Paul Herbert catches fish in his wheel - Part 1 of 2

This is Paul Herbert, last Saturday morning, just after 8:00 AM, driving his boat up the Yukon River from his house on the bank of a slough in Fort Yukon. He is headed to the fishwheel that he built two months earlier and hopes he will find a good number of salmon in the box.

Paul made this boat 22 years ago. He says it is an old, tired, boat but it skims across the surface of the Yukon quite nicely.

When he arrives, Paul finds some 15 fish in the box, including these. Driven by the swift current, the wheel keeps turning and the baskets plunge into the water over and over again. Every now and then, a basket will come up with a fish and then drop it into a chute from which it slides down into the box.

Fish in the box. The day before, there had been 30. 

Paul transfers salmon from the box into his boat. 

Paul spreads the salmon out across the bottom of the boat. A few of them are missing their anterior dorsal fins. Paul explains that this identifies them as having been born in a hatchery in the Yukon Territory.

Paul washes his hands in the river.

Paul checks his wheel two, sometimes three times a day. Each time, he adjusts it to make certain it is secure and aligned as he wants it. Each time the baskets plunge into the water, they should barely scrape the bottom. When we hear the sound pebbles tumbling through the wire mesh of the baskets, Paul knows he has the wheel properly set. 

Note the fence that barely protrudes above the water between the bank and the wheel. That fence will direct fish that come to it into the path of the fishwheel baskets.

When he was a boy living out in the woods with his grandmother, Belle Herbert, Paul would sometimes fashion toy fishwheels from sticks. When he grew older and started to fish by wheel himself, he just made them bigger.

The structure that holds the paddles that the current pushes against to keep the wheel turning...

...and turning and turning and turning. It is an easy thing to stand for awhile and watch the wheel, hoping with each half-rotation that a salmon will appear in the basket as it rises from the water.

After watching for awhile, accompanied by the sound of the current, the paddles and baskets splashing into and rising out of the water and the groaning of the wooden axle turning in its sockets, I felt almost as though I was being hypnotized.

No fish appeared in the basket during any of the three visits that I made there with Paul.

Paul with a King Salmon. At sea, the salmon are silver, but grow redder and redder as they migrate upstream to spawn. When they reach this shade of red, Paul notes, the run is nearly over. As the red deepens, the flesh of the fish will become inedible. It has been a poor year for kings. The river has been unusually high and the drift of wheel-smashing, net-ripping sticks and logs heavy.

The silver salmon run should begin soon. Paul hopes it will be better. When the silvers run heavy, the baskets will sometimes pull one up with virtually every scoop - sometimes, the wheel will grab two, three, or even four fish in a single scoop.

This means a lot of work, but also a good staple of food to eat through the winter, and to give to friends, relatives and community members who, for reasons of age or health, may not be able to fish for themselves.

It is time to go back to Fort Yukon, where Paul will soon be cutting fish.

Heading downriver, fish in front.

A young couple from Norway had pulled up in front of Paul's cabin in a canoe several days earlier and he had invited them to set up camp. Julie takes a photo of Paul with the big red king, which he is hoping will still be good.

After Julie gets her photo, Paul gives her a fishing pole, tells her to hold it and pose with the fish and get her picture taken. Now she will have a good picture that she can lie about when she gets home, he tells her.

Paul has some serious work ahead of him. He transfers the salmon from his boat to a box on his fourwheeler. Next, he will take them to the cutting table in front of his smokehouse and then cut them, just as his grandmother Belle taught him to do.

The cutting and smoking will be the subject of my next post.

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Snook takes us upriver from Fort Yukon to Circle; Fat Cat comes along but does not accompany us on the drive to Fairbanks

Yesterday morning, I rode about five miles upriver from Fort Yukon with Paul Herbert, "Snook,"  to retrieve the salmon that had swum into his fishwheel, then we returned to his house where we ate a big breakfast of half-smoked salmon (....mmmmmmm.... as good as salmon gets!) coleslaw, apple pie and coffee and then I packed my stuff and we loaded up the boat and motored out onto the river with Fat Cat coming along.

