Looking for Alaska (71 page)

Then we made the sharp turn, and everything below us and above us and beside us was snow, ice, glaciers, wild waterfalls, gray steep stone, sheer rock walls. Horrible places to crash. John seemed delighted. This guy is nuts, I thought. No, it was just such a relief to be able to see. When you're flying through this pass, you don't know what the conditions are until you get there. Can you imagine flying in here without being able to see 50 percent of what's waiting and unforgiving?

He pointed to our left. After a tall, sharp peak, there was a flattened mountaintop. Lying atop it far above the valley below was another wrecked plane.

“Now there, look.” His voice came in too clear, the rough air was smoother. “That guy almost made it.”

There atop a snowfield, atop a mountain, was a crashed plane, looking innocent.

“That pilot realized too late and at too low an altitude he wasn't going to make it any further west into Merrill Pass, so he tried to make it over that, but obviously didn't. You must be thinking in here all the time,” John said.

That was the problem right now, thinking.

John crammed us through the pass and we were over the headwaters of the Merrill River. The tiny, steep valley widened, then widened some more, into the Lake Clark Wilderness. Then we popped into the Stony River valley, lush, swampy, green—prime moose habitat. The next mountains with names on the other side of this valley even deeper into the wilderness were the Revelation Mountains. On either side were mountains called Babel Tower, the Angel, Golgotha, Mount Hesperus, and the Apocalypse. Somewhere back in that pass Jerry may have thought we were in the Apocalypse. Almost no one, even Natives, lived out here full-time. The only village anywhere nearby was Lime Village (pop. 47).

No matter how closely I searched the land below, I could see no evidence of anything man-made. There were natural meadows, stretches of blackened tree trunks where forest fires had been called burns, mountains that shot up like rockets, a river dividing itself at times around gravel bars, deep, dark forest. John said as many wolves and other predators lived down there as anywhere in Alaska. Then finally I saw a couple cabins, one with smoke trailing out of it. We flew lower and lower directly over the river, lower still, slower, slower, lower, and then landed gently on a sandbar on the side of the river. We had arrived at Jim Harrower's Stony River Lodge, and like everyone who comes through that pass for the first time, we were delighted to be here. Jerry, being a man of the ground, seemed especially happy to set his feet on the solid stuff.

A couple people stood near the runway. Don, a former guide, was now basically manager of this place. Patrick had just pulled up with a four-wheeler and a cart to haul gear. We could see a small tractor and some elevated fuel tanks. How did they ever get any of that out here? They had taken the tractor completely apart and flown it out piece by piece in the small planes that are the lifeblood of this wide-open world. These guys who flew around the Stony River drainage, in sight of the Revelation Mountains and the Apocalypse, over Tundra Lake, landing on bodies of water that would shrink your underwear to one-third its size, were some of the best bush pilots in the world. Since Jerry wasn't even a big fan of flying big commercial airlines, it was good that it would be a few days before we took off again. We were planning to go into one of the most isolated places in Alaska I'd ever been.

A trail led into the woods and away from the landing strip, and at the end was a collection of wood cabins with rough-cut siding. The oldest-looking one was a log cabin. Some of the buildings were built in the style of a Western saloon. How did they build places this nice out here? Jim Harrower and his people had hauled in a portable sawmill and everything else they needed, each large thing taken apart, flown in, and reassembled. Jim's an exacting and precise man; he's a dentist, a renowned bush pilot, a Dall sheep hunter, a world-class outfitter who also offers eco-tourism. I'm not sure which of these things requires more precision, but Jim's life involves doing extremely daring things precisely.

We were here because I had called an Alaskan friend of mine, Kevin Delaney, and told him that my seventy-year-old father-in-law—“the old farmer,” as he called himself—had a wish, and Rita and I wanted that wish to come true. Jerry farms many acres near Lansing, Michigan. He began farming for himself right out of high school and married my mother-in-law in the early 1950s. Their first child was Rita—we're both the eldest of six children—three boys and three girls. Under the definition of
work ethic,
you might find Jerry Jorgensen. He would be embarrassed by that; a Midwesterner and on top of that a farmer, he doesn't like to draw attention to himself. I'm proud of him, so I guess I can. I wouldn't want him to get aggravated with me and throw up his dukes, but I think I can outrun him, possibly, as long as he's on foot. I've been hunting with him in Wyoming, and when he's on a four-wheeler, you need God on your side to follow him. Deer hunting is one of the few things Jerry does for the sheer joy of it. I take that back—he gets great joy out of plowing the earth, harvesting a high-yielding field of soybeans, or seeing a healthy newborn Holstein female calf born at their dairy, Ri-Val-Ree Farm.
Ri
is Rita, first daughter,
Val
is after Valerie, second daughter; and
Ree
is after LeAnne Rennee, third daughter.

