Other than Anchorage, all communities in Alaska are small. Homer was small. The town itself was quaint, functional and not very interesting so we drove straight to the Homer Spit. To reach the end of the road you had to go to the end of the Spit. There we found the End of The Road Motel, which was literally built were the road ended. The road ended in the motel's parking lot and behind the motel were the water of Kachemack Bay. We could go no further. There were other motels in town, but for us there was only one. We checked into the End of the Road.
Homer Spit was a long narrow piece of land below the town of Homer. I don't know how long, but I'll guess two to three miles. Most of it is barely wider than the two lane road itself, but the end opens up and that's were the businesses are located. The Homer Spit mostly facilitates the fishing industry with some tolerance for tourist. We were too late in the year for tourist, so it wasn't crowded, but we were tourist none-the-less. Of course I had to walk the many docks to see the boats. There were a few rugged boats that were used for sports fishing, but most were commercial fishing boats. I knew plenty about boats. I'd seen commercial fishing boats since I was a kid in Savannah and through my Coast Guard days, but I'd never seen any like these. These were hard boats built for a dangerous sea. As I walked the docks I spoke to the men on boat decks working gear. They were like their boats: hard men built for a dangerous life. I was drawn to the boats and the life as if my destiny.
When we drove into Homer the first thing we did was find a newspaper so we could house hunt. The second thing was to find the airport. Homer had a fine airport, it's tarmac was packed with bush planes. Like the boats out on the Spit, the bush planes were the real. None were new. None were pretty. All were rugged, perfect for the wilds of Alaska's out back. I watched a pilot repair the torn fabric of his Piper Super Cub with a large roll of Duct Tape, then told my wife: "I love this place." She laughed because she knew that I did and she laughed because she did too. Alaska seemed like the kind of place that could hold me in one place. Mary believed we had come home because Alaska fit us both so well.
After a few days of unsuccessful house hunting a new Anchorage paper arrived with an ad that caught our attention. I don't recall what it said, but it was a cabin and it jumped out at both Mary and I. It was too late in the year for house hunting in Alaska, so we had decided to find something to rent. We wanted a place in Homer but nothing there was available, so we would be content with a house on the Kenai Peninsula. The add made it sound like it was perfect for us. I didn't know where it was because the location was given as "Sterling Highway, mile marker forty-seven and a half," without the name of a community. Alaska addresses were given in mile markers, but I'd not heard of the Sterling Highway. When I asked someone about it I learned it was the road we had arrived on. Alaska had so few roads it was assumed everyone knew their names. Which is why there were few road signs.
I called the number and talked to the owner. I told him our circumstances, number of kids and dogs. He was fine with all of it. I told him we were in Homer so he gave me directions. It wasn't until we pulled into Cooper Landing four hours later that we realized the guy on the phone was the same old man who'd showed me the sheep on the mountain. It wasn't until months later that I realized Red had run that ad in the Anchorage paper as bait to pull me back to him, into his carefully laid trap.
We all loved Red. He was a real deal Alaskan and one of the most interesting men I have ever met. His stories were the stuff of frontier legend and I still believe they were all true. Red had homesteaded Cooper Landing before there was a road through it, before Alaska was a state. He claimed his property was valued at more than a million dollars and I believed him. It would be worth ten million today. It was as beautiful as any wilderness fantasy, the location ideally suited. From his front door I could throw a rock into the Kenai Lake. It was also a hundred yards from the spot were the Kenai Lake overflowed to become the Kenai River. The Kenai River is famous world over for its salmon fishing. If you've seen a photo of men packed tight fishing salmon in a river the odds are that was the Kenai River. Its called combat fishing because of the number of fisherman on the bank. That's where Red lived, and that's were we rented a rustic log cabin from him.
The cabin was 150 yards from Red's place, just past the spot where the Kenai Lake became the Kenai River. It was a one room cabin with a sleeping loft and rudimentary kitchen. It had running water and I think it had a bathroom. Mary will remember and she'll shake her head that I don't remember such an important detail. More important than a bathroom, the cabin had a huge picture window. On the other side of that window was a view that still lives in my dreams.
As I said, Red was in his seventies, but he had a wife in her thirties and a young son. The first time I saw Red with his shirt off I could only stare at his washboard abs. I was stupid enough to ask if he went to a gym. He laughed at me and swept his arm towards the woods and said, "That's my gym." Like most Alaskans, Red made a living though diverse means. He had the gas station with a garage, and across the road, nestled up to the Kenai Lake there was a restaurant he owned, but leased to a husband and wife team. Red was also a registered hunting guide, which is a big deal in Alaska. In past years Red had made a great deal of money as a hunting guide, but for reasons I never figured out, he'd stopped doing guide work before I met him. Red also owned a small sawmill, a logging operation, and several mines. None were big money makers, but any of them could turn a profit when he worked them.
