The Final Frontiersman

by James Campbell

  A year later, Heimo was bound for Fort Yukon, hoping to reverse his fortunes. In the late 1970s, according to longtime trapper and fur buyer Dean Wilson, “The fur market was hotter than a pistol.” Heimo knew that at the rate he’d been going he couldn’t hold out much longer. His fur take had been so small that he could barely scrape together enough money to outfit himself with food, much less buy new traps to add to the four dozen traps his mother had bought him so he could extend his lines. If he didn’t find good fur country soon, Heimo feared, the woman’s prophecy would turn out to be correct.

  Paul Jagow, a New York City-born trapper who came into the country in the late 1970s and still lives there for six months a year with his family, sheds some light on Heimo’s situation. “You can be a romantic about living in the bush,” he says. “I am. But it’s important to pursue something economically, too. You really don’t know a place until you have to make money there. Hikers may love the land, but they’re only passing through. Trapping is a small part of the experience, but it’s an essential part. It binds you to the land. And cash is a part of the rural economy; it has been for a hundred years. Besides, the winters can get terribly long, and you have to keep busy to stay sane.”

  Near the end of his stay on the Chandalar, Heimo contemplated calling home and asking for money, but that idea didn’t last long. By the time he landed in Fort Yukon, he had already dismissed it. Another option was to go to one of Alaska’s end-of-the-road bush villages, such as Circle or Central or Eagle, but none of those places had ever appealed to him. They were frontier towns, sure, but they weren’t the wilderness. Finally, there was Fairbanks. But if he took a wage-paying job in Fairbanks, he thought, he might as well just go home where he had friends and family. So Heimo came to Fort Yukon asking a lot of questions.

  He inquired among the locals about a new trapping territory. Initially, he had his sights set on the Yukon Flats, a 10,000-square-mile chunk of lowland, larger than Lake Erie, made up of swamp and bog and 36,000 lakes and muskeg ponds. The Yukon Flats were lynx country, and at $200 a pelt, Heimo was eager to start trapping lynx. But the answers he got were hardly encouraging. With fur prices as high as they were, other trappers had already staked out much of the Flats, which were closer to Fort Yukon and could be reached by river, and Heimo knew that trappers, like miners, were not the type of people to take kindly to another man’s intrusion. They wouldn’t have any hesitation about taking the law into their own hands. Hence he stayed clear of the Yukon Flats.

  Then he heard the name that would figure prominently in the rest of his life—the Coleen—pronounced alternately “CO-leen” (long o) or Col-EEN (short o)—a French word, some said, meaning “little hills,” because of the hills that could be found at the river’s mouth. Heimo first heard about the Coleen River from an old Fort Yukon Indian who told him that there was fur to be had there. Much of the Coleen, the man said, had only been nominally trapped. Native hunters and trappers never had the tradition of going into the country with supplies. Before the 1940s, when the Bureau of Indian Affairs began building schools in bush villages, enticing peripatetic Native families to abandon their year-round wanderings, small Native groups came through, smearing themselves in summer with muskrat grease or an ointment of moose tallow or lard to fend off the mosquitoes. In winter they traveled with birchbark baskets or hardened moose-skin sacks containing hot coals for the next fire. But they were always moving, so they never hunted or trapped the river heavily.

  When a trapper friend, who’d just arrived in Fort Yukon to sell his winter catch, told Heimo that the Coleen area was indeed rich with fur, confirming the old Indian’s report, Heimo was already imagining the river. The friend was trapping on the middle Coleen, and he invited Heimo to trap above him. It was better to have someone he knew trapping in his territory than a stranger. That was all Heimo needed. Like Jim Bridger, he had a “hankerin’ to see more of the country” anyway, and he quickly made preparations to leave Fort Yukon for the Coleen River.

