Shadows on the Koyukuk

by Sidney Huntington

  Many Americans think of Alaska as an unpeopled, untouched wilderness. Indian, Eskimo, and Aleut people lived in these “wilderness” lands for centuries before the first whites arrived, and these original people had complex cultures, with ongoing relationships between different groups. These first inhabitants of the region established intelligent relationships with Alaska’s wildlands before the dawn of written history.

  A few paragraphs from a 1982 National Park Service publication, Tracks in the Wildland, A Portrayal of Koyukon-Nunamiut Subsistence, by Richard Nelson, Kathleen Mautner, and Ray Bane, speak of Alaska as home to these peoples:

  To most of us, the vast stretches of forest, tundra and mountain lands in Alaska constitute a wilderness in the most absolute sense of the word. In our minds, this land is wilderness because it is undisturbed, pristine, lacking in obvious signs of human activity. To us undisturbed land is unoccupied or unused land. But in fact, most of Alaska is not wilderness, nor has it been for thousands of years.

  Much of Alaska’s apparently untrodden forest and tundra land is thoroughly known by people whose entire lives and cultural ancestry is intimately associated with it. Indeed, to the Native inhabitants, these lands are no more an unknown wilderness than are the streets of a city to its residents.

  The fact that we identify Alaska’s remote country as wilderness derives from our inability to conceive of occupying and utilizing land without altering or completely eliminating its natural state. But the Indians and Eskimos have been living this way for thousands of years. Certainly, then, theirs has been a successful participation as members of an ecosystem. In a world of environmental degradation this represents an exemplary form of human adaptation, fostering a healthy coexistence of man and ecosystem. Certainly, we have been incapable of utilizing our lands so well.

  The country is anything but wilderness; at best it can be called a wildland.

  In the early 1980s, I decided to try my hand at trapping again after being away from it for twenty-four years. Lynx furs were bringing from $300 to $700 each—wonderful prices.

  Phantomlike, the lynx, Alaska’s only wild cat, stands as tall as a Great Dane dog. Gray in color, weighing up to thirty pounds, with long legs, they are rarely seen. Their big feet function like snowshoes and carry them lightly over loose snow. Lynx numbers increase with snowshoe hare abundance, for hares are their primary food. Snowshoe hare abundance is cyclic, with peaks occurring at roughly ten years. From great abundance, hare numbers may decline to virtually no animals—and lynx numbers follow.

  Although the lynx is big and strong, even a small trap will usually hold one of these animals, for they don’t struggle much when caught. Lynx meat is veal-like, light in color, and mild-flavored, a favorite with many Alaska bush residents.

  In the spring of 1982 I made a wide sweep, looking for lynx sign in the country across from my salmon fishing camp on the Yukon River, and sign appeared promising. At the time I thought back to a catch of lynx made before I was born, in the early 1900s, by old Chief Henry in the Red Mountain country of the Upper Koyukuk. It was the largest catch of lynx that I’ve ever heard about.

  “How many you catch?” I once asked Henry.

  “Two fourteen-foot basket sleds full,” he replied without hesitation, for such success is unforgettable.

  Lynx skins then sold for $1 each at Arctic City. The two basket sleds of lynx skins that he delivered to a fur buyer brought him “pretty near $300,” he told me. It was, he said, the only time he had ever owned a sack of $20 gold coins. At 1980’s prices (not considering inflation), Chief Henry’s sackful of gold coins would represent less than half the price for one good lynx skin!

  As I built and outfitted a trapping cabin and bought traps, I was disappointed at how few lynx traps $1,000 bought, and surprised at the changes in equipment and clothing over the decades. Instead of a dog team, I used a snow machine that could easily travel sixty miles per hour if I dared run it that fast. Synthetic fabrics replaced my old Metlicot pure wool underwear. I had an eiderdown sleeping bag rather than the black bearskin sleeping bag I had used as a boy. Despite the advantages of modern equipment, I was reminded that trapping itself is still risky, even for a sixty-seven-year-old with a lifetime of experience in the Subarctic.

