Heimo finishes his third bowl of oatmeal. “Let’s go look for moose,” he says, getting up from his bucket. A friend of his from Fairbanks is coming out to hunt, and Heimo wants to make sure there’s a moose around for him. Heimo shot his own a few days ago.
Fortunately for Heimo, the moose has extended its range all the way north into the treeless, wind-whipped mountains of the upper Coleen River country, and he can reliably count on getting one each year. In fact, moose can now be found as far north as the Arctic Ocean. Prior to the 1960s, their territory didn’t reach much beyond the marshes and woodlands of the Yukon Flats. Fred Thomas remembers that it was rare to see a moose when he was growing up.
Moose are survivors, capable of subsisting on frozen willows, bark, and twigs during the winter, while they wander the deep snowdrifts of the creek beds to keep out of reach of the wolves. While a grizzly can kill a full-grown moose with one swat to its head, wolves rely on stealth and sheer numbers. When the wind is right, they are on a moose before the animal has a chance to react. They wear it down, cripple it if they can, by attacking its hocks. Then they go for the nose. Eventually, when the moose has little strength left, they rush in for the kill, biting and severing the jugular vein. Before the animal has even bled to death, the wolves begin their feast.
Thirty minutes after breakfast, Heimo and I are fording the river. I stumble and step into a hole, and the cold river water laps over my hip boots. “Youch,” I yelp, bounding toward him.
“Better keep your eyes open. It’s not summer anymore,” he warns me, making reference to my propensity in July for wading into the river until I was waist deep. The joke was that I wore hip boots only for show, since I regularly disregarded the river’s depths when stalking a rising grayling. In summer the water was cold, but not so cold that I was unable to endure it for the time it would take me to make a few casts.
Only four days short of the autumnal equinox, I’ll have to break this habit of mine, since the first day of fall usually signifies the beginning of winter on the upper Coleen. Perhaps Mother Nature has other plans though. It has been warmer than usual, Heimo tells me. The robins are still here, a full two weeks after they should have hightailed it south. Fall-like weather was slow to come, and now winter’s cold appears equally reluctant. However, this could change in a day. Tomorrow I could wake up, walk out of the Arctic oven, and be ankle deep in snow. If the sun is any indication, winter is on its way. It is tired, listless-looking, and casts only a dim yellow light over the land. It’s hard to imagine that only two months ago it was working nearly a twenty-four-hour shift.
“Look at that,” Heimo says, pointing to a riverbank where a grizzly has excavated gaping holes and piled up mounds of dirt in search of Indian potatoes. It hardly seems worth it—so much energy expended just to get at a few tasty tubers. But this time of year the bears are getting ready to den up, and they’re ravenous.
“The wolves didn’t howl last night, but they were howling almost every night before you came,” Heimo tells me, as he examines a bear print. “You’ll like hearing that, won’t you?” He gets up and slaps the dirt from his pants. “I like it, too, but come winter”—he winks at me now— “I’ll be trying to trap them.”
In Alaska, where opinions are fierce and often as intemperate as the weather, few issues elicit more rancor than the trapping of wolves. In 1998, Alaskans were given a chance to voice their opinions. Ballot issue #9 proposed to eliminate the snaring of wolves. It was defeated by a 64 percent majority and left a lot of bitterness on both sides. There are those who regard the wolf as a killing machine, a wasteful predator. Mention Farley Mowatt’s book Never Cry Wolf, and most trappers will simply scoff and say that Mowatt, whom they refer to as “Hardly Knows It,” knows “nothing” about wolves. For others, including many people in the Lower Forty-eight, the wolf is a charismatic symbol of the outdoors, an animal to be revered and protected.