  Heimo bought supplies and arranged for a bush flight. Just when he thought he’d attended to everything, he realized that he was missing maps. The Coleen was unfamiliar country, and he’d need them. Heimo searched Fort Yukon for the maps and discovered that a friend of his who also had his sights set on the Coleen owned the only set in town. The friend, however, didn’t have the money to outfit himself, and he wasn’t about to go out into the country for ten months without supplies. Realizing that Heimo had the jump on him, the friend offered to sell Heimo the set. His asking price—more than ten times what it was worth. Heimo was down to his last $40, but he bought the maps anyway, and he was good-natured about his friend’s banditry. One-upmanship was a trapping tradition. It didn’t matter anyway—Heimo was bound for the Coleen River. “I would have spent my last dime on those maps,” Heimo says. “I couldn’t wait to get out there.”

  The Coleen River is a clear, ice-hearted river, one of several major rivers of northeast Alaska helping to drain an area as large as the state of Texas. It is also remote. Its headwaters lie 160 miles above the Arctic Circle. Heimo’s nearest neighbors would be the trapper friend who had told him about the Coleen—he lived fifty-five miles downriver—and a small group of Athabaskans who were trapping at the river’s mouth where it met the Porcupine River, one hundred miles downriver.

  Heimo discovered that the area where he would be on the Coleen was once the upper reaches of the trapping territory of Ed Owens, a legendary miner-trapper from Hanging Gulch, Oklahoma, who came to the Coleen in the early 1900s and died there in the 1960s. Owens always said that he was “born a prospector.” He trapped only enough to make money to finance his mining forays, always certain that one day he would strike it rich. Between trapping and mining, Owens and his wife found the time to raise a family, and a number of the area creeks still bear the names of his daughters.

  Owens was a large man of prodigious strength. Folks in Fort Yukon claimed that he could dance and drink all night and snowshoe forty miles the following day. In the 1920s the country was a web of well-used trails, which made the walking easier; breaking trail would have been impossible even for a man of Owens’s stamina. Nevertheless, forty miles in a day was a feat of nearly incredible proportions.

  Owens was as surly as he was strong. Miners and trappers knew not to get too close to Ed Owens’s country. Rumor had it that one particularly brazen trapper insisted on venturing into his area, ignoring others’ advice to stay away. One day the trapper just disappeared. Some say that Owens discovered tracks near his trapline and followed them to an abandoned line cabin. There, Owens found the trespasser and promptly shot him.

  Abel Tritt, an Arctic Village Gwich’in elder who had befriended Heimo while Heimo was on the Chandalar, was in Fort Yukon at the time Heimo was preparing to head out for the Coleen. Abel had heard of Heimo’s intention to trap on the upper part of the river and was eager to tell Heimo what he knew.

  In 1919, when Abel was only seven, his family left the Chandalar River country in February at 40 below, setting off for the Old Crow drainage, a grueling trip of 150 miles. When they reached the Coleen River, they ran into a small herd of caribou, and Abel’s father shot a large bull. They arrived in the Old Crow Flats country in mid-March and trapped muskrat until late spring. Then they walked to the village of Old Crow, where they shot more caribou. Fashioning caribou skin boats supported by green willow frames, they floated down the Porcupine to Fort Yukon, where they traded skins for supplies. In late June, they walked the 160 miles back to the Chandalar.

  Abel’s story captured Heimo’s imagination, particularly the part about Abel’s father shooting the caribou on the Coleen. Both his trapper friend and an old Fort Yukon Indian told Heimo that caribou commonly traveled through the Coleen River country in July and August en route to their wintering grounds in the Ogilvie Mountains of Canada’s Yukon Territory. In May and June, he was told, they often came again, roaming back to their coastal plain calving area. But this was the first Heimo heard o
f caribou along the Coleen in early spring. This was good news, and he knew that Abel Tritt was not a man who took liberties with the truth. If Abel Tritt said there were caribou on the Coleen in spring, there were caribou.

  When Heimo left Fort Yukon for the Coleen River in June 1978, he was laying down roots that would bind him to Alaska forever. Beaver Creek and the Chandalar were temporary stopping points, acts in an adventurous play. He had sworn the day he left that he’d never return to Wisconsin. But before he came to the Coleen, Heimo still had his doubts—could he really make it in the Alaskan wilderness?

  The Coleen River changed all that. Though Heimo had never considered himself a spiritual pilgrim, the Coleen saved him. On Beaver Creek and the Chandalar, he was staying in friends’ cabins. On the Coleen River he would build his own. It would be the first real home he had since leaving Wisconsin, and he was filled with hope. He could not know then that the river he loved one day would turn on him.

