improved throughout the day. Gus, who had been leading and exploring some few hundred yards ahead, now rejoined my little party and was soon asleep on some ferns in a sunlit area. He had been running, up and down, left and right, for almost six straight hours, and was exhausted. After eating, I stretched out under a large fir tree and dozed off.
Not long into my snooze, I was jolted awake by Gus’s menacing bark and snarl. As I leapt to my feet, I saw the backside of a large mountain lion some fifty yards away, running fast through the forest with Gus in hot pursuit. Fumbling for my pistol, I called out for Gus to return, fearing that he would be no match for such a creature. I wanted to run after him, but I knew I couldn’t leave Blaze and the mules unguarded in this environment.
For the next few minutes, I strained to hear the distant sound of a fight or a yelp, but my heart pounded in my ears so loudly that I heard nothing but that. Moments later, I saw the nearby brush quiver and then part. The hair was up on the back of my neck, and my pistol was cocked and ready. As I tightened my grip and dug my feet into the moss, Gus crashed through the underbrush and into our little clearing. His ears were up and he had what I swear was a broad grin on his face. I knew the lion had outdistanced him, but he was still very proud of his attempt. This was my first face-to-face contact with a wild animal, and thanks to Gus there had been no deadly confrontation. The encounter reminded me, however, that my animals were the keys to my survival. I would always have to be alert to protect them from the many wild predators of the forest.
Sobered, I packed up and we started our ascent of the trail again, with Gus at the point as always.
The Pacific Lady
As a young boy I don’t recall that Uncle Roy had been responsible for this back-to-the-earth mission stuff, but also I don’t recall his support for my loud protests. But then, I didn't hold that against him. He was Grandfather’s brother and closest business associate, and he provided, after the loss of my parents and Grandmother, the only truly warm family relationship I had. Grandfather’s and Roy's personalities were like night and day, ice and fire. Roy was relaxed and fun to be around while Senior was stiff, somber and always businesslike.
Uncle Roy told me that Grandfather’s whole personality had changed after my father died. Then, after losing his beloved Alice, my grandmother, it only got worse. It was Roy who found time to come to my school ballgames. It was he who brought the presents that young boys wanted at Christmas time and birthdays. And it was always Uncle Roy who would sit down and take the time to talk with me. To Roy, I became the son he never had, and I had grown to love and respect him for that. Uncle Roy had always been there for me. Now I was here for him.
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