  I spent early fall at my new camp, cutting wide trails for my snow machine; a narrow trail is plenty for a dog team. I even had to cut out all the fallen logs that lay across the trail; a dog team and sled easily cross such logs, but a snow machine won’t.

  I finished cutting most of the trails a few days before trapping season. On October 28, the weather turned cold, with a temperature of –30 degrees. I loaded my gear in a plastic sled which I towed with my snow machine. The sled could double as a boat for crossing a creek, for it floated fairly high and dry.

  I headed toward Eight-mile Creek, looking at side lakes, watching for a bear den. Throughout the day, before each crossing, I checked ice cautiously at every creek and slough and found no ice less than an inch and a half thick, even close to a beaver dam. I could zip right across.

  As dusk fell, I was eager to reach home. I grew careless and sped the snow machine to about thirty miles per hour to cross a pond by a beaver dam. I ran about thirty feet onto the pond and broke through the ice. With me on it, the snow machine sank to the bottom through splintered ice and floating grass, and the frigid water came to just under my arms. I was soaking wet, alone, and far from shelter. I was in real trouble.

  My survival hinged on obtaining gear from the sled, reaching shore with it, and quickly lighting a fire. Stepping off the snow machine, I waded back to unhitch the buoyant sled. It floated, holding the back end of the snow machine off the bottom of the pond. I had to plunge my hands more than two feet underwater to reach the hitch. The cold metal of the hitch at the air temperature of thirty below had instantly turned the water around it to ice. Fumbling, I got my belt knife out of its case and tapped the ice-encrusted hitch until it came free. It was a battle all the way. My arms got soaked to the shoulders, and I soon lost my gloves.

  Turning toward shore, I knew I must quickly climb out of the water and cross the sixty feet of ice that appeared fairly solid. Pulling the sled, I tried climbing up on the ice and almost succeeded. My soaked clothing seemed to weigh a ton. Just when I was almost on top, the ice broke off, and I submerged. With my hair dripping, I came up cussing. I should have tested the ice with my axe before putting my weight on it.

  The pond was only about five feet deep. I dug out my axe and inched my way along the ice’s edge, tapping until I found a stretch that was firm enough to support me, and then I climbed onto the ice. I was growing weak, and the icy water plus the chilly air temperature were bringing me close to hypothermia. I’m lean, without much fat for insulation, so the cold penetrated quickly.

  Everything I touched—the ice, the sled, the axe—froze to my wet hands, and they started to go numb. I had to cover them, so with my axe I cut the string on my bag from the sled and found gloves. Desperately, I managed to work my stiff, wet fingers into the fur-lined gloves, which sure felt good.

  Dragging the sled, I trotted across the solid ice to shore, searching for a place suitable for building a fire. I had to have heat, and quickly. I spotted many dry bushes from old beaver cuts and a small dead dry spruce tree about four inches in diameter.

  I chopped the tree down and piled it on some dry brush. My oil-soaked fire-starter rags were submerged with the snow machine, but there was a five-gallon plastic container of gasoline on the sled. Having lost my knife while struggling with the sled hitch, I used my axe to cut the rope across the gas can.

  My hands were too numb to open the screw top, and after a few tries I quit wasting time and hacked a hole in the jug with the axe. I couldn’t open the Marble steel match safe I always carry in my pocket with my stiff fingers, nor could my freezing hands operate the cigarette lighter I carry for starting fires.

  For emergencies, I carried extra strike-anywhere matches inside a Ziplock bag in
my shirt pocket. I also had a bag of matches in my toolbox, and another in a handy bag with my clothes. I pulled the matches out of my shirt pocket, but I couldn’t grasp them with my numbed fingers. As the first match dropped in the snow, my tired mind asked, “What the hell now?”

  I worked two matchsticks between my lips, with sulphur tips out, ready for striking. I poured gasoline over the pile of firewood, and moving my head, I swiped a match against the rough-sided Marble match safe. The match stick broke.

  Would I die because I couldn’t even light a match? How long would it be before searchers found my frozen body? After years as a woodsman, would people say that Sidney got careless in his old age and let the country kill him? Memories of men I had known who had frozen to death flashed through my mind.

