Chapter 3: Our First Taste of Alders
“Good morning! Wake up, little Susie! Are you planning on spending the whole day in there?”
Dan peered in at me from the front of the tent the next morning. I had been sleeping so soundly that I never even heard him getting up. I sat up and rubbed my eyes and then it hit me. I was really in the Bush! Getting dressed and out of the tent took a minute flat, since I simply got dressed in the same clothes I’d been wearing the previous day. I couldn’t wait to get on with whatever it was we decided to do with our first full day.
Dan had already fixed tea and handed me a cup as I walked over to the fire. I looked around through the combined steam of my breath and my hot cup of black tea. It wasn’t quite a frosty morning, but the air was brisk and had a lingering bite to it. Both of us had sore muscles from all our moving of boxes the prior day. I had used muscles I didn’t know I had. Dan was in much better shape, a good thing since we had hard work ahead of us that day.
We walked over to the edge of the lake to see the wide open sky. And we munched on Pilot Bread with peanut butter for breakfast, since it was readily available in the “First Day” box. Several cups of tea were needed to restore energy. While I had been sleeping, Dan had improved our campsite, dragging in a couple of large logs for use as chairs and a table. He suspended a tarp over the logs in the campsite to create a dry sheltered space. The camp was very messy looking, with trampled grass and mud.
More work was needed to completely organize things. Ultimately, we would have to get our boxes into more secure quarters for the next several months, especially as we had no intention of staying in camp full time, to keep an eye on things, but this didn’t seem to be an immediate need to be met.
Messy and disorganized, home sweet home nonetheless.
But first things first, and first on our agenda was a little look around the neighborhood. After attending to brushing hair and teeth, and washing hands and face, we both felt ready to face the day. We gathered some food together into a small backpack, each put a holstered pistol on our belt, and Dan took a rifle. We set off towards the east and a higher elevation to see if we could get a better look at our location. We set as our goal to reach the frozen lake we’d flown over the previous day, approximately a mile away.
Everything was brown, except the Black Spruce trees and some small pink flowers called Pixie Eyes. Near the outlet creek we noticed a line of duck and goose feathers which seemed to mark a high water line, several feet higher than the current level of the water in the lake and creek. It was very fortunate we had arrived when the water level was lower.
In among the feathers were a lot of fresh water snail shells, which surprised us merely because we had not known they were in this part of Alaska.
Once out of the very narrow margin of trees around the lake, the ground was deep wet moss, tussocks of grass supporting Dwarf Arctic Birch, scrubby Willows, wild Blueberry plants (we were very happy to see those), and Alders. Some places were even wetter, grassy bogs too wet to wade through. We discovered that a couple of days later, when Dan almost lost his hipwader falling through the grassy mat over hidden water. There were also open sinkholes, one eight feet across and several feet deep. Because of these obstacles, our path up to the ridge was convoluted, winding around and doubling back as we attempted to reach higher ground.
Another plant was abundant, Labrador Tea, Rhododendron tomentosum (former Ledum palustre). This member of the Heath family has a fragrance unlike anything else we’ve ever been around, and the smell of the plant combined with the crystal clean air of the Bush was fragrant, sweeter and more pleasant than any perfume. More than any other smell, I miss Labrador Tea.
Labrador Tea
Kamchatka Rhododendron, about two inches tall.
A light rain was falling as we finally made it to the base of the ridge and started to climb. The whole ridge turned out to be covered with a dense tangle of Alders, downed trees and a few live spruce. Every low area was wet and boggy. We spooked a White-crowned Sparrow from her nest when we got too close. Her babies had not yet hatched, and her nest was well hidden in low brush near our trail. A Northern Three-toed Woodpecker knocked on a long standing dead tree, drumming to mark its territory.
Dan estimated the snow had been gone off our lake no more than two weeks at most, and the ground was still saturated with melt water. It was extremely difficult to move through the Alder branches and for the first time, but not the last, I wondered aloud how bears and moose managed to get through the heavy branches with such apparent ease.