The day that Danny Grangaard brought his wolf skins into Dean Wilson’s office, Wilson and I had a talk about wolves. “The environmentalists,” he explained, “would swear that wolves eat only the old, sick, lame, diseased, and carrion. Other than that, maybe a few rabbits and mice. Wolf haters think they’re wanton killers. They think the only good wolf is a dead wolf. I find both views a little extreme. Natives used to dig out wolf dens in spring and kill the pups to keep the population in check so there was enough wild game for their families. Sometimes wolves will kill indiscriminately—the sick or the healthy, it doesn’t matter to them—and just let the kill lay. Maybe they’ll come back to it, maybe they won’t. I’ve never really understood that. Other times they will come in and consume diseased, sick, and winter-killed animals.”
Now Heimo and I leave the bear diggings behind. We’re walking along the bank when he stops. He glasses east, across the river, in the direction of the heavy timber. “Nothing,” he says, letting the binoculars fall to his chest. “I thought I saw some movement.” Then he looks at me. “You don’t understand how I can talk about wolves like that, do you? How one night I can enjoy the sound of them howling and the next morning I can talk about trapping them.” He continues: “I’m very sincere when I say that I try to trap humanely. I use the right-sized traps for the right animal. The animal’s always going to feel pain, but if the trap is too big or too small, they’ll feel much more of it. Public opinion about trapping is already so bad. I don’t need to make it worse.”
I tell him that I’ve always loved wolves, that seeing one in a trap might be hard for me, but that I respect his right to make a living off the land, and if that means trapping the occasional wolf, well, then, so be it. Trapping, and hunting, too, is what Heimo does; it’s part of what binds him to the land. If he is more callous about the death of an animal than many of us, it is because death is woven into the fabric of his life. He kills to live.
Heimo sits down on the bank and dangles his feet over the river like a little boy sitting at the end of a dock. “People have always worn fur up here. Heck, in Fairbanks even the greenies do. It’s practical. And you’d be hard-pressed to find a perfume that doesn’t contain beaver castor. Now, to me, that’s the most wasteful thing in the world, killing an animal just so people can smell good.” Heimo grabs a smooth round stone and chucks it into the river. “I’m getting worked up, ain’t I?” Then he jumps to his feet. He’s agitated, and he needs to walk, and it’s clear that he has no intention of waiting for me.
“Did I tick you off?” I shout to him as he cuts into the forest, leaving me at the river.
“No,” he yells. “But I’m going to walk you till you drop.”
Fifteen minutes later, we cross a creek. The thin film of ice that has formed on the creek’s surface cracks under our weight, sounding like vegetable oil being poured into a hot skillet. We scale the creek bank and pick up one of Heimo’s trails. One hundred yards down the path, Heimo stops. “Ax cutting,” he says, stooping and running his hand over a tree stump. “It was probably made by a Gwich’in or an Eskimo hunter around the mid-1800s. They were still using stone axes then. You can tell by the cut. It’s rough.” Heimo runs his hand over the stump again and then points to a small clearing in the forest. “Over there is where I sometimes cut wood.”
We’re at least three miles upriver, and I can’t understand why Heimo travels so far upriver for wood, when there are countless dead trees not more than a quarter of a mile from the cabin.
“I’m saving those for our old age,” he says, “when Edna and I will be glad to have firewood close by. While I can still do the work, I use the trees way up here.”
Today is the autumnal equinox, and Heimo, his friend Rick from Fairbanks, who hopes to bag a moose with his bow, and I are walking and scouting. Heimo stops occasionally to cow-call, cupping his hands around his mouth to amplify his interpretation of the bawling of a lusty female searching for a suitor. He calls and we wait, hidden among the willows along a dry creek bed. He calls again, and we listen for grunting and the thrashing of horns. Satisf
ied that there’s no bull around, Heimo says, “Let’s go,” a big grin lighting up his face. We are off again. We cut through a dense copse of willows and then begin a steep climb. Heimo powers up the incline, nearly bounding, losing himself in the utter joy of the hike.
Earlier we were discussing the incremental advance of civilization. The mines, the oil fields, changing values, antitrapping sentiment, and tourism continue their inexorable advance on Alaska’s remote wilderness, threatening to undo Heimo’s way of life. I’d brought up the subject before, and he had evaded it. But now I press him. This being my last visit, there are some things I have to know. “Would you ever consider leaving?”
