Great Happenings in the Great Land

It's been one hell of a week here in Ketchikan. September is generally the time when Mother Nature presses the button to release the hounds of inclement weather, and an iron curtain of rain and gloom descends upon the land until the following May. This year, however, she's either extremely distracted or completely insane, because the past seven days have been warm, blue skied, and sunny. There's a chill in the morning that feels like fall, real fall, not soggy, grey, Alaskan fall. The days are markedly shorter, the sun setting ever farther to the south, giving way to an incredible expanse of stars in the clear night sky. Birds and seasonal workers alike are getting restless to move on to southern climes and the alpine areas are taking on a rosy autumnal hue. Beaches and streams are clogged with dead and dying salmon, stinking to high heaven. Ah, yes, fall in Alaska.

Our mission this week was stocking up woodsheds for the winter on several cabins. We stayed at the southeast end of Heckman Lake in the cabin there, boated over to Heckman's other cabin, and hiked down to the cabin at Jordan Lake. On the flight out we caught sight of two Humpback whales, their huge forms suspended in the water down below us. One of them was apparently wounded, because each spout was a red-tinted mist, leaving a bright trail through the green water.

The woodsheds went quickly with five pairs of hands and some conveniently located trees, leaving us time and energy to explore the lake by boat and foot. Amazingly enough a handful of salmon had made it all the way up the Naha River, past bears, eagles, and a significant waterfall, to the outlet of Heckman Lake. Watching those couple fish, white-tinged with decay and swimming slowly in place, you had to wonder if they knew what they were in for when they first started upstream. Do they contemplate their own fishy mortalities as they batter their way up a river they'd left years before? As little orphaned fry there were no parents or aunts or uncles to tell them what to expect: a couple years of open ocean wanderings, a taxing return home, one frenetic orgy of reproduction, and then slow, inevitable death. It's probably better that they don't know, as a large percentage would probably say "screw that", run away and join the circus. That doesn't bode well for the propagation of a species. I'm just glad my life cycle has significantly more flexibility than that of the salmon.