Four Quarters of Light (46 page)

Back at my cabin I sat on the porch. I thought I could see the tiny pin-pricks of distant stars. The seasons were on the turn again and I still had some travelling to do. I had already been to places that were on no map. Now I was heading south-west to Dillingham to catch the shoals of salmon as they return home to spawn and then to die in the waters in which they were born. There was some kind of metaphor for myself in this. I kept thinking of what Jack London said about being prepared to forsake your old ways, belief systems and old gods when you come to Alaska. But it was too much to take in just now. I have never been convinced by Damascus Road experiences, and in any case, my life was not my own. Tomorrow, Audrey and the boys would be back with me.

I looked out at the strands of fireweed growing by the track up to the cabin. Seedpods were beginning to ripen at the bottom of the stem; at the top, the remaining purple petals. Soon those seedpods would split and the seeds with their downy parachutes would float off in the breeze to root and grow again. Winter was already drawing near. But for now the fireweed was resting in the night, and I wasn't sure where my dreams would take me.

Audrey and the kids made good time travelling from Anchorage. The first thing that struck me when I saw them was that Cal was walking more steadily than I remembered. He seemed happy to make adventuresome forays on his own without having to hang on to one of us or whatever was at the ready. I was taken by the idea that my youngest child had learned to walk in Alaska while his father was learning to walk in another reality that Alaska had opened up. Jack was even happier
to see me. I had lots of stories to tell, but they could wait.

The next morning we deposited the
Pequod
with the hire company after we'd bought an extra buggy and stocked up on baby supplies. Pat would take care of the goods we had to leave behind. That afternoon, I watched as a V-shaped flight of geese flew over us heading south-west, the same direction as us. They always seemed to be turning up at such moments. Now here we were, leaving, like the birds, on our homeward leg. Our flight out of Fairbanks would only take a few hours on a commercial jet.

When we arrived in Dillingham a fisherman friend of Pat's called Mike and his fishing partner, Olaf, met us. I observed to myself that this was the third Alaskan named Mike I had stayed with, and I had met plenty of others on my travels.

Mike Davis had arrived in Alaska some thirty years ago to work on a volunteer scheme as a teacher. Like most of the people I had met, he had found himself staying for one more year, then another and another. Over those years Mike had worked as a journalist, a teacher and a union representative, and had even served a term of office in the legislature as a Democratic representative. Now he worked for the University of Alaska's rural development programme in Dillingham, and spent the summer break fishing the Bristol Bay area during its massive seasonal salmon run. Olaf was a postgraduate of the same university doing research into the walrus. He and Mike partnered up during the fishing season, but, as they explained during the drive to our cabin, it was one of the poorest seasons on record. The salmon numbers were exceptionally low and the price of fish per kilo the canneries and the buyers were offering was also the lowest it had ever been. As we drove past, Mike pointed out the harbour. It was jam-packed with the chunky, silver-grey aluminium fishing boats that were unique to the Bristol Bay fleet. ‘This time last year that harbour was empty. It's going to be a long, hungry winter for some fisher-folk.' By the time we'd got ourselves installed in our cabin, Mike was still talking salmon. The disastrous season was having a major impact on everyone in this lively but isolated bush town. Dillingham was, as Mike proclaimed, the salmon capital of the world. Sometimes
more than fifteen thousand tons of salmon are hauled out of Bristol Bay in a six-week salmon run. During that time, the population doubles with seasonal fishermen and cannery workers.

The majority of the resident population were native, a mix of Eskimos, Aleuts and Athabascan Indians. The whites who had settled here were well assimilated. The greetings hailed across the street to Mike declared that he was a well-liked resident. A glance at the map explained why the majority of the population was native. The names of the small villages clearly declared that this was Yupik territory. Quinnhagak, Togiak, Aleknagik, Ewok, Koliganek, Iquigig and Kokhanok all made the name Dillingham appear ludicrously cumbersome and totally inappropriate.