The first week we lived in his cabin Red came over asking for my help. On a return trip from Soldotna his wife had run over a bear. The bear had damaged the truck enough that he couldn't safely drive it so he asked me to drive him to the spot of the accident in our van. "Is the bear dead," I asked. "Probably just wounded," Red said. "Might want to bring that fancy rifle. A wounded bear can be unfriendly. Bring that dog too. She can find it if its crawled off into the woods."
The logical part of my brain knew it was dangerous to go into Alaskan woods to hunt a wounded bear, but the adventuresome part of me was eager to go. I always give in to my adventuresome side. I grabbed my rifle called the dog, borrowed Mary's van and drove down the Sterling Highway with Red.
The dog was a female Rottweiler less than a year old we called Lady. We'd bought Lady in north Georgia before she was weaned from her mom and brought her home the day she was taken off the teat. I'd never taken her into the woods so I knew she'd never been. I'd trained her to do her business outside and not to chew the furniture, but I hadn't taught her to hunt or track. I explained this to Red but he said not to worry, that Rottweiler's were German dogs bred to hunt bear. I'd never heard this so I was skeptical. When we reached the spot Red's wife had hit the bear I couldn't contain my excitement. After all, this was what I came to Alaska for: an adventure. Hunting a wounded bear with a legendary Alaskan hunting guide and my dog was about as good as it got.
Red found the spot where his wife locked up the brakes attempting to avoid hitting a bear crossing the road. However, there was no blood. She'd been positive she ran over the bear, but Red wasn't so sure due to the absence of blood. It had yet to snow and Red couldn't spot any tracks on the hard ground. His wife said the bear had went to the north side of the road so we walked off into the woods in that direction. "Be careful," Red warned. "With no blood he might not be hurt, but if he was hit by a truck he's sure to be pissed off." Great. Fifty feet into the woods we cut across a game trail. Red said the bear hadn't went forward, so he would have went either right or left on the trail. "You follow the trail to the right with your dog, I'll go the other way. Holler if you find something." "And if the bear charges me," I asked. "Then I'll hear your gun shot," he said.
I should have had better sense than to go into the woods alone tracking a wounded, or as Red suggested, "a pissed off" bear. I should have been scared, but I wasn't. I was excited by the danger and the challenge. My rifle was bolt action, so I chambered a round and set off. Lady acted like the big puppy she was. She was playing and had fun doing it. On a hunch I called her to me and knelt down to talk to her. I spoke her name with a serious tone and she settled down immediately. I'd never trained a dog to hunt so had no idea how to teach her, so I did the only thing I could think of. I patted the ground then put my nose to it and made an exaggerated sniffing sound. I grabbed her collar and pulled her head towards the ground. She resisted, but when I let go and stood up she put her nose to the ground. "Find the bear, Lady," I said with as much dog talk encouragement as I could. To my astonishment Lady began sniffing the ground with great interest. I watched her move back and forth for a minute then she held her nose in the air. She left the trail and ran into the thick brush. I followed confident that if she ran into a live bear I'd have plenty of warning.
It took Lady three minutes to locate the bear. The instant I saw the bear I brought my rifle up and aimed. The bear was so close I had to look around my $2,000 scope. Even now I am surprised I didn't shoot in that first instant. The small black bear laid in a shallow depression. It had made a futile effort to cover itself with dead brush. Lady was going nuts growling and snarling a few feet from the unmoving animal. Since the bear didn't reacted to the yapping dog I knew it had to be dead. I lowered the rifle and called Red, then waited for him before moving any closer. Red said the bear was a two year-old. There was no blood, not even a wound on its beautiful black fir. All its injuries were internal. What I remembered most is that the bear had put its paw into it's mouth and bit down so hard it punctured it's paw. It died in terrible pain, which was sad. Red was right about one thing. It would have been wrong to have left a wounded animal to die in pain. Better to risk getting hurt hunting it down to put it out of its misery.
The small bear was surprisingly heavy. We carried it back to the van and laid it on the first bench seat, which was the only open spot in the van. I knew Mary had taken the kids to the restaurant to drink cocoa and chat with her friend Becky who ran the place, so I dropped Red off at his place then went back to the restaurant. There I adjusted the dead bear on the seat so it was sitting up. In the restaurant I sat down with my wife and told daughters Emily and Rebecca I had a surprise for them in the van. They ran out of the restaurant excited. Mary gave me her look, but before I could explain Emily and Rebecca screamed. I thought it was funny, but no one else seemed to think so.
Red showed me how to skin and butcher a bear, which was a new experience. I couldn't resist calling my friend Larry back in Ohio to share my day. His fourteen year-old Jamie answered and told me he'd killed a deer that morning. I said, "That's cool, I just finished skinning and butchering a bear." He was the fish and I the fisherman. I'd just set the hook. Jamie and his dad were hooked on Alaska and would soon join us.
*I remember very clearly running out to the van to see what surprise my dad had for Emily and I. That jerk. It was not funny. Not then anyway. Now it is. Just reading the story brings back memories and makes me laugh. He has a sick sense of humor, but it was definitely memorable!
~Rebecca