Outdoors/Adventure

In these times, the outdoors in your backyard is truly great

It was about a 30-mile drive from my house in town, but the trip was worth it. The destination was a landlocked lake chock-full of stocked fish. These were not just fingerlings, but catchable Arctic char — some more than 20 inches.

Although descendant from fish captured in Bristol Bay, my first hatchery fish was the ugliest fish I had ever seen, especially for a char. He had the characteristic pink spots, but the coloring was an all-over duller version of the char I caught in the Swanson River drainage. Those fish, the only char I had seen up to that point, varied in their flamboyant sunrise hues. Their spots — from fuchsia on green to pale pink on burnished silver — made them the most beautiful fish I had ever seen.

“Is this really a char?” I asked Steve.

He explained the fish stocking program and how my fish was likely sterile, raised in tanks, and trucked to the lake where it shot through a hose to its new home water. My char was a “stocking product” born of a fertilized egg that was pressure-shocked during early development so that it could not reproduce and compete with natural fish. It had probably been in the lake a few years, based on its size and the stocking records.

The rounded nose of my char did not resemble the characteristic salmon head, and I wondered if this was from “bumping the tank,” where I imagined it spent its youth in a crowded box. Until then, I never thought of a school of fish as being inside a school.

Fish stocking diverts angling pressure away from wild fish, and the fish-stocking program is complicated. A lake must have legal public access and provide increased angling opportunities. Because of this, I felt good about heading to the same lake week after week throughout one winter.

Those days on the ice with the sun reflecting off the snow gave me much needed sunlight and fresh air. And, the fishing was often better (in terms of fish caught) than it was on the “wild” lakes.

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As it happened, one day a realty sign showed up, stapled to a tree across from the public access.

I followed the signs, turning down gravel roads that revealed other stocked and natural lakes until, at the top of the hill, I saw a big, white house. It was a bigger house than I could afford, but it wasn’t fancy.

A few weeks and stacks of paperwork later, Steve and I owned our first home together. It made sense to combine our households right smack next door to several stocked lakes. We would save on gas — no longer would we each drive 60 miles to our steady fishing lake when it was a quick jot through the woods.

Except, after the initial ventures by boat and canoe that next summer, we didn’t fish on the lake again for 10 years.

Many times, I have wondered why the lake lost its allure. First, I accused Steve’s nature. It seemed, or so I theorized, that he was like a horse my sister owned. She had trained it back when she was a teenager, when she would storm out of the house to gallop away from all her cares in the world.

Twenty years later, the horse won’t start without a 20-minute gallop. You can’t get on this horse and have a nice four-beat walk to start the day. It has to settle down from being a wild teenager pace horse first.

The same goes for bird dogs. The best thing to do before a day of hunting is to stop somewhere else before you get to the place you will hunt and let them run off some steam.

I’m not sure if either of these examples sheds light on Steve’s behavior, but it is a fact of his life since I have known him that he needs to drive at least 20 miles, and preferably more than 100, before he can fish, hunt or hike. The idea of a nearby fishing hole sounded good at the time, but it turned out its proximity lacked the appeal of a real destination.

Now that state of Alaska mandates limit travel, the old lake looks pretty appealing. Also, everything in and around the house seems a little neglected and worthy of attention.

[Heading outdoors? Here’s what Alaskans should consider during the pandemic.]

Since my first 6-inch trout — caught as an adult despite being raised in Alaska — I’ve been hooked on what seems an ever-growing and expanding desire to seek out and experience the great outdoors. It’s almost as if by calling it “great” it can’t exist in the easy, subtle, nearby. Even if there are breathtaking backyards full of magnificent magpies, they are not images of freedom.

For so many years, my mode of expression has been through the great outdoors. In my mind, it is a romanticized faraway place of escape and connection to the natural world. When I caught my first hatchery fish, I was a bit disappointed that it was not a wild, beautiful fish. I even wondered if it was safe to eat (of course, it was).

This weekend, while on a walk with the dogs, I found a grouse feather sitting on the snow along the trail. The bird might have been hit by a hawk, because the rest of it was nowhere to be found. Upon examining the feather, I admired the beauty of this random, small piece of nature — the intricate pattern of the colors, loomed in perfection and lost in the wind.

I love the mountains, wild rivers and remote destinations that are like a Neverland for a person such as myself who works many long hours in front of a computer. These past weeks have been full of anxiety and grief. I’ve wanted to get away and participate in an environment so much bigger than myself.

I find myself doing that by walking through the woods to the nearby lake to try to catch a stocked fish. And I’m grateful for the reminder of why I picked this place as home.

Christine Cunningham is a lifelong Alaskan who lives in Kenai.

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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