“They go through this stuff like it is nothing,” said Dan (referring to bears). “Same with moose, it doesn’t faze them at all.”
“Why don’t they build trails then? Help out us lesser species.” I said, and wished for a wide trail in front of us.
Dan laughed at me and suggested we keep going for another hour before stopping for a bite to eat.
“How far do you think we’ll get in an hour?” I panted as I almost tripped over yet another Alder branch.
“At this rate, 100 yards.” Dan replied as the Alder branches he was trying to wade through caught on his rifle and backpack. He bent down, and backed up, to look for a different path through the branches.
“That doesn’t make me feel very secure while I’m being pinned to the ground by these branches, like I’m a bug.” I looked through the branches surrounding me, thick and tangled, and no sign of green. “What is it like when there are leaves on them? You won’t see a bear until you step on it!”
“Yeah, pretty much.” Dan replied. “Usually they hear you coming and they leave long before you get to where they are, unless they are on a kill or something. Any bears we see here probably won’t have seen a human before, so there’s really no telling what they’ll do.”
After that inspirational comment I was only too ready to stop right then and have something eat. I was still pretty wiped out from the prior days’ activity. Dan took pity on me, and we stopped for a break.
We struggled through heavy brush and skirted swamps for a couple hours after our lunch, but ultimately we gave up our quest to reach the top of the ridge. Less than a mile from our camp, in a direct line, it was not reachable in several hours of walking. Interesting lesson. We turned around and began our trek back to the base camp.
On our way back to our camp, a Willow Ptarmigan startled us when it exploded out of the brush only a few feet from where we walked. It made a short flight before dropping back down into the bushes, and disappeared from view, entirely. Their plumage was an amazing camouflage in leafless bushes.
Retracing our steps took almost as long as getting through it the first time. Half way to camp we heard a small noise behind us, through the heavy brush. I immediately thought, “Bear!!” I had bears on my mind after having been trapped in the Alder thickets for several hours.
It was no bear, however. A small brown head was peeking around the trunk of a tree, about eight feet off the ground. It was a Marten. It growled at us, fiercely, not sure what we were, and then apparently decided we were scary as it disappeared quickly. This was a highlight of the day for me, I’d never seen a Marten before.
Back at camp, we fixed a more leisurely dinner, rice and lentils in a single pot. It was the first time I’d made that particular combination of spices and it is still one of our favorite thick soups, easily cooked over an open fire.
Lentil Soup
¾ cup of washed lentils
¾ cup of long grain brown rice
1 teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon black pepper
1 ½ teaspoon Italian seasoning
1 bay leaf
2 Tablespoons olive oil
¼ teaspoon onion powder
4 cups of water
Bring to a boil, cover and simmer, stirring occasionally, for an hour. Add more water if it gets too thick. This makes its own gravy and is wonderful with fresh bread of any description.
We had a great division of labor. I would put things together in a pot for dinner, and Dan would tend the fire and make sure it got cooked the way I wanted.
When dinner was finished, and everything was washed and put back into the boxes, we reviewed our topographic maps, attempting to reconcile what we had seen from walking around on the ground with the map.
It didn’t take long to realize we had not landed where we had wanted to land. Our best guess was that we were approximately 18 miles from where we had wanted to be dropped off and on an entirely different lake. If we could find solid ground for a trail, it might only take a few days of hard walking to get that far. We were such optimists.
Both lakes (the one we wanted to land on, and the one we managed to land on), were unnamed on any of the topographic maps we brought with us, and we christened it that day. “Wrong Lake.”
A Long-tailed Jaeger flew past our camp, and peeps (sandpipers) were foraging in the brush at the end of the lake, The Jaeger was another new life species for us. Least Sandpiper, Western Sandpiper, and Gray-cheeked Thrush we all singing around us. More bird songs were filling the air. The local birds had already become accustomed to our presence and were no longer keeping quiet.