Jerry doesn't like to be far from the farm. He raised his family in the farmhouse he was raised in, then he and Mom moved up the gravel road, still on their original 240 acres, to the corner of Moyer and Morrice Road, into the house Jerry's dad and mom moved to when Jerry and his new wife had moved in. You look out any window of their house in spring, summer, fall, and you see either alfalfa growing, corn growing, or Holstein cows gazing. In winter the land rests. But Jerry is never idle.

And that would make it tough on him as we waited around the lodge for our guide, Larry Fiedler, to come in from the wilds where he was with another client, Bruce from Wisconsin. They'd been gone over nine days to a spike camp on some lonesome lake on the edge of the Lake Clark Wilderness Area.

My friend Kevin had been a hunting guide for Jim Harrower when Kevin was new to Alaska. I'd asked Kevin to suggest an outfitter who could take my father-in-law and me into the bush. Jerry has always wanted to hunt in Alaska, and since he's a deer hunter, he would like a chance at the largest member of the deer family, the moose. Jerry's a purist; he wanted to be as far out in the bush as we could get. He'd heard people did float trips, but he wasn't interested. I told him that going into the bush could be extremely demanding, that there was no way we could do it without a guide; he said fine, get one. After I'd met Jim Harrower and one of his young guides, Arno, from Germany, I called Jerry. I explained that if we were going to go out as far as he wanted, we'd have to do some serious walking through bogs, swamps, tundra, up and down mountains through seemingly impregnable forest. There would be no bridges on the wild side of the Alaska Range, the west side, but plenty of rivers. These kinds of trips, searching for bull moose in Alaska, taxed the youngest and toughest Alaskans. The saying was too that the work didn't begin until you got your moose because then you had to pack out all the meat on your back, hundreds and hundreds of pounds of it. The hindquarter, for example, could not be deboned; carrying just one out could be over 150 pounds. Jerry didn't feel that he could carry one of those anymore, and I told him that I seriously doubted I could either, but that I'd be his secondary packer. Larry, whoever he was, would have to take the biggest loads.

This, my last experience in Alaska, was meant to be a tribute to my father and my father-in-law. Jerry was the only one still alive. My dad had died on December 5, 1999, about six and a half months after we'd come to Alaska. Speaking at his memorial service was one of the most impossible challenges I've ever faced. I still pick up the phone and start dialing his number, but there's no phone service where he is. Often, I felt like a parentless child, even though I wasn't. I was so blessed to have all the family I did; I was just missing some anchors that I'd thought would never be gone. Since the death of my father, I was determined to give more, love more, be more available, sacrifice more. I didn't expect perfection, I just wanted to do more for those I love.

Jerry'd trained for this adventure for months, walking in his hunting boots, carrying his rifle, there on the farm in Michigan. He'd call us in Alaska, ask me how much exercise I was getting. He'd researched every type of clothing, worked up special loads for the bullets he would use at his own shooting range, using some machine that calculated velocity and all kinds of other things that were beyond me. So as we waited, I could tell Jerry was becoming frustrated. He began making comments that he'd never been so idle in his whole life. And that was true. He was ready to be out there doing what he'd planned for almost a year.

Being a planner and list maker, for the first time in his life Jerry began keeping a diary. It helped click off the minutes and hours and days that we waited for Larry.

On Sunday morning, September 10, Jerry wrote, “Eberhard Brunner and his German client arrived back in the lodge early last night. They hunted for moose at Grizzly Flats with no luck for 8–9 days. It is supposed to be a nice camp with good view and rolling terrain. Jim Harrower told Peter that will be our spot when Larry, our guide, is available. If weather changes, it should be good for moose.”