  I did not dare break the other match. I was growing light-headed and clumsy, but I simply had to succeed this time. With clenched teeth, I turned my head carefully, wiping the match against the match safe. It didn’t light. Again I turned my head, slightly faster this time, and the match lit! I spit the flaring match onto the gasoline-soaked wood.

  Whoosh! The gasoline ignited and the dry wood blazed.

  I stuck my numb hands out gratefully above the flames, then pulled them back, remembering that I could burn them because they had no feeling. When sensation returned to my hands, I pulled out the waterproof bag holding my sleeping bag and cut the tie string with my axe.

  Draping the bag over my shoulders, I allowed heat from the leaping flames to reflect from it while I removed my wet, partially frozen clothes. My Thinsulite underwear was wet but not frozen. I had a tough time removing my boots, and in the end had to use the axe to cut the laces. Both feet were beyond being cold; they were numb. I wrapped them in the warm wool sleeping bag liner.

  As my hands began to come to life, the pain began, but I was able to pull off my Thinsulite drawers and hold them to the fire. They dried in minutes and when I slipped them back on they felt wonderful. My Thinsulite undershirt also dried quickly when I held it near the flames. I was pleased to discover this fast-drying trait of synthetic underwear; my old-style wool underwear would have taken hours to dry.

  My feet began to sting and then to hurt, almost as if I were holding them in the fire. Even the bones seemed to burn. The pain in my feet was much worse than in my hands. The urgency of warming my freezing body made time move slowly, but actually all of this occurred within about twenty minutes.

  I warmed some dry Duofold wool and silk underwear from my clothing bag, and pulled it on over the Thinsulite, and the warmth against my skin was most welcome. Out of my clothing bag I dug dry socks and pants. Drying my water-soaked parka would have taken hours, so I didn’t even try, but put on my extra jacket, which had a hood, and I snuggled into it. My fingers were now warm enough to work a zipper. Gratefully, I put on my extra moon boots. These insulated rubber-soled boots aren’t the easiest to walk in, but they are warm. With dry clothing from head to foot, I felt 100 years younger.

  Darkness had fallen and I didn’t know how far I was from where the trail crossed the creek, although I figured the distance wasn’t more than two miles. I didn’t want to camp by my fire, although I dreaded walking away from the comforting flames.

  I drew wolf-skin mittens on over my gloves, picked up my axe, and set off, following the creek but staying on high ground. I had had all I wanted of freezing water. I wasn’t about to walk on the creek ice. Cutting across the bends of the creek, I trudged through the rough terrain for about two hours before hitting my trail. From there I had to walk about ten more miles through the portage, across lakes, to my camp on the bank of the Yukon River. I kept moving, never pausing, knowing that a stop could have been my last one.

  I was dog-tired when I staggered into camp at five o’clock the next morning. I built a fire in the stove and crawled into bed. For a few hours I was dead to the world. When I awoke about midday I was stiff and sore all over. My neck felt swollen and I could hardly move my head.

  I rested all day. The next day, I took a spare snow machine I kept at camp for just such an emergency and went to retrieve the sunken machine. I managed to attach a line to it, and with a come-along fastened to the spare snow machine, I dragged it from its watery resting place. The poor machine was a big ball of ice when I finally pulled it onto the bank. After many hours I managed to deice it and get it running again.

  I caught $16,000 worth of furs that winter, the most I ever earned in a year of trapping: 63 lynx, 150 marten, 100 foxes, and 8 wolverine. The least I ever made during a trapping season was $380 during the winter of 1933–34—a season I prefer to forget.

  Although trapping is still a passion for many Koyukon people, unfortunately it is no longer economical to make a living from a trapline. Fur prices haven’t risen like prices for other items—in fact, amounts paid for many furs today are not much higher than they were in 1928, and some fur prices are actually much lower. But today a trap costs eight times what it did when I was a boy. A $3 boy’s axe—handy on a trapline—now costs $28. Gasoline used to cost 42 cents a gallon; today we pay $2.50 plus tax.

