Outdoors/Adventure

An Alaska hunter finds joy in returning to favorite places

We were weathered in and waiting for a flight as I turned the pages of a coffee table book full of photographs — "Bush Pilots of Alaska," by Kim Heacox and photographer Fred Hirschmann. Had our flight not been delayed, I might never have read the text, but the weather did not break until I finished the last page.

It's been several years, but the book comes to mind as I think about my favorite places in Alaska. It was the first time I had read about the phrase "Here be dragons" written on old maps, denoting the edge of the known world and a treacherous, unexplored wilderness. In the context of bush pilots, mention of flying into the "unknown beyond" perpetuates and contradicts the myth that maps represent reality.

As my partner and I looked over the unmarked landscape on our flight home, the question of boundaries was on my mind. I contrasted the vast tundra below with what I saw when flying over the Midwest. There, a patchwork of agricultural fields hemmed together only to unravel at the borders of rivers and mountains. I wondered about the invisible political boundaries of the states — lines that exist on some maps but not on others.

I question maps as geographical representations, not because they are inaccurate but because they are selective. And I cannot use them to point to my favorite places. These places do not exist in cartographic terms. They are found on the ground, in the woods, on the water.

If I were to draw a map of Alaska, it might have little use to a reader. My map might include a wolf on the edge with the inscription "Where wolves howl." This would not signify my contemporary ignorance of geography but would offer a symbolic association and point of reference.

Best places, favorite places

My orientation to Alaska's landscapes came to me as a hunter, and it fits to choose a hunter — the wolf — to represent the frontier edge of my map.

This mind map would not help a reader get from one place to another but would represent a sense of place. These places — an island as it appears in the fog, tidal flats thick with the smell of fish and birds, the skyline of a hill as run by an English setter, the dappled light of the sun through leaves along a grouse wood — are not easy to locate on paper.

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Best places are not the same as favorite places. Best places must meet a criterion of general rather than personal importance. A best place is the most of something — the most excellent, say, or the highest — to a specialized audience. A favorite place may not offer the most or best of anything, except that it endears itself to you for its particular qualities.

If someone asked me to describe the best hunting opportunities in Alaska, I'd think first of species and places — a mountain hunt for Dall sheep in the Wrangells, black bear hunting out of Petersburg, a float trip for moose in the McGrath area, a brown bear hunt on the Alaska Peninsula, caribou hunting on the North Slope of the Brooks Range, Sitka black-tailed deer and Dungeness crab out of Kodiak, or a sea duck hunt in Izembek Lagoon.

But if the question were about favorite places, my mind works out the answer in a different way. There are no maps or directions to places that exist in the mind. The intangible chemistry of memory haunts and informs topographical features — the growth stage of flora and fauna, the day's weather, and who we are at the moment we look at a landscape and decide it's one of our favorite places. Like Peter Pan's directions to Neverland, we cannot get there by following a map.

Alaska is known around the world for its unique hunting opportunities, and some hunters save money over a lifetime for a chance to hunt here. If their image of success is one pulled from the glossy pages of a hunting magazine, it wouldn't be fair to send them to any of my favorite hunting spots. I don't know what my places look like to those who see them for the first time, perhaps barren wastelands with little chance of game.

Mostly, I hunt birds with dogs. I hunt ducks and geese with Labs and grouse and ptarmigan with English setters.

Favorite duck hunting spot

My favorite duck hunting spot is not a grand destination of world renown. Rather, it's a scrappy bit of tideland between the mouth of the Kenai River and the city of Kenai. The horizon includes distant Mount Redoubt as well as old canneries and fishing docks.

The Kenai River Flats offer a treasure trove of migrating junk as well as birds. There are litter remnants of the dipnet fishery, lost Kwikfish lures washed up from the in-river salmon season, as well as flotsam and jetsam — marine debris brought in and left by the tide. I pick up some of it as a curiosity and some because it's dangerous to wildlife.

Rather than marginalizing the marsh, these ever-present reminders of a nearby town give the flats a particular charm because it is easy to drive by them and not see the possibility of thriving life concealed within. For a time, I didn't. But it is precisely their proximity that makes them dear. It's a place I can find every day. Otherwise, most of my nature experiences are relegated to the weekend or planned vacations.

[Hunting on the Kenai River Flats, surrounded by the marvels of nature]

My favorite place to hunt upland birds is also my "home range" — the Kenai mountains. It would take a lifetime to learn the entirety of the area, and it changes every year. One year there is heavy snow and water for the dogs in a particular valley; the next year it is dry. Avalanches rearrange rocks and stream flows. Flowers and songbirds reorder the landscape in infinite variations of sight and sound.

Sometimes, after sharing images from ptarmigan hunts with the dogs, I am asked to give away my spots. Nowhere I go is a secret, but my love for certain mountain valleys and coveys has evolved as a relationship built over time. I don't know how to translate the experience captured in a photograph into directions to an exact spot.

Appreciating the details

That is the joy and the trouble with favorite hunting destinations. For those of us who return to the same places year after year, it is not necessarily because of a general principle — this is the best place. More often, it is because of the relationship developed and the delight of revisiting a place haunted by memories.

The pleasant misery experienced at the individual level is not something you can always recommend to another person — a swamp crawl through dewy spiderwebs in the marsh to sneak up on ducks or a grueling climb into the mountains with gear and shotgun for a small chance at finding ptarmigan is not for everyone.

How do you get to a favorite place? Instead of opening a window on a screen and searching, you open the window of the house. You go out into the yard and beyond and with a childish mind you find the invisible doors that open up to the possible. You pick up a single leaf, rock or feather on the trail and examine it. It becomes one of the most beautiful things you've seen because it's the thing you spend the time to examine.

As I prepare for the upland opener on Aug. 10, I am anxious about every detail.

How will Winchester, our English setter, fare in his later years?

Will Hugo, the younger pup, overcome his zeal to hunt with us instead of for himself?

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I still have that scratch in the stock of my shotgun from falling down a shale slope and may earn a few more. I don't have a lot to go on, but the coveys seem fewer this year.

My dreams, memories and feelings about returning to special places are not geographic as much as mental. They are like an old friend, and I'd like to see them again.

Christine Cunningham of Soldotna is a lifelong Alaskan and avid hunter. On alternate weeks, she writes about Alaska hunting. Contact Christine at cunningham@yogaforduckhunters.com

Christine Cunningham

Christine Cunningham of Kenai is a lifetime Alaskan and avid hunter. She's the author, with Steve Meyer, of "The Land We Share: A love affair told in hunting stories."

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