Looking for Alaska (30 page)

Andy is a salmon fisherman because his grandfather and grandmother and father and uncles were before him. His boat, a twenty-six-foot-long fiberglass bow-picker powered by a jet drive, is named
The Snow Ghost.
Jet drives are motors that use jets of water to power them instead of propellers. It lets fishermen get into really shallow water. Permits to fish the Copper River delta and Prince William Sound are hard to come by. The authorities issue only 560, only about 350 to 400 of which are active in any given fish season. Andy got his permit when his grandfather retired.

Andy's twenty-four years old and part Aleut. The Aleuts originally traveled these treacherous oceans in kayaks. They did venture this far south, but were centered mostly on the Aleutian chain. Traveling the open water in an animal-skin kayak, like a cork on a deadly ocean, seems almost unimaginable. They were the ultimate water explorers. Andy's hair is dark, his spirit deeply sensitive yet death-defying. His last name, Johnson, probably means he is part Norwegian. No wonder he is so comfortable on, in, and zooming over the icy cold water. Andy fishes so that he can make enough money to live the life of the spartan warrior-snowboarder the rest of the year. His life is not fishing, like Per's; he fishes so that he can afford to fly the way few people can.

At some point between when his father's fishing boat doubled as his crib, rocking him to sleep, and when he went to high school, Andy developed a problem with taking the regal lives of so many salmon, especially the king salmon. As a sixth-grader, having fished his entire life, he would look into the powerful eyes of the king salmon as they died on the deck of his father's boat. He wanted to see them, really look into their eyes as they flopped, captured by the net, drawn out of the salt water to the boat where fishermen stood atop the salmon world. When he was at his most sensitive, Andy felt the kings were looking at him as if to say, “Please throw me back, please throw me back.” The salmon these fishermen catch have not fulfilled their reason for being yet because they have not spawned. They have spent every day of their lives avoiding the sea's predators, the sea lions and salmon sharks, the orca and Dall porpoise. If they get past the humans, and then the bears, to deposit their eggs or sperm and create more king salmon, then their kind will last forever.

People like Andy's father and Per want their sons to be fishermen like them. They love the life, for the most part, and understand how someone could want to throw a dying king or a flopping red or a high-leaping silver salmon back to live a bit longer before dying for their species. Andy came to appreciate that some of the salmon have to give themselves to some of the many predators, and that he is one of those predators. He still deeply respects the taking of a salmon's life, especially the king. It's a sacrificial moment, and it's not felt by everyone, but Andy does not care about what others feel or do. He will not think of the lives of the salmon he takes so that he can live, as a dollar amount that trivializes what incredible creatures they are and what their flesh provides.

Andy keeps a sort of sculptural tribute to these salmon and their sacrificed flesh wherever he goes, wherever he lives. In his apartment in Cordova, piled in carefully built pyramids of gleaming gold cans stacked on top of the kitchen cabinets, is Andy's “home pack.” For almost all Alaskans, “home pack” is one of the most important symbols of their reason for living. Home pack is an Alaskan's own personal pile of canned, vacuum-packed, and/or smoked strips of salmon. Eating it makes existence enjoyable, even blessed, with moments of great pleasure.

Andy said he liked to keep his golden cans of the salmon caught by him and canned by his neighbor out where he can see them all the time, not hidden in some dark pantry. It makes him feel like a king to see what he thinks is the greatest food in the world; the cans are his piles of gold. The Copper River kings and sockeye and silver salmon give him much of his power and energy, because the flesh of a salmon is so loaded with fish oils and healthy fat and eye-opening, muscle-powering protein. The salmon pass on to him the energy they would have used to fight their way up the Copper River, some two hundred miles.

