Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
a catwalk. On the other side of the bridge, you can lean out from the car and look 296 feet
straight down. If you really want to. I preferred looking straight out, at the Chulitna River
and the Alaska Range gnawing at the western sky.
“When are we getting back to Talkeetna?” I ask Chuck. He frowns at his watch. “Oh,
maybe around 6 p.m.”
On the way back through Indian River we pick up Katie Briggson and David Vaille
from California, visiting Jeff Brush and his dog, Jaeger, of Anchorage. All of them, with
the possible exception of Jaeger, smell distinctly of Coors (“You get hungry and thirsty on
this job,” Michael says, helping to load their gear). It has been Katie's first fishing trip and
she has loved it, especially the release part of catch-and-release. “You won't have to talk
me into it next time,” she says.
Near Curry, Dan Mawhinney waves us down, a homesteader also retired from the rail-
road. He's a dark, wiry man missing a few teeth and smells not all that unpleasantly of
Bush life (i.e., no running water). Asked why he choses to live in the back of beyond, he
replies seriously, “The solitude. It just gets hold of you.” He deliberately homesteaded
between two lakes too small to land a float plane on, and the four-hour hike from the train
tracks straight up the ridge to his cabin discourages hunters. “My idea of a good neighbor
is one a day's walk away, and for me that's eight miles.” Dan was going into Talkeetna to
attend the wedding reception of a friend, and he wanted to know what I was doing after
we got in.
We got back into Talkeetna, oh, maybe around six that evening. I thanked Chuck and
Michael for the ride, and I told them I'd be seeing them again. Next time I'm going to ask
Chuck if I can blow the whistle when we come up on a highway crossing.
Might even take Dan Mawhinney up on his offer of a personally guided tour of his
homestead. He was awfully gregarious for a self-avowed hermit.