In spite of its name, Dillingham was a good place to stay, but it was the countryside around it that made it so attractive. This was still the Alaskan bush. The only stretch of road out of Dillingham ran for approximately twenty-three kilometres to Aleknagik Lake and back again. The countryside beyond and around this road was virgin bush, teeming with mountain lakes and rivers that were the spawning waters of millions of Pacific salmon every year. A cursory glance at the map confirmed that everything here was dependent on water. The salmon was born in icy mountain lakes then swam through the labyrinthine network of rivers to mature into fabulous majestic fish far out in the ocean, only to return some three or four years later to the exact spot of their birth to start the cycle all over again. Dillingham could have been Killybegs in Donegal to me, except that the fishermen in Donegal would not believe that such a place as Dillingham existed. It was part of the dreams of old men and drunken deckhands. In fishy terms, it was El Dorado.

On the second evening of our stay, Mike invited me to a ‘steam', which I was happy to agree to. A ‘steam' in Alaska means a steam bath. It is a ritual in every native community, the traditional way of getting clean but also something more than that. It's a bit like going to the pub, or even to church. It's where men gather at the end of the day to contemplate life and gossip about the fortunes and misfortunes of friends and enemies. It's
where you can cleanse yourself, ease the aching in your bones and put the world to rights with a few other naked men in the space of a few hours in a tiny wooden hut in the back of beyond. The steam is where you purge yourself, body and soul.

The steam Mike took me to was a rickety old plywood and plank structure erected a few metres from his fisherman's cabin. There were a few other cabins whose inhabitants shared the premises. The steam house was never fired up without first inviting the other fishermen. There were several boats resting on trailers and various piles of boat parts and fishing gear lying around. In fact, the steam looked more like a repair shed than a bathhouse. It was divided in two, with a changing area and a sauna. The changing room comprised two plank benches running along each facing wall. At several intervals at about head height, cup hooks or an occasional nail had been driven into the wall to hang one's clothes on. The place could not have held more than about eight men.

There were already three ‘steamers' there when we arrived, and all of them sat unconcernedly naked as they talked intensely to one another. Mike introduced me, and we undressed. There was no formality and little ritual in this freemasonry of the steam. Another man arrived with a bag of beers, and after being introduced to me he too got naked like the rest of us and slipped into conversation without further ado.

The poor season was the big issue, and as the men bemoaned the insignificant catches they were making one or two of them would disappear into the sauna and reappear ten minutes later, red and sweating, to join us. Each man wiped the excess sweat off his face and the back of his neck like a penitent about to enter a house of prayer. A single bare bulb lit the place and ghostly wafts of steam bellowed in every time someone entered or emerged from the sauna.

As the only non-fisherman, I was soon informed by my companions about the finer details of the Pacific salmon. The Chinook or king salmon was where the real money was. These fish could weigh up to eighty pounds and more. In a good season,
you could fill your boat three or four times a day if you had the energy and a good crew. Then there was the sock-eye salmon and the humpy, a much smaller fish at about two and a half feet in length and weighing up to twelve or fourteen pounds. The coho was a better fish: it could grow to over three feet and weigh in at some thirty pounds. It tasted a lot like the Chinook as it fed on the same basic diet. There was an argument about whether the curiously named Dolly Varden was a trout or a char. But, like the steel head, it was really a sport fish, and the sport fishermen were welcome to them.

With this debate going on, I asked what fish they didn't like to catch. There was a moment of quiet thought, then one of the naked confederacy laughed out loud. ‘I hope you won't take any offence at this, but there is one fish that ain't worth the effort unhooking it. It's called the “Irish lord”, and if you're a sports fisherman and can't catch nothing else, then you're sure to catch a lord. They are ugly brutes with big mouths and bulging eyes and you can't fail to catch them because they will take any kind of bait. Anything from shrimp or spinners, banana peel and cigar butts to bologna sandwiches and potato salad, if you can get it to stay on your hook.' I laughed along with everyone else as the storyteller spun out his improbable list. Again he apologized if he was offending my Irish sensibility. I explained that I wasn't the slightest bit bothered as there were no ‘lords' in Ireland. The only time the Irish had had lords that fitted his description was when the English imposed them on us. Another round of laughter went up and I took my bow by taking a turn in the sauna.