In Andy's apartment stood an old Ping-Pong table. Bent in the middle from a tidy arrangement of outdoor equipment, the Ping-Pong table was a display of who Andy truly was. The centerpiece of the display was a collection of shoes to put his body and mind and spirit to different uses. There were running shoes and basketball shoes. There was also a pair of old snowboard boots. He'd finally bought some expensive Northwave boots, red and white Apollos. They are the most supportive of all boots, and Andy had wanted them for a couple of years. They cost $240. Counting all his snowboards and boots and surfboards and flying machine and specialized clothes, he had to catch a lot of salmon to pay for it all. Andy spends the majority of his income on equipment so that he can fly, in the snow, in the water, in the air. Andy told me he uses his old Jamie Lynn snowboarding boots to fly his flying machine. On the day I was there, a car battery sat on the table, only temporarily. Andy had left the dome light on in his old truck and worn out the battery. He
is
human.

There was a pair of white, tall boots for the Kawasaki X500 dirt bike he rides. There was a pair of snowshoes, the skis for his flying machine, some old ski poles, some Techtron waterproofing spray. There was a box with his wet suit for surfing. There were six different helmets to protect his head. From all the death-defying things Andy has done, he knows the body can more easily be repaired than the head. There were two helmets for flying his ultralight, a helmet for snowboarding, a helmet for use on his Jet Ski, a helmet for mountain biking, and a helmet for dirt biking. Every year, Andy said, it seems as if one of the three hundred or four hundred fishermen in Cordova dies. A few years before, three had died during the short season. Everyone he knew, I suppose including himself, had been in really bad situations, but most lived to fish again. So far, none of these Alaskan cowboys wear helmets to fish.

On Andy's refrigerator, the one place in North America where you can find out what lies dear to a person's heart, was a poster of a mountain peak advertising his friend's helicopter company. They flew extreme skiers and snowboarders with money to surrounding ultrafantastic extreme skiing and snowboarding locations. Andy said with a smile that he needed to marry a superrich woman who was also a helicopter pilot.

Last winter, he'd hiked up alone to snowboard down Queens Chair. Andy has done quite well in competitions in Valdez at the World Championship, in New Zealand, and all over the Northwest. The Queens Chair is his favorite place in the whole world to snowboard. The mountain looks like a throne. It's a technical ride; it offers an “intricate playing field” for him, a challenge. Well, during this ride the challenge almost ended in his solitary death.

He had left at 5
A.M
. and told only his landlord where he was going. It took him three hours to hike to the top of Queens Chair, the last hour of which was severely steep climbing to get to the top. When he began, the powder was deep and fine—he was “dancing in the white room.” “Dancing in the white room” is one way to come down the mountain. When the powder's dry and deep enough, three or four feet, by flying through it with all this force and speed and gravity, the way a boarder turns creates “the white room.” As Andy made each turn, the snow flew out and about and everywhere. Making sharp turns deep and wide, the snow was sprayed up all over the place, surrounding him, like the walls of a white room. He couldn't see anything but white. When a boarder is dancing in the white room, he must know precisely where the trees and cliffs and boulders outside are located. It used to be Andy wore his Walkman, and when he created the white room, he was in there listening to CDs by Pennywise and Offspring. Now he listens to the sounds of the powder and his breathing and his board. Andy had been in the white room an infinite amount of times and was in it again coming down Queens Chair, except this time, he said, he had this premonition that he should come out.

When he came out and stopped, he immediately saw the danger he was in. The sun had hit one side of the mountain, the side he hadn't started on, and hardened the crust so that Andy could not break through, couldn't get his edge in. He had to stop. He was stuck, and below him was a hundred-foot sheer cliff. If he went off the cliff, he would land in a section of boulders. He had no ropes and no transceiver, which skiers use when caught in an avalanche. Earlier that winter he'd been snowboarding in Washington and watched his friend get swept away in an avalanche.

As he perched there on the smooth, icy snow surface, he thought about how he had to turn around. Just turning around took ten minutes. He had to leap up and twist around without sliding off the cliff. But he did it. Every move put him on the edge of death. Finally he was able to get his snowboard off and hike back up to where he could go down a different chute. Just hiking up took another half hour, because he had to dig in his snowboard with each movement up, barely being held from sliding to his death. He had to make all the decisions himself. So alone. As so often happens in Alaska, he returned to his home before noon, only one person ever knowing he had even gone anywhere. And he'd told no one how close he'd come to ending his life until he told me, and initially to me he even made it sound about as noteworthy as turning on a light switch.