After these long days of waiting, to hear that these two men spent eight or nine days and saw only one black bear way up on the mountain was not good. After all this planning and hoping, I surely didn't want Jerry not to see the moose he'd come so far to get.

Jerry's back was beginning to bother him. I fired up the sauna for him a few times and we took some walks on a trail beside the Stony River. Every so often Jerry would stop and sit on a stump. He is a man of such pride, and of course he vividly remembers when he was in his prime. What a prime it was; he was tough and stoic and tireless. I walked at his pace, which was fine, but tried not to seem as if I were slowing down. Jerry often commented on what a walker I was, and that his feet were his weak link. Most farmwork requires upper-body strength, your hands, your arms, what's between your ears. Don't ever think today's farmers are dumb; they are some of the most intelligent, capable, productive, efficient people on earth. Since being Jerry's son-in-law, I will never wish for perpetual sunshine again either.

To come on this trip he had begun his hill walking on the annual July 4 trip to their cabin in the upper peninsula of Michigan, known as the UP to some of us. He and Dorothy, who have one of the best marriages I've ever known, began walking about two miles a day. I think Dad decided that when he turned seventy, he would spend that year preparing for and having one of the biggest adventures of his life. A few years prior he'd begun pumping down the herbs, which Rita had got him interested in. By herbs, I'm talking antioxidants and the like. Then he devised a walk two miles up and down hills in the UP, and then on the family farm. He carried a twenty-pound pack and then increased it to thirty. He carried his rifle, wore his new boots. The other days he did aerobic treadmill and stretching. He changed his diet and lost thirty pounds. He knew Alaska was a supreme challenge at any age, and he was right, as he usually is, in a humble way. He did his own Jerry Jorgensen Boot Camp, Drill Sergeant Jerry Jorgensen, Private Jerry Jorgensen.

And here we were with Jim Harrower, world-renowned Dall sheep hunter and Alaskan bush outfitter, and we'd been here seven days, looking at some of the world's most dramatic stone mountain peaks dusted with snow, my second termination dust. Below them were foothills burning with the deep reds of blueberry bushes. Looking through a spotting scope, we could see several black bears feeding. Below them were the yellows and oranges of Alaska's quickly passing fall. In five days, I'd seen changes. And always the silver-green Stony River rolled by, all this was good for sitting, meditating; taking pictures is not Jerry's thing. Action is, following through on a plan of action. I was here to see that it all came to pass. I could not be frustrated by anything Jerry said. This was all about him.

On Thursday morning, September 14, Jerry wrote, “Chris, the camp pilot, who usually flies for FedEx to Russia, has already made two trips by 9:45 bringing Harry, who is the hunter we've been waiting for to get his moose. Chris has gone to get Larry (our guide) now. Hopefully we will fly out in the
P.M
. if Larry gets ready to take two more hunters, ‘us.' Peter has sauna fire started for therapy for my back. Harry, from northern California, got his moose. I took my 2-mile walk along the river while Harry was in the sauna. After a walk and my sauna, my back feels much better. The word seems official that ‘author guy' and ‘the old farmer' are heading out today. If so, I'll have a gun in hand tomorrow.”

GRIZZLY FLATS

That evening Jerry's diary recorded the good news, “Don just loaded our gear in trailer behind ATV and headed for landing strip. It's 3:25
P.M
. and put us on 1-hour notice to fly.” There's always good with the bad. Chris flew Jerry, Larry, and a bunch of our gear over to Grizzly Flats, a flat spot halfway up a mountain with a valley below, the bare mountain above. They would have to land on a field of blueberry bushes and brush. Jerry was ready to land on anything, after all that waiting, as long as it wasn't a crash landing. Chris made a second trip to fly me in.

“We landed on tundra in blueberries and low bush cranberries. Peter came on 2nd trip with rest of gear with Chris in Super Cub about 6:00
P.M
. Larry got water out of a fast stream about 50 yards down from our tiny cabin. After being there about an hour, Larry spotted a 55–57'' bull moose wandering along ridge 250 yards from camp. We couldn't shoot him because you can't shoot the day you fly in. We had a Spam-and-cheese pizza for supper. We organized our gear and made plans for tomorrow's hunt, which means trying to find the bull. Time to turn in, it's 10
P.M
.”