At age twelve, I was sent off to boarding school. Although this upset me a great deal, I soon came to realize that it was better than living with Grandfather in that musty, lonely house. I hated returning to Fairview at each summer break—except that it gave me a chance to see Uncle Roy and Hazel, our Negro housekeeper and cook.
The Christmas before my sixteenth birthday, Uncle Roy asked me if I would like to work in Alaska on a fishing boat that coming summer. It seemed that Roy had an old college friend, Skip Patterson, who owned a commercial fishing boat and needed some summer help from a strong and willing body. With Grandfather’s approval, I jumped at the chance.
That was the first of four straight summers I spent with Captain Skip. He had a 55-foot wooden trawler named Pacific Lady, out of Ketchikan, Alaska. In the spring and summer, he and his crew fished for salmon. In the winter, it was halibut, shrimp and bottom fish. His crews were all expert seamen.
I fell in love with southwest Alaska the minute I stepped off the ferryboat from Seattle. Ketchikan was a small fishing, logging, and mining town with fewer than 5,000 people. With its wooden boardwalks, saloons, and sporting houses, the little community was as rustic and rowdy as any town in the old Wild West. Further, Captain Skip and his crews were just the opposite of the people I knew back East. For the most part, they were warm, honest, and hard-working, and they had no fear of man or sea.
In the first and second summers, I was what they called the “bait boy” and was paid for each day we were out fishing. My first few weeks on the Pacific Lady were a living hell, as the crew was suspicious of the “privileged” kid from back East. They loved to torment me and give me a bad time. But my biggest problem was seasickness. I hugged the rail and the head almost all the time. This meant nothing to my other shipmates. They required me, like themselves, to do all duties. And if we were fishing, I was needed topside, whether sick, wet, cold, tired, or hungry.
After I got my sea legs and gained the confidence of the crew, I started to connect with these men, the boat, and their way of life. Fishing the Inland Passage, with all its beauty, was truly something to experience. Here, for the first time, I saw bald eagles, bear, mountain lions, and fish of a size I could not have imagined. But mostly it was the captain and the other fishermen that I enjoyed. They seemed to know every rock, every inlet, and every bay. They knew where the fish were and how to catch them in any weather or water conditions. In and out of port, I spent hours listening to the crew and Skip tell stories about their travels up and down the Pacific Coast.
During my second summer, one of those stories stuck in my mind. Captain Skip told the tale of how he’d been trolling down the Queen Charlotte Sound for spring king salmon, the largest and most valuable catch in the salmon fishery, when a strong storm started to rage out of the southwest. With winds blowing at 60 to 80 knots, the barometer dropping, and gale force seas swelling to over 30 feet, Skip looked for relief. Soon he turned the Pacific Lady in at the protection of Dean Channel alongside King Island in Western British Columbia. Using some old charts, he moved the boat through sheets of rain and white water some 40 miles up the channel before the weather improved enough to fish.
With the seas still running with six-to-eight-foot swells, he ordered the outriggers to be lowered. While Skip had never been in those waters before, and had no license to fish in Canadian waters, the fishing still looked promising. The crew soon had the outriggers lowered and the hooks baited as they moved further up the channel. Sure enough, they started catching a few very large kings.
Then, just past Edward Point, the northernmost point off King Island, the boat hit a rock or submerged log. The force of the blow caused the propeller shaft to bend, snapping off one blade and jamming the rudder. With the seas and winds still running high, the crew put the outriggers up and Captain Skip begin looking for a protective bay or cove where he might put in for repairs.
After a difficult search, they found Nascall Bay two miles further up the channel, on the port side. Using the winds, the tide, and a small outboard motor from the dinghy, they limped into the bay and dropped anchor.
There they stayed for three days and nights, making repairs to the Pacific Lady. During this time, the weather improved, and on the last day they took the dinghy to shore to look around. They told me that above the bay they found a large freshwater lake, which on the chart was called Nascall Lake. A large, green valley of grassland spread at the base of this lake. There were two or three spring creeks running through the floor of the valley, with large groves of tall alder and oak trees on the perimeter. The rest of the area was surrounded with old-growth fir trees, which dominated most of the landscape. They saw many signs of wildlife—deer, elk, bear—and the clear water of the lake looked to be teaming with trout. Skip had called it, "The most beautiful and rich valley I have ever seen."
He went on to describe how the water from the lake flowed over large rocks, down some 200 feet to the bay and channel below. This waterfall and the rocks made for many large pools, some of which were fed by steaming hot water flowing out of the side of one tall cliff. He and his crew bathed and played in one of the many hot springs. In another conversation, he talked about the bay being sandy and rocky, rich with shellfish, crabs, and fish. All agreed that this area was as beautiful as any they had seen in all of Alaska and Canada. Often, the crew would joke about returning to Nascall Bay and doing a little hunting in the valley they had discovered. These stories were repeated often, each time with the addition of yet another detail. Their tales and descriptions sparked vivid images for me.
At the end of each summer, with nearly $400 dollars in my pockets, I found it harder and harder to leave the Pacific Lady and my newfound friends. Each year, before I left, I’d ask Captain Skip if I was welcome back for the following summer, and each time he would tell me that I would always have a berth on any boat that he commanded. That made me feel good, like I’d found something I did well and friends who enjoyed me for who I was, not just for who my family was.
On the third summer of fishing, I was promoted to deck hand, which meant that I would share in the value of the fish we caught and sold. I left Ketchikan at the end of that summer with over $1,200 in my pocket. This was my money. I’d earned it myself and I would spend it myself. These summers gave me a feeling of freedom, fulfillment, and independence. For the first time in my life, I had my own money, my own friends and something I enjoyed doing. It was bloody hard work, but I was in love with Alaska, the sea and the men who fished for her bounty. These summers were the best of times.
Horsemanship
The way we were traveling turned better as my little caravan moved up a well-traveled game trail. It was now early afternoon, and, to my surprise, the weather was still improving. The bright sun felt warm on my body as I rode through the few forest clearings. Then, just starting up a small, windy hill, I turned to the rear to make sure the mules were in a correct path behind me. As I turned to the front again, a low, thick fir branch hit me squarely on the forehead.
The force of the blow rolled me off my horse and hard onto the ground. The crash knocked me out for a second, and I struggled to get my wits about me again. Slowly opening my eyes, I could see Gus clearly, some 50 feet up the trail. Blaze was standing in front of me with his head down, turning back looking at me, his reins hanging on the floor of the forest.
Both Gus and Blaze had puzzled looks of their faces. Blaze seemed to be saying, "You pointed the way, pal." As I got slowly to my feet, both the mules started to bray as if they were laughing at me. Embarrassed, I brushed myself off with hands and hat, dust rising into the still air. I had to remember that my head was taller in the saddle than Blaze’s head on his neck. Basic horsemanship. As I mounted Blaze once again, I knew that, while my forehead would have a lump, the only real damage had been to my pride. This event only