Alaska Dispatches
# 5  —  7 September 2000

Fall Hunting

I just saw a spectacular shooting star on the way home from a spectacular steam to cap off a spectacular day.
I have been out hunting twice this week with Kyle, captain of the Renegades and son of our in-town acting landlord. Today we were hunting seals. It seems like I have a good eye for them, and I spotted a couple this afternoon. But I am decidedly not quick enough with the shotgun, nor probably accurate enough, although I have been killing ducks lately. I still worry that I am going to blow a hole in the side of a boat, or worse, and so I end up checking every few seconds to make sure the safety is engaged, and that makes me more than a bit tentative. I am getting better, though.
Kyle is a nice guy. It is hard for me to tell how he rates as a hunter. Kyle has asked a couple of times to borrow money, and that always puts a weird spin on a relationship. It may be no big deal here, though, I’m not sure. He invited me to go to Nelson Island to camp out for a few days and get a bunch of geese. I am game, if the trip materializes. 
I am surprised at my reaction to hunting, since for my entire life I have felt an intense fear and even hatred of guns. There is so much to the experience of hunting here, though, from the sheer beauty of the landscape to the tradition of subsistence to the challenge or rush or whatever it is that has drawn people to hunt for sport for as long as it has been an option. 
Seal hunting is extraordinary. We are out on the open sea, so far in fairly inclement weather, scanning the waves for a seal. They pop their heads up quickly, and then dive down in a flash for another 2 to 10 minutes. The idea is to spot one, pilot the boat towards it, and wait with the shotgun ready, hoping that it will pop up again within range. They are also hunted with rifles, but I haven’t seen that yet.
At one point this afternoon we spotted a bunch of boats in a group, so we joined the chase. There were 7 boats tracking one seal. Each boat had a pilot and at least one person standing in the bow with a shotgun at the ready, scanning the surface of the sea. As soon as someone saw the seal pop up, he raised his index finger with his hand facing himself, and then pointed toward where he had seen the animal. The drivers all gunned their outboards toward the spot. I figured there was no way the seal would escape, but no one got close enough to fire a single shot at it.
I learned that we are a bit early, and that the choppy weather makes it next to impossible to get a seal. Everyone talks about seal hunting in the spring with a twinkle in their eye, and people are excited for me to experience it. In any event hunting seals is, even under these conditions, one of the most intense things I have experienced. No matter how cold and miserable you feel, when a seal has been spotted the adrenaline kicks in, your heart pounds and your blood flows, and everything but spotting the seal is wiped clean from the brain’s slate.
Many have expressed their desire for me to get a seal. It is an incredibly endearing part of this culture. I feel again something I have felt before in Japan and Africa, where I have also been on the receiving end of incredible generosity to outsiders. Along with feeling improbably blessed and grateful, I would like to somehow karmatically return the kindness by having the kind of home where people would drop in to eat at any time, or where I could host visitors from out of town, including random people I hardly know. But ultimately this never happens when I’m back home. I don’t know exactly why. Perhaps it is cultural, in that there simply isn’t the same kind of opportunity to offer of oneself, or perhaps I don’t hang out in the kinds of places where visitors and tourists gather. Or perhaps it is ultimately more something about me, and something I could change, and something I should change.
Leisy has mixed feelings about the idea of me getting a seal – after all it is absolutely illegal, and perhaps immoral - although I would give the meat and skin away, and so ultimately the animal would be used for subsistence purposes. However, something about a white guy out there shooting a seal doesn’t sit too well with her, and I can understand her emotions. These aren’t the kinds of things you think about, though, out on the rolling sea with the rain pouring down, the boat rising and crashing with the swells, the shotgun against your shoulder with the safety released as you scan the surface of the sea for a seal to pop up. 
We always set gill nets (called gill nets because they catch fish by their gills – one more of the seemingly endless things I never knew), and today we also dug around a bit on a sandbar for clams. I am getting to do more each time. Today I piloted the boat a bunch, and helped to pull in nets. I also bought my own ammo for the first time, and have been borrowing a 12-gauge Remington from another friend of Leisy’s. 
Both times out this week my hands have gotten cold and wet beyond the functional stage. Waders would also be nice to have. It would be amazing to be out on the water in inclement weather with the right gear on. But it seems I’m always a few pieces short. Everyone here is pretty well decked out with the same stuff, and Cabela’s, a large hunting catalog company that must do a brisk business with this village, carries it all. I don’t want to go overboard on gear so that I wind up with a closet full of stuff I will never use again, but I do want to be able to be out and about and comfortable. It will also be great to have some of my own stuff rather than relying on people to constantly loan me everything I need. I look forward to having Leisy’s grandfather’s shotgun here with us.

So I finally got my first decent duck the other day. I was out with Kyle. The bird appeared on the bank, all alone, and just kind of sat there waiting for me to take my gloves off, disengage the safety, aim and shoot. As Kyle aptly put it: “Some of these birds don’t realize just how dangerous guns can be.” I killed it with one shot. Aiming for the feet has dramatically improved my shooting percentage. I got another duck at the end of the day as well, which I gave to Leisy’s friend for loaning me his shotgun.
I wonder how much I will miss hunting when we are back to our lives in the Bay area. I also wonder in more general ways if and how being here will change me. Today it is easy to imagine staying here, or moving to Montana and building a house in the middle of nowhere and spending much more time out of doors. I wonder, though, if I will just as easily move back into our life in California, and all of this will become a collection of fading memories.
I have kind of forgotten about life in San Francisco already. I certainly don’t miss work. Perhaps that will all change when the weather changes. But I have been keeping busy. I am also enjoying having so much time with Jules, and that remains my number one priority. But there is so much else going on here as well. A man in this neighborhood is building a new house, so I helped frame the floor for a few hours the other day. I could learn so much by helping him out more. It seems like Kyle will take me hunting often; he seems pretty determined to have me get a seal.
I am also finally being asked to steam regularly - well at least twice in a row - by Freddie. Tonight they told me the story of a blind elder from this village named Joey who in the 60s or 70s started a tradition of knocking on the floor to have the driver poor more water on the rocks, thereby turning up the heat in the steam bath. I guess that this has caught on and is now done throughout the Yukon-Kuskokwim region. Tonight they demonstrated the technique and cooked me pretty good. So good, in fact, that I’m feeling a bit faint. I think it is time to lay down.
Oh, about that shooting star. The sky is totally clear, filled with countless stars and a half moon. As I walked home 3 graceful, somewhat menacing owls circled overhead. I stopped inside to get the honeybucket and walked the 500 yards to the collection spot, emptied the qerrun and turned for home. As I walked up our boardwalk another owl swooped down in front of me and reversed toward the sky. Following its path I looked up and saw a shooting start racing straight down, burning brightly for several seconds before dissolving into the night sky directly over our house.

©2000, Michael Thornton Wyman