I'm well towards accepting that certain feelings and impressions have a relentless way of impressing themselves on the mind again and again....yearning reveries are in that category, so my dreaming of Alaska's mists, mountains, bears, whales, salmon, halibut, ulu knives, berries, light nights, hearty food, treetop majesties, chilly mornings, smokehouse scents, and a thousand other companeros acknowledges another "move-in" upstairs, alongside all those other places in the world's four corners that attest to a life that can pinch itself as the camera rewinds the tape as it's over and can proudly say, "yes, I've been there."
One "zoom" in my reveries is the town of Skagway way up in the Inside Passage. This is one "movie set" of a mining town that seems to have been preserved for the pleasures of commemorating that life-wooden store and hotel fronts, a locomotive with a face sporting a circular spinning bore device, squared -out easily plotted streets. Although cruise ships dock here, they are a mile's walk from town and do not intrude. In fact, I was one of the first off one chilly morning and my walk to this and any other new place was filled with that special cluster of feelings and sensations so familiar they could almost be named.
Just before town, there's a stream that runs under the path via a culvert. The water there is the icy-misted medium colored by glacial silt. I looked downstream and saw a fish jump, and then another, and another. I ran quickly to the stream side and got a heart-pounding look a loads of large king salmon from 20 to 30 pounds struggling their way upstream. My companion was mentioning something about catching the train up into the mountains and Liarsville, but the voice was so far off it could have been a surfer off of Southern Cal. My only thoughts were focused on grabbing up my rod, reel, and lure...........more,soon.
Jan
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