The Alaskan Spirit

I know that it’s a bit odd that in a column that is at least nominally about bass fishing I continue to write about Alaska – the one state that almost certainly doesn’t have a reproducing population of bass – but hear me out: there’s much to be gained from talking to those who live in the Last Frontier.

I consider myself a fairly adventurous person – my goal is to see as much and do as much as I can within reason, while also planning for the future. That means that not only have I been to the heart of the Amazon, and to remote Africa, and of course Alaska, via helicopter, float plane and rickety boat, but also that I’ve lived productively in New York City. There isn’t much that fazes me, but the folks of Alaska continue to impress.

Take, for example, the two young women we met on top of Punchbowl Glacier, who spend five days at a time up there in trailers without electricity tending to an Iditarod team of sled dogs. When the topic of South America came up, one of them mentioned that she’d spent last winter motorcycling from Peru to Argentina. There’s also the woman we met in the town of King Salmon, who said she’d insisted that her 17 year-old get his pilot’s license “because he really likes to fish” and she wanted him to be able to use the family’s plane to access some remote areas. I can’t forget about our float plane pilot Rod, who missed his native Maine terribly, but said he had “the best job in the world” and could not move home because he’d miss the daily flights too much.

The stories like that are the rule rather than the exception there. So are kids who take a plane to all of their high school basketball games, or have a shortened school year to accommodate the subsistence hunting season. I feel remarkably self-reliant when I can learn the FG knot, but the folks up there are truly next level. If you haven’t been, you need to go, and make sure you spend some time talking to the people who live there.