The throbs of the ferry’s engine pulse through my body as it heads from Haines, the small community where I have courted the edge of civilization for forty years toward Juneau, 90 miles away. Glacier-encrusted mountains rise 7,000 feet from the sea, forming ramparts around the vast wilderness that surrounds Lynn Canal, through which the boat passes.
I’m leaving my hunting territory and old homestead cabin, for the first time in 16 years, and heading to catch the soonest flight from Juneau to Seattle, for an urgent hospital visit. I’m in chronic pain and physically weak. My scheduled spring brown bear hunts are just around the corner, but I’m uncertain about my future as a professional hunting guide; only minutes ago friends and family gathered around while I signed a last will and testament.
The serious pain started one night last fall while I was guiding a brown bear hunt. The hunter and I were out in the snow, and as I paddled my canoe in the dark, I suffered my first bad attack.
Upon arriving in Seattle, my loving former girlfriend, Catherine, whom I left behind 40 years ago, meets and accompanies me to the hospital. Back then I was a cowboy who rode solo into the sunset in search of adventure; she was the 19-year-old cowgirl I left behind, now single and lonely after raising three beautiful daughters and a husky son.
To my relief, my doctor in Alaska was overly cautious, and the specialist in Seattle informs me that I don’t need surgery, after all.
Catherine and I travel to Port Townsend, our hometown, two hours north, where I’ll rest.
After five days I begin to regain my strength, and Catherine drives me around the roads I once cruised in my hot-rod ’57 Chevy; my ’56 Jaguar XK-140, and my favorite-of-favorites, a rag-top ’60 Corvette. I sold them all to finance my dream of moving to Alaska and purchase the high-performance airboats that I still use for my guided brown bear and goat hunts, from which I make my living.
While driving back roads of the Olympic Peninsula, we find remnants of the original forestlands where my dad taught me to hunt and trap. But clearcutting and development abounds. Homes were once thinly spread across the countryside, but they now crowd the landscape and even cover the spot where I gutted my first deer at age 12.
Traffic is another thing, altogether.
This morning, after three weeks in this changed place, my thoughts are consumed by my absence and pending homecoming. I feel the same longing for Alaska that first surfaced in me as a young man, the elixir of my life so long ago.
Washington is beautiful, but it exists best as a memory. My home has always been Alaska, and I’m eager to disembark for Haines and reunite with my dogs, in the comfort of my old log cabin that overlooks the Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve. After my spring brown bear hunts are over, the halcyon summer will come, as will a visit from the cowgirl whom I left behind forty years past. +++
To book a trip with Gilliam (now in full health), contact him at al.gilliam@hotmail.com or 907-767-5522; get more info at his website AlaskaBearAndGoatHunting.com.
Read a portion of Gilliam’s feature story “Three Bears” from the March/April 2015 issue of the magazine.