  Feeding a dog team with purchased food is prohibitively expensive; those who own dog teams must catch fish to feed their dogs. Snow machines are more commonly used by trappers now (the average machine sells for around $4,000), and a full season can wear a machine out. Most who trap now do so as a sideline, and some regard trapping as recreation.

  My early years on the trapline were my poorest times financially but the richest in satisfaction. Sadly, that old way of life is gone.

  I love to start my summer day at five in the morning. The air is cool and fresh, and usually calm. Birds call, and the world seems to have renewed itself overnight.

  One such morning I went to my fish wheel on the Yukon River and worked hard to remove a heavy drift log jammed in the wheel. Working alone, I finally yanked it out. I was balanced on the spar log, which anchored the fish wheel to shore, when suddenly, I had a terrible pain in my chest. I moved quickly to the beach on the narrow spar. Near shore, I fell. My legs were in the water, but I just lay there, in bad shape. I thought that my problem was lack of breakfast. I was growing numb from the cold water when I crawled out on the bank.

  The pain slowly diminished. The sun climbed higher and my clothes dried as I sat enjoying the warmth. Then I finished tending to the fish wheel.

  Several times that summer, I had dizzy spells but thought little of them. When nearing the seventy-year mark, a person must expect a few creaks.

  The following winter while trapping I got my snow machine stuck, and while lifting and digging it out, I found myself lying in the snow, recovering consciousness with a hurting chest.

  Gradually, my heart pains came more often. Over one summer I built a new home for Angela, figuring that if I died she would have a decent place to live. Our old house, where we raised so many kids, was too big for her if she was to be alone. As I worked to finish the new house, I had to rest often, allowing my heart to settle down.

  In 1982, I found myself at Mary’s Help hospital in San Francisco. Three arteries to my heart were blocked and I needed a triple bypass operation. With a concerned look, my doctor said, “Sidney, you have about a fifty-fifty chance of pulling through the surgery.” The operation was scheduled for the next morning, but a crisis arose at three o’clock in the morning, and the surgical team decided to operate immediately.

  Before operating, one of the doctors told me that he wanted to consult with Angela and our daughter Agnes, who had accompanied me from Alaska.

  I asked, “I’m the one you’re going to work on, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “You guys are the engineers. Let’s get to work on this thing,” I said. “You say I have a fifty-fifty chance. I’ve played many a hand of cards, with big stakes, when the odds weren’t that good.”

  Afterward the doctors told me they had a tough time persuading my heart to start up again after the surgery, and then I sailed through the first critical
hour and a half after surgery. One patient I saw in intensive care couldn’t handle the stress. He had plugs and drains all over him like I did, and he yanked them all out. Before the doctors and nurses could replace them, he was dead.

  Rebuilding my strength took a long time. But that summer I was able to build a new house at my fish camp, and I did my usual commercial salmon fishing.

  So, life goes on. I have a plastic eye, false teeth, two hearing aids, and three bypasses to my heart. I call myself the modern plastic man. But, modern or not, about seventy-five percent of the food we live on still comes from the wildlands along the Yukon and Koyukuk rivers.

  In these later years, I often think how pleasurable my life with Angela has been. Angela is skilled in many of the old ways. She is always helping people make potlatches—some of which cost thousands of dollars and weeks or months of effort. Both the elders and young Koyukon people also come to her for help in making decisions in their lives. They ask her how to make various garments and how to prepare Indian foods. They use her patterns for fur boots, parkas, mittens. Every year to make preserves, jams, and jellies, she picks gallons of berries, including wild berries and domestic strawberries and raspberries which we grow.

  When we got married, Angela said she wanted twelve babies. She had her twelve, and two more besides, before doctors convinced her she shouldn’t have more. When Andrew, our youngest, was a teenager, the house seemed empty with just one youngster around.

  So Angela suggested that we should adopt a baby.

  Not long after, a young woman called to ask if Angela would care for her baby boy while she went to school for a few months. Angela was on the next airplane to pick up the baby. Mark was fun to have around, and we became very attached to him. Eventually his young unmarried mother allowed us to adopt him. He became our fifteenth child.