A bald eagle perched in the gray branches of an old snag stared intently at the choppy water of the inlet. I sat in my kayak, bobbing


with the waves in the pouring rain, jigging up and down with a rhythmic motion of my wrist. The eagle and I were doing the same thing—fishing, waiting, hoping, trusting that something to eat would come our way. A tiny wiggle traveled up the fishing line resting in my fingers. I jerked upward. Nothing. I went back to jigging, staring at the silver sea. Eventually, the eagle flew away. I paddled back to the beach disappointed. Fishing when you are hungry is different than fishing when you are not.


Fredrik and I had begun our two-week trip a few days earlier. We brought with us a slew of fishing gear, a collapsible shrimp pot, a small fish smoker, a garden trowel for digging roots, and an assortment of spices and condiments. The bulk of our sustenance we planned to collect from the land and the sea as we traveled.


Efficient hunting and gathering techniques and the abundance of life in Prince William Sound had allowed the native Chugachmiut and Eyak people to develop a rich, self-sufficient culture. Fredrik and I aspired to thrive in the same way. We wanted to make it as easy on ourselves as possible, so we planned our trial excursion for early August, when millions of salmon would be returning to the streams to spawn and an abundance of wild berries would be hanging in ripe handfuls. We hoped to eat well and have time leftover to enjoy this magical place.


Working as a kayak guide, I was accustomed to paddling 10 to 15 miles a day, 20 feet offshore. Finding a scenic camp and serving my guests a delicious dinner hunted and gathered from an Anchorage grocery store was part of my repertoire. Living off the land would require me to slow down. As we paddled, we scanned the shoreline for berries, jigged for bottom fish at steep drop-offs in the ocean floor, and poked into every small stream to see if it had a salmon run. We averaged less than five miles a day.


As I explored each potential camping beach for fresh edible greens, I found myself experiencing the country at a deeper level than ever before. Small details I never noticed before became important. How quickly do salmonberries ripen? On cloudy days, patches just off the beach along west-facing hillsides allowed me to re-pick every two to three days. I found that I could reliably find the salty spikes of goose-tongue greens a few feet above mean high water level in most protected bays. Although many of the wild woodland edibles I was familiar with—twisted stalk, Arctic dock, wild violet—were bitter and tough by August, avalanche paths, which frequently deposit huge piles of snow at sea level in the winter, provided vegetation months behind in the growing cycle. Slowly, my observational skills became more acute. I wondered how I would see the world if I had come from generations of living off this land as had the Native people of Prince William Sound.


Deep Water Bay had everything I loved in a campsite. Steep, smooth granite walls fell into a deep fiord, glaciated peaks reached toward the skyline, a blonde sand beach beckoned us to camp for a week. But there was a problem. Those vertical rock walls produced picturesque waterfalls but no salmon runs. The thin soil of recently glaciated country is poor in nutrients. The few pockets of wild edibles to be found were perched frighteningly high on small shelves. We suspected that these deep, cold waters would harbor delectable shrimp, but a storm tide two days earlier had stolen our shrimp pot. It was late and we had no choice but to spend a hungry evening in this lovely place. But like the Chugachmiut before us, we could not settle there.


44 PADDLING MAGAZINE


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54