"'Tis the Season"

‘TIS THE SEASON

December 22, 2005

Ten years ago this morning, I woke to the sounds of occasionally crackling embers in the woodstove, light snoring from one of the bunks below, the tireless wind, and the rolling thunder of the surf beating in the darkness along the shore a stone’s throw or two from the cabin. Below the loft where I lay, listening, slept my father and brother—but not for long. Soon they, too, would wake—my father first, rising to putter among his toiletries, swallow a handful of morning vitamins and supplements, dress quietly and then slip outside into the chill air to pee between the traces of recent snows—and together we would begin a day of waiting, a day of hoping that the recent turbulent weather would relax its grip at last and give our pilot a chance to touch his floatplane down in the churning bay and extract us from our isolated perch in Eagle Harbor, a small inlet in Ugak Bay. The bay opened onto the Gulf of Alaska, the open ocean currently frothing with storm, battering the eastern shores of Kodiak Island. Known for its winds and its tempestuous waters, the gulf was churning with the weather and shoving its rain, its winds, its ground-hugging clouds, and its undulating currents down the throats of adjoining bays. Many pilots weren’t flying, let alone landing.

On December 16, another pilot, Jack Lechner, had landed us in his Super Cub right on the rocky beach at low tide. We had hurriedly unloaded our gear—food, backpacks, clothing, rifles—and then Jack had, with little ceremony, turned his craft and left us behind to begin our deer hunt. Getting back was a different proposition, however. Jack wasn’t going to be around for the trip out, and he had scheduled another pilot, Dean Andrews, to come get us in his larger Cessna 185. Dean would have to land on the water, and then take off again—carrying three grown men, all of our gear, and the meat from six blacktail deer.

We had been busy since the day we’d arrived: a quick, unsuccessful afternoon hunt, followed by setting up the cabin for our sojourn there, awakening the next morning to a thin layer of newly fallen snow. Then, with temperatures climbing into the 40s during the succeeding days, we hunted the brush-lined hills and ridges as the wind swirled and the rains slanted down. I killed my first-ever deer on one particularly blustery late afternoon—my first big-game kill, shot through the heart on the first shot, and I watched as the light and life faded from one large brown eye, not certain how I felt about it—and then, with my father and brother toting their own kills, we arrived back at the cabin in the dark. There, in our rain-slicked Gore-Tex jackets and pants and our rubber Xtra-Tuf boots, we tied up our meat high along the leeward side of the cabin and went inside to dry out, warm up, and eat.

Four months earlier than this—on August 12, to be exact—I had welcomed into the world my son, Kelty. Two months later—right at the end of my 7-week paternity leave—I had been diagnosed with Bell’s Palsy, which had paralyzed the left side of my face and left my left eye miserably ill-equipped to deal with the lashing wind on Kodiak Island. Virtually every minute I spent outdoors, my eye filled with tears, which then ran down my cheeks like tiny tributaries. This drainage left me constantly aware of my physical infirmity, the worst of which had diminished to manageable proportions. I was pleased particularly that the whanging headaches I’d had early on were now gone.

I was not pleased, however—as I lay there that early morning—with the prospect of having to spend my Christmas gnawing on deer meat as we waited day after day for the weather to change. The day before, while Dad carved and cleaned meat, Lowell read, and I worked on belated Christmas letters up in the loft, we listened on occasion to forecasts on Dad’s battery-powered radio. No change in sight. Hour after hour, the same low clouds and high winds. Lowell and I played cards. The three of us bonded over stories about hiking and hunting and camping and fishing. Dad told a story about one group of Kodiak hunters stranded in an isolated cabin for nearly two weeks, so long that they had run out of food and been forced to trek another cabin in the vicinity and to break in to find something to eat. Hearing such a story brought me no solace. I missed my family terribly, especially my kids. I began to think bitterly about Kodiak.

Daylight brought slightly diminished winds, a tiny break in the seemingly endlessly overcast, and a lessening of the waves out in the bay. Eventually, later that afternoon, it also brought to our ears the sound of an airplane. Dad’s radio was designed to communicate with low-flying aircraft. We hurried outside and dialed up the correct wavelength. It was our pilot, checking on our situation. He said that the water was too rough at the moment to attempt a landing, but that believed it was going to improve soon. He’d be back in an hour, and he’d been landing in the calmer waters of the inlet about three-quarters of a mile to our west. He instructed us to take everything we could carry in that time and meet him there.

We packed like fiends and hauled nearly all of our gear to the inlet. Then we hustled back for the rest of the gear and as much of the meat as we could carry. Unfortunately, what meat we could carry was less than half of what we had hanging there.

When Dean touched down the floats of his Cessna and taxied over to us, we told him about the meat we were leaving, and he promised that he’d return for it as soon as the weather allowed. So we hoped for colder weather—to keep the meat from spoiling—and packed all we had into the plane.

I can still clearly remember our takeoff. Hammering into the wind and the choppy waves, we bounced, trying for the speed necessary to lift all our weight into the sky. On and on, out of the inlet and into the open bay, buffeted by the wind, until at last the floats lifted from the surf and we sailed north toward the city of Kodiak.

EPILOGUE: We arrived safely in Kodiak, only to endure a long wait in the airport until a small jet there carried us back to my father’s truck waiting at the Anchorage airport. We spent the night with my sister in Anchorage, then drove home the next day. I arrived in the arms of my family on Christmas Eve, much relieved.

Back in Kodiak, the lousy weather remained in place for nearly two more weeks. By the time Dean was able to check on our meat, it was ruined. Despite the loss, though, I was absolutely thrilled to be home for Christmas.