“The simple answer is no,” Heimo says. “I can’t imagine myself doing anything else. How could I ever leave the place I love?”
Still, love it or not, the option of leaving the bush, at least temporarily, and relocating to Fairbanks or a smaller Alaskan town is one he cannot completely exclude. It would be difficult for Heimo, very difficult, but it is a sacrifice he has entertained. Oil development probably wouldn’t drive him away, nor would a mine, nor would a sudden influx of tourists. But he might consider leaving for Rhonda and Krin.
For Edna the adjustment to town would probably be less complicated. To some extent, she is living Heimo’s dream. She’s learned to love the life, and she’d miss the cabin and the quiet, no doubt, but being in town would sure be a lot easier than being in the bush. She could cook on a range rather than a woodstove, use a real washing machine, have a bathroom with a flush toilet, a mirror and a medicine cabinet, hot and cold running water, and most especially, she could enjoy the company of other women.
How Krin would react is hard to say. Part of her yearns to be surrounded by boys and girls her own age. The other part is young enough and innocent enough to enjoy the serenity and isolation of the river—a dash through the woods with her dog, climbing a tall tree, gathering blueberries, digging for Indian potatoes in spring.
“There’s not much money in it, but I never want to do anything else,” Heimo said this morning, while slipping on his hip boots for the day’s hunt, sounding much like his friend Fred Thomas. I’d asked Thomas what trapping meant to him. “Well,” he said, his eyes shining, “if you’re asking me would I do it all over again if I had the chance, you bet.” Ernie Johnson, a trapper whom Bob Marshall, founder of the Wilderness Society, once asked something similar, said, “I can make better money as a carpenter, but I am staying out here because I like it among these ruggedy mountains better than anywhere else in the world.”
It’s not to say that Heimo is without financial concerns. His catch for the winter of 2001-2002 was seventy marten, eight wolverine, four beaver, and two wolves. With marten bringing only $38 apiece, it was a so-so year. He’ll have to do better this winter. With Rhonda away at school, there are books to buy, clothes, and an occasional ticket to Fairbanks. Once she gets to Fairbanks, Heimo can rely on the generosity of pilot friends to fly Rhonda out to the cabin. His friends won’t ask for anything in return, except perhaps some of Edna’s delicious moose pockets smothered in gravy.
Heimo and I are sitting on a ridge overlooking the Coleen River valley and enjoying the cheese sandwiches and homemade bread Edna sent us off with. Rick found a comfortable spot underneath a tree and promptly fell asleep. Because of their big ears moose have an extraordinary sense of hearing, so Heimo and I are whispering. But it doesn’t matter. Rick is snoring loudly, doing his best impersonation of Fred Flintstone. If there’s a moose in the area he’s heard us and is long gone.
I tell Heimo what Ron Bennett said about him. Bennett is a friend of Heimo’s from when they were both single trappers. “Heimo said from the very beginning that he was going to be a lifer,” Bennett told me. “He’s the last of the mountain men. You gotta envy him doing what he wants, but he’s not really planning for the future. Trapping’s a dead end. Besides, there are too many other things to do in life. How much country can you see? How many different ways can you trap a marten?”
Heimo laughs at this. “Ah, that’s just Bennett. He soured on the country, and he’s just sore that I haven’t soured on it yet. If he’s waiting for that, he’ll have to wait until the day I die. I like this country more all the time. Fortunately, I got Edna. She loves it out here as much as me. Without her, I never would have stayed.”
Heimo plops the last bite of sandwich into his mouth. “See that small mountain over there? That’s what we call Guroy Mountain.”
“Yeah, I know,” I say. “You and I were up there last summer.”
“What I didn’t show you was Coleen’s grave,” Heimo adds. “We never recovered her body, but after she died, I built a cross for her and chiseled out an inscription using a screwdriver and a hammer. Edna filled in the letters with a Magic Marker. It says, ‘Coleen Ann Korth 5/29/82. Died 6/3/84.’ We put up the cross at the top of the mountain. When we’re at the upper cabin, we climb Guroy and spend the afternoon and talk about Coleen. We bring fresh flowers. It’s hard on Edna, but it’s something we like to do.”
