Free Fish

The fish wheel spins in the river and scoops up salmon that are trying to head upstream. The buckets dump the fish (lower, center) into a box alongside the wheel.

The fish wheel is a perpetual motion machine. The Copper River propels it. We received permission from Angus DeWitt, the grumpy Athabaskan native on whose property the wheel is located, to drive through and look at the wheel. As we stood on the bank on a drizzly evening, the river roared through on its way to Valdez. The salmon, heading upriver to spawn and die, have to run this gauntlet. There's an immature – but enormous – eagle perched on a fallen tree halfway across the river. He's waiting to see what he can collect.
The roaring river hits the baskets in the wheel and propels them, scooping up anything that is trying to pass upriver.
I made my way down the slippery bank and looked into the box at the side of the wheel. There were six salmon lying in there. I retreated to the bank and waited two minutes. A salmon appeared in the rotating wheel. It ferociously tried to find its way out of the scoop. He fell, twisting on the way down, and fell onto the wheel support system. It took him a second to wriggle off the wood and back into the river. Whooo! Close call. Two minutes later, the same thing happened. Two minutes after that, however, a salmon ended up in the scoop and didn't move fast enough. He ended up being caught in the box. Another few minutes passed and yet another salmon was picked up but escape death by performing a wonderful leap that took him to freedom.
The wheel is owns by someone other than Angus (which probably accounts for his grumpiness). You are welcome to pick out a fish (you are permitted 250 salmon per year). But you must report to a Ranger station to show a fin, along with the permission you have received from the wheel owner to collect fish. The Ranger will contact the owner to verify you have his permission.
We came here to Slana, in the middle of the wilderness on the road between Glenallen and Tok, on a visit to Brian and Jean Johnson's little cabin. Seven years ago, Brian had bought the shell of a cabin and five acres of land from a homesteader. The cabin housed the local preacher and was one room. He set about living in the plywood box while he strengthened the structure. He added insulation and then added log facing to the cabin. He built an attic bedroom and installed a couple of support beams to carry the load.
Brian said when he showed Jean the original cabin/hut she stood there and just laughed. But they have carved a beautiful little home in the wilderness. Life took a step toward modernity two years ago when the electric grid came through. Till that time, they had been living with a loud and heavy generator. “It was tough to get that started in the morning when the temperature was 30 degrees below zero,” Brian said. They would drag the generator into the cabin and warm it in front of the wood stove. Then they could get it to start. They found if they bought a smaller generator, they could start that after storing it inside the cabin. The heat from the exhaust would then be pointed at the larger generator and that would eventually unfreeze it. So the arrival of the electricity was an enormous boost for them.
The couple said moose wander into their front garden regularly. The female moose have a nasty tendency to snap off the birch trees. They do not bother to munch on the lettuce and potatoes the couple grown.
Brian explained how he and his wife benefit each year from the Alaskan Pipeline fund. He said they each receive around $1,250 per year. This changes, depending on the flow of oil and has been as high as $2,500 per person. You must own property in Alaska and stay in the state for a minimum of six months and a day to reap this benefit.
We parked on a gravel pull-off space at the front of the house and were sitting in the living room when Steve, a neighbor, stopped by. He offered the couple some salmon that left over after he'd married off one of his daughters the previous day. We received a whole, cooked salmon which we chopped up and stored in our freezer. Steve is a trapper and artist. He told me he runs two trap lines, usually between late October and April. “I'll run one trap line one day, the other the next day,” he said. He traps martens, fox, wolf, mink. He says he find the meat of these animals is not that tasty, although he is partial to beaver. “Tastes like high quality beef,” he said. His wife makes hats from the pelts and they make jewelry from the teeth.
The previous day, Saturday, we'd driven to Wrangel-St. Elias National Park. This is a huge wilderness – 12 million acres and the park abuts the Kluane National Park in Canada. The place is pristine with huge mountain ranges and endless glaciers. But it is not very accessible – only two roads lead into the park. One of them is prone to being closed by washouts. This happened to be the case when we headed down the Nabesna Road. It had washed out and was closed.
We hiked through the boreal forest with a park ranger and learned much about this largest organism in the world. It extends across all of Canada,, from Newfoundland-Labrador, crosses into Russia and China and ends in Scandinavia. Many of the trees are white and black spruce. In addition, quaking aspen is a major player in the forest. We learned about the “drunken forest” caused by the tilting of shallow-rooted evergreens because of the permafrost. We came to appreciate the fragility of the permafrost. If you melt it, it can never be restored to the original state. Parking lots, and highways do a great job of destroying the permafrost – hence the roller-coaster ride in mainland Alaska where the permafrost heaves and sags because of the highway heat.

Monday, July 19, 2010
We drove north to Tok, a small crossroads town 90 miles from the Canadian border. We checked at the visitor center and discovered the road farther north, to Chicken, was opened this morning. But we've decided not to push our luck by driving this ragged road after the washouts we'd read about earlier in the week. We'll head for the Canadian border and retrace our route to our favorite campground of the entire trip at Kluane Lake. Then we'll head down to Haines, Alaska.