It was about half the size of the changing room, and the heat emanated from a fifty-gallon oil drum that had been cut and laid on its side. A door had been constructed in the top of it which was covered with a blanket of rocks, and a long metal chimneystack carried the smoke out through the roof. Near the fire sat a large bucket filled with water. A ladle constructed of pieces of timber with a tin can on the end was used to pitch water onto the hot stones. The benches that faced each other beside the fire could only hold four people. The room was dark from years of
wood smoke and lit by one small window in the wall. Underneath the bench were a few basins, each with a helping of cold water for dipping your washcloth.

I quickly learned the ritual rhythm of the steam. The easygoing camaraderie of the changing room changed in the sauna. Here, the macho element of the freemasonry kicked in. This was very much a testing room, and I was sure my companions in the steam room were determined to test my pale suburban flesh against their own hardiness. I have little time for such shows of prowess. As the water hit the stone, exploding into slow-moving clouds of steam, I lowered my face into a washcloth and hoped that the dampness would cool the roaring air that was barbecuing the back of my throat. When the gold chain I had forgotten to remove from around my neck started to burn through my flesh, I'd had enough.

Back in the easy atmosphere of the changing room someone handed me a beer and the conversation carried on – sometimes about boats, or engines, sometimes about different fishing practices in other countries. A lot of the talk was about their dependence on the canneries and the Japanese fish market, which ultimately determined the price. At this time of year the season was coming to a close. Men were calculating how they would get through the winter without having laid down a big supply of fish in their freezers. The talk turned to hunting and trapping. Some of the men were considering getting out from the worst of the winter. The talk was all ‘men talk'. I had half expected a bunch of guys swigging beer in a sauna to crack a few jokes about women, but the subject never came up.

As we walked back to the cabin, I asked Mike what people did in the winter. After all, I thought, you can't hunt every day. Mike wasn't troubled by the question. ‘It doesn't get as cold here as up north. So when we get snowed in we just have fun. The countryside is great for cross-country skiing and people still like to run their dog teams. Though most prefer to load up a trailer on their snow machines and head through the mountains to the villages. Alaska is a place that keeps you busy even when you think there is nothing to do.' Before parting, we planned a trip to one of the
nearest villages called Togiak, some fifty miles west of Dillingham.

‘How was your evening out with the boys?' Audrey asked mockingly when I returned to the cabin.

‘It's a male thing,' I answered teasingly, ‘and unless you want to come and join us I can't tell you. After all, this is the Brotherhood of the Steam.'

But she would not be drawn in. She and the kids enjoyed Dillingham – not that there was much to do or see, but the small town was homely and uncomplicated. Cal was getting stronger on his legs and wanted to go ‘walkabout' everywhere. Jack wanted to go fishing, but Mike wasn't entirely happy about that. You had to be several hours out on the ocean to lay the nets, then you either hung about and waited or came back ashore for a while before going out again for few more hours of heavy hauling work. Mike worked from a big, long, open boat powered by a large outboard. It was cold and bleak out on the bay and there was no place to shelter from the cold or a mass of three-foot-long fish thrashing around in the boat. However, he did lay out a beach net one morning. Jack and I watched as he walked into the sea with enormous rubber boots on that allowed him to wade into the ocean up to his chest, whereupon he anchored the net to the seabed. ‘Don't expect much, these subsistence nets haven't been catching much,' he'd informed us.

In the meantime, we all went off to church and the potluck afterwards. I was beginning to think that we were not in Alaska at all. We stayed longer at the potluck than we had intended. The food was good and everyone wanted to welcome and help the new Irish family. The only thing was, Mike suddenly realized he had forgotten about the net on the beach and we had to leave in a hurry. It was just as well. The tide had come and gone and fish lay entangled in Mike's beached net. ‘Oh my God!' he said. I was amazed at the number of fish. Jack was running up and down the length of the net deliriously calling out, ‘Daddy, Daddy, look, here's more fish!' I don't believe he had ever seen so many real fish, even on a fishmonger's table. ‘Look at the size of this one!' he called out again.