Already this summer, Andy had been surfing. He found it more complicated. Everything is constantly moving: the water's moving and he is moving and his feet are moving. When the fishing is slow, Andy will put his net out and go surfing. Some of the locals see him and think he's lost his mind. Andy surfs in water where so many have been chilled so badly by immersion that their body parts failed and they drowned. When he's surfing in the Gulf of Alaska, Andy's got his dark dry suit on and only his hands and face are exposed. Some of the middle-aged fishermen tell him that one day some older fisherman with bad eyesight will mistake him for a sea lion and throw a seal bomb at him.

On one of the warmest days of the year last summer, not very warm as warm goes but warm for Cordova, Andy, who's always searching for the most freeing rush to be found in nature, decided to catch a couple waves completely naked. He didn't think any of the near- or farsighted fishermen saw him. He said it felt pure and exhilarating. A sea lion was nearby; Andy understands now how they feel as they surf the waves. He was so inspired that he has a plan for this coming winter. Sometimes he and a few of his friends snowboard during a full moon. Instead of dancing in a white room, it is a beautiful blue room, inside it the dancer's dark, flowing shadows. Someday soon Andy plans to make the ultimate full-moon snowboard run in the blue room—naked.

*   *   *

I walked back to Per and Neva's. Andy had given me a couple cans of his home pack. Rebekah was still out kayaking. Right about the same time Rebekah got back to the trailer park, Per and Seth pulled in from having done their chores in the seine boat. By mid-July they'd be living aboard it, fishing for their living. Neva was out with Keith in her boxy Sentra caring for her beloved flowers. She pampered them and admired them the way most humans wished they were. Per asked Rebekah if we'd like him to cook dinner. Rebekah, not having been around Per enough to know if he was kidding or not, looked at me to answer.

“Per, how about Rebekah and I take your truck and get us some pizza,” I said.

If Neva had been here, she would have said, “Oh, Per, come on.”

Rebekah and I went to get the pizzas down past Orca Book and Sound. I was impressed to see how quickly she made things happen, completely on her own. Her NOLS wilderness course had added several layers to her foundation of confidence. Being with her in the cab of Per's old pickup felt like being by myself, like being able to talk to a female version of me when I was twenty. Our spirits and minds seemed so similar, just in different places on the spiral of decisions and experience. We don't look much alike; our hair couldn't have been more different. Hers is curly and thick—to die for, I often overheard people say. I've never heard
curly
or
thick
used to describe my hair, and if I had to depend on it for warmth, I would die. I was awed at times by her ability to discern things in the world around her. She saw things I did not, and it inspired me. Sometimes she set me straight.

We turned left on Railroad Avenue to see the boat docks, fish-processing places, boat-repair shops, and net and boat parts graveyard. Pip had told me that he didn't think commercial fishermen in Alaska would be able to make their living much longer from the waters of the Copper River delta and surrounding sea, including Prince William Sound. He said a giant comet was coming to squash them but no one could see it clearly, yet. How much longer will they be able to pull their boats and store them in their yard like Andy Johnson? How long will Per be able to pile old nets in the net graveyard to be recycled? Will Cordova ever vote yes to build a road? What will happen then?

I pointed to a slow-moving white, wooden boat chugging into its space in the docks. It was Sully, the fisherman, the one who has a run at Telluride named after him, a run too daring for most. Sully, the man who has lived his working life defying death on the sea so he could defy death on the slopes and the mountaintops, had returned cruising at his own pace, from another fishing trip and sold his salmon. Like Per, like Andy Johnson and Pip, these fishermen love the extreme demands of their lives. They are even willing to be reined in by Alaskan biologists and sonar-counting gods because this is a way of life where they can feel completely challenged and alive.

Per dropped us off at the airport. He was proud we'd come to see the Cordovans' world. He doesn't mind people visiting Cordova. He would just rather not see the ones who think there may be a better way to live than to go to sea with your nets and hooks and pull your living out of it.