Heimo pauses. “Did I ever tell you that we petitioned the Board on Geographic Names to get them to name that peak over there Coleen Ann Mountain? We submitted a proposal for state approval. What the state wrote back really chafed me. The letter said that she was of no ‘historical significance.’ So I wrote the governor, Steve Cooper, and Congressman Don Young. They both fought for it. But the board still said no. They said we needed a petition. I did that, too. I started a petition and got hundreds of names. They still said no. Finally, I just got tired of trying.”
Tomorrow I leave the river, but for today there is work to be done. Late yesterday afternoon, Rick shot a moose. When the arrow hit, the moose thundered off, crashing through the forest. We followed the blood trail and eventually found it a quarter mile from where Rick stuck his arrow. He had punctured the moose’s kidney, so it didn’t go far.
Rick was excited. The moose was huge with an immense symmetrical rack, nearly 74 inches across, Rick figured, admiring it as a possible Pope & Young bow-hunting record. For Heimo a moose means only one thing—meat. He doesn’t give a hoot about records, so he went to work on it, and was soon buried up to his elbows in flesh and blood. Rick took pictures—I couldn’t blame him; it was an impressive animal— and then he pitched in, too. With the two of them working on the moose, there was little I could do but watch. After nearly two hours of cutting, they were almost finished, and Heimo instructed me to build a fire. We had given up on the idea of getting the meat back to the cabin that night. We were downriver and it was too dark to line a canoe loaded with moose upriver. The hope was that the fire would smolder for much of the night and keep away the bears.
The plan then was to go back to the cabin and get a good night’s rest. The following morning Rick would get his plane, which he had parked on a gravel bar above the cabin, and try to locate a gravel bar near the kill site where it was safe to land. While he was doing that, Heimo and I would float down in the canoe, load the meat, and paddle downriver to whatever bar Rick found. It was going to be a lot easier than the way Heimo usually does it.
Heimo has to pack out his moose alone, for one thing. That’s why he always takes a small one. And he likes to get his early in the rut when the meat and the organs are at their tastiest. Later in the rut, after the lusty bulls have been lapping up cow urine, the liver, in particular, is no good. He also makes sure to shoot his moose near the river and always upriver so he can float it down. Years ago, when he was younger and stronger, he wasn’t so picky. But it didn’t take him long to figure out that he was making a lot of extra work for himself.
It is early, and Rick has already gone off to get his plane and search for a gravel bar downriver. Heimo and I are polishing off the last of the oatmeal, which he will replenish when he goes to Fort Yukon and then to Fairbanks to buy food supplies for the winter. Edna is sitting at the edge of her sleeping platform, using part of a caribou horn to scratch her back. The caribou horn back s
cratcher was a birthday present from Rhonda and Krin. Using a hand-powered drill, they bored a hole in the end of the horn and slipped a piece of leather through the hole. To the leather, they attached fur from a white fox. It is not only functional, it is a work of art, too.
Krin is huddled in the corner of her sleeping cot, writing in her journal, and protecting it as if she thinks I am going to steal a look. I have no doubt that that would be a losing battle for anyone who tried.
“Don’t worry, Krin,” I say. “I’d sooner tangle with a grizzly than try to see what you’re writing in that journal of yours.” Heimo laughs. Krin just puts on her headphones and turns up the volume on her portable CD player.
We hear Rick’s plane overhead, and Heimo says we’d better get going. Just in case a bear is feeding on the kill, he brings his shotgun and slugs, and we go to the river to get the canoe. When we reach the bank, Heimo whispers, “Look.” I follow his gaze upriver. Not more than fifty yards away is a large bull moose browsing among the willows along the riverbank. “Too bad Rick didn’t wait to shoot this one,” he laughs. “It’d sure be a lot less work.” We climb into the canoe, and the moose hears us and high-steps deep into the willows.
The Final Frontiersman Page 32
