Claire Henley: Adventures West (Beyond Realms: Part 3)

(Editor's Note: Chattanoogan Claire Henley started an adventure of a lifetime on the remote Pacific Crest Trail in April. Along the way, she had many adventures and found herself a husband named Big Spoon).

“And I do believe it’s true/ That there are roads left in both of our shoes.”

-Death Cab for Cutie, “Soul Meets Body”

The owner of the Alaska Horn and Antler gift shop had white Einstein hair and a Santa Claus beard that stuck out from all directions on his head and chin in clumps of static frizz as if he had been electrocuted. His hands looked leathery as a baseball glove and were noticeably calloused. His name was Cooper, a buoyant old man wearing faded blue jeans, a red flannel, and an electric twinkle in his eye. Big Spoon and I had stopped at Cooper’s shop off Sterling Highway a few miles after seeing the grizzlies. The hundreds of antler sheds that were stacked like Tetris tiles all over the ground outside had drawn us in. Each shed had a price tag tied around the base of the horn. I could see in Big Spoon’s widened eyes how badly he wanted the massive moose rack with the skull still attached. We hadn’t bought an Alaskan souvenir yet, but unfortunately for Big Spoon this wouldn’t be the one. The rack went for $800.

Inside the shop, big plastic bins of rocks, crystals, and gems jutted out from the side walls. The far back wall showcased Native art like baleen carvings of hunters spearing walruses. Baleen, I learned, was whalebone; and something interesting Big Spoon and I had also learned during our time in Alaska was that only the Alaska Natives could collect baleen, as well as ivory, to use for art.

Cooper reiterated this law of Alaska when he noticed me examining a tiny and spectacular statue of an ivory Native holding a fishing rod in one hand and a salmon in the other. “Yep,” he said in a whimsical voice, “I just sell most of the artwork here because, being that I’m not indigenous, I’m not allowed to make it myself. But that’s okay. I don’t mind. I carve antlers. Me and my friends, we collect the sheds around this time of year. We know where to go, you know. Made a ritual of it. It’s not much, carving antlers, but I love it. Gives me purpose, you know, a place in this world before I head on.”

As he spoke, Cooper stood behind the main glass counter in which a decorative array of handcrafted knives and ulus with handles carved from antlers were displayed. Big Spoon walked over to the counter and asked if Cooper made the knives. The shop owner nodded fondly, saying, “Yep, some of them anyways.” Big Spoon asked if he could see the ulu with the pinkish-tan handle. As Cooper took the ulu out of the case and placed it on top of the counter, he explained that ulus were special knives that had been used for thousands of years by female Eskimos to skin the fish and animals their men hunted and killed. Big Spoon picked up the ulu, lightly scraped his thumb across the convex edge, then grasped the handle in the way he would if he were cutting something. Then he handed it to me to do the same. The ulu felt good in my hand.

“It’s caribou antler, the handle,” Cooper said. “And the blade is made from a carbon steel saw blade. It’s the real thing. Not those mass produced ulus with the stainless steel blades and wood handles you can get at your local Walmart. Nope, this ulu here withstands the test of time. It’s what the Natives use today.”

Big Spoon and I left Cooper’s shop a few minutes later with our beautiful new ulu in hand. It cost $75, and we considered it the perfect souvenir because of it’s aesthetics, functionality, and Alaskan tradition. Cooper even threw in one of his antler stands he had carved for free. Before we left he had us search through the bin that contained a bulk of tangled stands until we found the one that fit our ulu best.

“Journey on!” He encouraged as we walked out the door.

Fields of bright purple fireweed paralleled the highway to the gulf-side town of Homer. On the way we stopped in Ninilchik, a compact fishing community along the Kenai Peninsula where magnificent views of the volcanoes of Cook Inlet–Mount Spurr, Mount Redoubt, Mount Iliamna and Mount St. Augustine–slapped awestruck looks on our faces. We viewed the snowy volcanoes from the grassy overlook at the Russian Orthodox church, built by Russian settlers in the early 1900s. The Ninilchik River ran through the small settlement into the inlet that spread out to the volcanoes. The narrow river ran into the wide, welcoming sea, and it was comforting in a way. Maybe because my and Big Spoon’s journey was coming to an end. In four and a half months we had traveled by foot, car, and plane from the border of Mexico to Alaska, nearly 4,000 miles. We started our journeys separately, alone. Along the way our journeys converged. We got married. Two became one. Now we would finish our great and life changing journey together. It was sad in a way. Bittersweet. But as the river blended into the sea I was reminded that this wasn’t all. This was our river run. What awaited us now was the sea.

