacal expression that read more Friday the 13th’s Jason Voorhees than my Supreme Court “Bong Hits for Jesus” arguing cousin.
It was a full on day. A moose, a hooking, a fish. We even watched a salmon swim upstream to lay its eggs and followed a beaver as he swam around and built a damn. The day concluded with Jason and I grilling the fish (which turned out to be the kind you can’t catch and keep – ummmm….oooops?) and then going to see the Simpsons Movie – I had no idea about the Alaska scenes and it seemed fortuitous to see if here.
All in all, a great second day in Alaska. Sunday morning involved Jason speaking at the Unitarian Universalist Church about his free speech case which went before the Supreme Court. He was great. I am finishing up this blog entry as I eat a bagel with Lachs (they don’t spell it Lox and I don’t know why but it is local Salmon and it is fantastic). We are going to go fishing for about an hour and then drive to Homer. We might be back tomorrow. Who knows?