  That first summer on the Coleen, Heimo enjoyed the company of his thirteen-year-old brother, Tom. Tom was fascinated by his oldest brother’s life and had been dreaming of this trip since Heimo told him that he’d welcome a visit.

  Tom had almost two months free for the trip. He would have to return to Wisconsin in early August before school began, and Heimo would leave to guide for Keith Koontz. In that time, there was much work to be done and country to see.

  Tom was the first family member to visit Heimo in the three years since he left home. It was a big responsibility, caring for his thirteen-year-old brother; Irene Korth made sure Heimo understood that. But Tom was enough like Heimo that she knew she couldn’t refuse to allow him to visit. Tom had been only ten, nothing more than a kid, when Heimo left home, and he admired his older brother.

  According to Heimo, Tom’s relationship with Erich Korth was much closer than his own had been. Heimo wonders if his father had mellowed, if as the youngest child of the family Tom had been spared the outbursts, the beatings. Perhaps Erich Korth had changed his expectations since Heimo left home. Maybe Tom had been allowed to grow up at his own pace with his own dreams. Could it be that Erich Korth had learned something from his relationship with his older son, that he was aware of the mistakes he’d made with Heimo and was determined to make good with his youngest son?

  Still, when Tom came to visit, Heimo regarded him as his personal project. He was eager to play the role of the big brother. Because Erich Korth had never introduced Heimo to the woods, Heimo assumed that Tom was similarly impoverished. Heimo had seven weeks to introduce his brother to the woods, and not just any woods, but Alaska, the granddaddy of them all.

  A bush pilot flew in the two of them and all their provisions in late June, but the pilot had a hard time finding a place to land. Fortunately, he was flying a floatplane. After surveying the area that Heimo had pinpointed on the map, he located a lake a mile and a half from the river. Heimo had hoped that he’d be able to land on the river, but it was still dangerously high with runoff and the pilot was concerned about hitting a submerged log. Heimo knew what that meant: The pilot would land on a lake, and he and Tom would have to pack in all their provisions to the river. Fortunately, Heimo didn’t have much. In addition to the food, he’d brought out a chain saw, a tent, sleeping bags, an ax, spikes, and nails for building a cabin. Still, lugging the supplies from the drop-off site to the river would require many trips.

  It took Heimo and his brother Tom the better part of two days to lug everything to the river. In winter with snow cover, the trip would have been a less arduous one, but in early June, with water flooding the land and a maze of muskeg, like an obstacle course, sucking at their boots and tripping them when they weren’t careful, it proved to be exhausting. Tom worked without complaining, but at thirteen he hardly had the strength to carry heavy loads.

  Once they had packed in all the provisions, Heimo and Tom walked up the river, searching for a suitable place to build a cabin. They didn’t have to look hard. After only a quarter of a mile, Heimo discovered a sizable stand of timber. His only problem was that it was on a large island. Wading the river wasn’t an option, since the river was high and still roiling with spring runoff. So Heimo had to make a decision—did they wait, biding their time until the river played itself out, or did they attempt a crossing? Heimo didn’t deliberate long. He was eager to get on with his life. They would risk a crossing. He and Tom would fashion a raft and pole across.

  Using his chain saw, Heimo toppled four white spruce trees. Then he cleared out an area and built a smudge fire, coaxing the fire with dry black spruce to keep it fueled, adding green willow boughs for smoke. Heimo sectioned the trees into ten logs, each ten-feet long. Tom limbed them with an ax. Because of the swarms of mosquitoes, newly hatched and hungry, they worked as near to the fire as they could. When either of them strayed from the fire, though, the mosquitoes were relentless, and Heimo worried that Tom might not be able to hold up.

  In addition to the mosquitoes and wondering if he was working Tom too hard, Heimo had another concern—meat. Though he’d flown in food, it was not enough to carry him and Tom for more than a few weeks. He’d wanted to bring in more, but he was low on money and could only buy the essentials—flour, oatmeal, spinach, noodles, and tea. He knew that soon he’d need to kill a caribou.

