Not all the Way to Eagle

The road from Fairbanks to Eagle follows
the Tanana for quite a ways, skirts the Alaska Range,
winds past Delta Junction and Tok Junction and a few
more clusters of  a dozen or so buildings which the locals
refer to in all seriousness as cities.  You can see the 
galloping glacier and rainbow mountain along the way,
pull over right next to the road with a few sandwiches and a coke
and – except for the road itself and an occasional traveler –
feel like you are alone there. 

One time my father and I loaded a pack, piled on his Suzuki,
and went on a fishing expedition with two
other fathers and two other sons, but we didn’t go
all the way to Eagle this time.  We followed the
highway a while and went off road and drove up
to a lake, and then we went to a lake beyond the lake.
It was a good trip, but it rained a little and we were
a little cold and stiff.  We stopped a while at the base
of Rainbow Mountain and drank coffee and walked
the cramps out of our legs and looked quiet up at the mountain
and then far across the torrential waters of the Tanana
to the glacier.

Then we got back on the bikes and made our destination by dusk,
but the fish weren’t biting that evening.  We hardly got a thing, so
we made do with just a few grayling and some peanut butter.
It was okay, though, because grayling was my favorite food
and even one was a treat.

(In spring, the fishermen in dad’s company
would gather their families and all the fish
left over from winter and we’d fry them all
at once.  I finished eight grayling by myself.)

Next morning, we didn’t fish.  Instead we followed
an animal trail to the top of a high hill.  Just over the
lip of the hill was some kind of den, a badger's perhaps –
but then we saw not one lake or two or even ten, but
dozens of small lakes – ponds really where the melting
snow had accumulated.  In one of those pools stood a
cow moose and her calf.  The water was so clear we
could see all the way to the bottom where their feet
disappeared into the thawed ground.

We didn’t catch much that trip.  When my dad went alone
or with one of my brothers, they nearly always got the limit.
When I went with him, we also returned with our limit –
not in the creel, but in my head - snapshots of sun reflecting
off a multicolored mountain; water racing so wide and wild
the sound alone makes your heart rush and your feet want to
race along side; dark and winding trails; water so bright and
clear it hurts your eyes and your heart; and a sense, stronger
than intuition, that every picture is a family photo
of a scene in which even the photographer has a place.