The Rut and the Pumpkin Guns
‘Tis the season for fall hunting . . . Fla la la la la . . . La la la . . . Blah! The talk has begun. In the grocery line Thursday, Judy VanderVelst tells me with a sigh how she’s about to become a widow. Not that she’s planning on killing her husband […]
Tree of Life
I knew there was something special about her, the first time I saw her standing solitaire on that grassy bluff a year ago. She fascinated me, maybe more than the grizzlies across the Shelikof Strait from her, stuffing themselves on salmon as I stood not twenty feet away. Last September, I watched her blown about […]
Harvesting Goodness
There were no cell towers—only a satellite phone on the arch of an island known as Harvester in Shelikof Strait, a thirty minute skiff ride from Kodiak’s Larsen Bay where our bush plane landed. The Fields family are the only human inhabitants on this bit of Alaskan wilderness. They spend every summer setting salmon nets, […]