  After their first day of work, Tom and Heimo sat outside their tent near the smudge fire. They were sticky with sweat and reeked of wood smoke. After a supper of noodles and a can of spinach each, Tom crawled into the tent and fell almost instantly to sleep. Heimo sat by the fire and fretted. Did he dare risk the river crossing? Would he be able to shoot a caribou or a bear? In July there would be grayling, but now the river was too muddy for grayling—they were lying in the feeder creeks waiting for the river to clear up.

  That night, sitting by the fire, listening to Tom snore in the tent, Heimo chain-smoked, lighting a second cigarette before he snuffed out the one he was smoking. He was dragging on a fresh cigarette, pulling in deeply and filling his lungs with smoke, when he saw movement on the riverbank. Though it was 11 P.M., it was broad daylight. There it was again, in the willows ten feet from the river’s edge. He was certain this time. His 300 Winchester Magnum rifle was leaning on a log next to him. Slowly he grabbed it, brought it up to his shoulder, and sighted it in on the bushes. He pressed his cheek against the stock of the gun and watched. When the animal appeared, Heimo’s heart jumped—a big bull caribou. The pregnant cows, followed by their yearling calves, had come through earlier. He and Tom had found their tracks and beaten trails leading to the river.

  The bull emerged from the willows and stopped at the riverbank, anxious about the crossing. Heimo knew he’d have to take him soon. In the water the bull would be an easy target, but Heimo would never recover the meat. Heimo sighted in on the bull’s neck. He took a deep breath and blew out half the air, then held it. Slowly he pulled back on the trigger. The shot sounded and the caribou’s legs buckled. Tom stormed out of the tent and discovered Heimo dancing in front of the fire. They would have meat for the summer.

  Under the midnight sun, Heimo gutted the caribou and then showed Tom how to build a smoke rack. With temperatures certain to reach the eighties, Heimo knew that the meat would not keep for long. They would have to smoke most of it and subsist on drymeat until the grayling returned to the river. Heimo cut the caribou into strips and salted them in a mixing bowl of clear creek water from an upriver stream while Tom gathered dead willow sticks. After the meat had salted for thirty minutes, Tom slid the sticks through the strips of meat and then placed the sticks on the rack over a fire. Working steadily in the light of the Alaskan summer night, they cut and hung the entire caribou by early the next morning.

  A few days later, they finished the raft. Near a slow spot in the river, Heimo found a place from which to launch it. They loaded their gear, and ten minutes later Heimo pushed off from the bank with his long pole, casting his and Tom’s lot with the hard-running river.

  It was exhil
arating, at first, the wild tug of the current. Using the eight-foot poles, Heimo and Tom managed to guide the raft safely into the middle of the river. Everything was going well; the raft was holding up. Thirty more feet and the riverbank would be theirs. Heimo went to plant his pole to steer the raft around a large deadhead log protruding from the water’s surface when he realized that something was seriously wrong. He stuck his pole in again and tried to push off. He felt nothing but water. Stay calm, he thought, it’s just a deep hole. He tried again, removing his pole and digging it in on the other side of the raft, stabbing at the water, searching in vain for the river bottom. Tom was lunging frantically, too.

  Heimo knew they were in serious trouble; the water was deeper than their poles were long. Without the poles, they had no way to maneuver the raft in the fast current. They were at the mercy of the river. The current whipped them downstream. Then Heimo saw it—a large white spruce tree, its roots pulled from the ground, the main portion of its trunk dangling over the river. “Sweeper!” he yelled. The next thing he knew the sweeper caught him in the hips and threw him into the water. He made a swipe for the raft, but missed and was dragged under by the current. He fought back to the water’s surface and fumbled again for a handhold. This time he grabbed one of the logs, but all he could do was hold on. He didn’t have the strength to pull himself up. Tom was poling and screaming, and the water was cold and Heimo was tiring. Just once, he thought; I have to try to get on the raft. Heimo threw a leg up and fell back into the water. He threw a leg over the raft again and wrestled his upper body onto the logs. He was retching now, throwing up river water. Though he managed to pull himself to the middle of the raft, he was too weak to help Tom.