From the church, Big Spoon and I drove to the nearby gravel lot next to the river and boat harbor. It was a day of sun and breeze, and the smell of sea salt filled the air. Apart from a few fishermen loading up their boats, no one was out. As we pulled into the lot I noticed something dark and plump perched atop a rusty parking sign. “Is that a bald eagle?” I asked Big Spoon when the silky white head lifted into the air. Big Spoon crept slowly as a sloth toward the parking sign then shut off the car. We couldn’t have been more than ten feet away from the yellow-beaked bird with clear globular eyes. Indeed, it was a bald eagle, the first I had ever seen in real life. We watched the mighty bird from our rolled-down passenger window as it cleaned and pruned its thick and shining feathers. Its sharp black talons clung to the parking sign. The creature was the real thing, radiant and statuesque beneath the sunlight.We watched the bald eagle for many minutes until a fish delivery truck rumbled by, disturbing the eagle’s peace. The eagle unfurled its wings and remained on the parking sign a moment as if to show us its bright and brawny wingspan of at least six feet. Then the eagle jumped up and flew off. It flew towards the glittering sea and mountainous horizon, far into the Great Beyond, until it was out of sight.

For the next three days, Big Spoon and I experienced as much as we could on the Kenai Peninsula before it came time to catch our flight out of Anchorage. On the Homer Spit–a strip of land that protrudes into the bay–we tented on the smooth, stone beach, falling asleep to the hush of breaking waves and waking at dawn to the hum of high tide. Later that day, on our way to the city of Seward, we stopped at Kenai Fjords National Park where we climbed three miles to the top of a cliff for a breathtaking view of the deep crevasses and sliding blue ice of Exit Glacier. We camped that night on Resurrection River, fed by the glacial runoff of Exit glacier, and the next day in Seward we splurged on a four hour whale watching tour through the Alaskan Gulf. During the tour we spotted sea otters floating on their backs, sea lions sunning at the base of cliffs, porpoises racing each other, puffins gliding inches above the water, and a juvenile humpback whale flipping up his tail as if to say hello. Our last night in Seward, Big Spoon and I took a walk along Resurrection Bay where we came upon a school of pale gray salmon that half swam, half floated in the shallow water near the shore. They looked like zombie fish with their bulging eyes and faded skin.

“What do you think is wrong with them,” I asked Big Spoon.

“They’re dying,” he said.

“Dying? How do you know?”

“I read it somewhere. In the whale watching tour office, I think. Anyways, now’s the time of year when the salmon spawn. And after they spawn they die.”

“After they spawn they die?” I asked, bewildered and a little saddened.

Big Spoon nodded then confirmed, “Yes. After they spawn they die.”

Looking at the salmon as they floated ghost like to and from the surface of the water, it was quite apparent now that this was, in fact, their dying day.

“How terrible,” I said, fighting the inevitable. “They bring new life to the rivers and streams and then they have to die? It doesn’t seem right. Do you think they’re ready to die?”

Big Spoon put his arm around my shoulder and pulled me close. “Of course they’re ready, Claire,” he said. “Their purpose is complete. Now it’s time for them to move on, beyond these earthly realms to some place new and better, I’d like to think.”

It was a suiting conversation for our last night in Alaska. The next day we drove back to the Anchorage International Airport where we dropped off the rental car then waited several hours at the congested gate for our flight to Newark. In the morning to come I would meet my husband’s family for the first time, and two weeks after that we would drive Big Spoon’s truck from New Jersey down to Tennessee where he would meet mine. Big Spoon held my hand as we waited in the airport terminal. At sunset a shrill screech sounded from the overhead speaker followed by the voice of the flight attendant calling for our flight to board. I looked up at Big Spoon and he kissed me on the forehead. Several minutes later we were buckling our seat belts inside the plane. A few minutes after that, the plane lifted into the sky and soared past the sunset until it was far beyond that dying light. I looked out the window to the night. Big Spoon and I had reached the end of our journey. And yet here we were, soaring.

* * *

Claire's first book on her adventures while living in Colorado can be ordered here:

http://www.amazon.com/51-Weeks-The-Unfinished-Journey-ebook/dp/B00IWYDLBQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1394801373&sr=8-1&keywords=51+Weeks