That's Fat Cat, hunkered down near the door as we head upriver, headed east and south, from Fort Yukon to Circle.

Further upriver, Snook waved at the occupants of a boat headed downstream, towards Fort Yukon. You cannot drive a car into or out of Fort Yukon and, like most Alaska villages, once you get there you will find few roads, all very short.

But there is a wide-open, free-flowing, highway system and that is the Yukon River and its tributaries, such as the Black, Porcupine, Chandalar and the many other rivers and navigable creeks that drain into it.

Snook's wife Alma and another woman also traveled with us.

To travel on the beautiful Yukon River is a wondrous and marvelous thing.

After we had been traveling for what I believe was a bit over two hours, we came upon a man who had stopped his boat on the south bank. Snook stopped to see if he was okay. He was. I overheard the man say something about how he was going to be on TV, and how someone had lost her keys.

I mistakenly thought the TV reference was a joke in reference to me and my camera. I had no idea what the lost keys thing was about. 

Although a seasoned veteran of this trip, Fat Cat was a bit nervous. For maybe ten or 15 minutes, she found some comfort on my lap.

After what I estimate to be about two-and-half hours, we reached Circle, where the Yukon was very high and the drift had taken out a couple of fishwheels and nets. Before I transferred into the pickup truck for the drive to Fairbanks with Snook's wife, Alma, several people spoke of Jeanie Greene, famous throughout this state for her TV program, Heartbeat Alaska. She had documented the Gwich'in Gathering and just the day before, I was among those who waved to her as she set off by boat to Circle.

I learned that she was still there, because she had lost the keys to her vehicle and could not drive off to Fairbanks. She was making good use of her time, though, and was taping and interviewing people in the village.

Not long after I took this picture, Fat Cat jumped off the boat and headed into some dense brush just beyond the beach. Alma told me that this is what Fat Cat always does, but when it is time to go, Alma opens a can of cat food and out she comes.

Finally, Alma's pickup truck was loaded and it was time to go. She opened up a can of food but Fat Cat did not come. So Alma began to search for him, calling out his name. At one point, she heard him "meow," but he did not come. This brush is very dense inside and has an undergrowth that is twisted and matted - easy for a cat to move through but hard for a human.

Snook and I joined in the search. Knowing that it would hamper my movement through the dense brush and might prevent me from retrieving Fat Cat, I put my camera down on the grass just outside the thicket.  As Snook and Alma combed the sides, I went to the top of the thicket and began to slowly work my way down through it.

As I did, I spotted the fur of Fat Cat's lower back, very well camouflaged beneath the thick matting. She had gone to ground. I was happy, for I thought she would soon be in my arms and I would be carrying her down to the truck. She was one step out of my reach. "Fat Cat," I spoke in my most soothing voice as I slowly took that step and reached out for her. Before my hands could reach her, she dashed off.

I did not see her again. None of us did, although we searched and searched. To make it worse, for about five or ten minutes I could not find the camera that I had set down, but finally I did.

There was only a tiny handful of houses in the area and it seemed likely that Fat Cat would eventually show up at one of them. One of the occupants promised Alma that she would get Fat Cat and keep her until she could be returned.

There were more people at the boat landing area than usual, Alma noted. Maybe the number of people is what caused Fat Cat to go to ground.

So, with me feeling worried and frustrated - Fat Cat had been just beyond my finger tips and I had not gotten her, as Snook launched his boat back into the Yukon and headed towards home, Alma, her friend and I set off on the three-and-a-half hour drive to Fairbanks.

We soon crossed this tiny bridge.

Not long afterward, we spotted these people picking berries.

There was almost no other moving traffic on the road, but after about 45 minutes or so this amazing vintage pickup truck appeared, traveling in the opposite direction.

We spotted more people picking berries.

Alma sacrificed her own desire to pick berries along with her daughter, Melanie, who drove up the road from Fairbanks to meet us, just so she could get me to the Fairbanks airport on time to catch my flight to Anchorage.

Thank you, Alma. That was exceedingly nice of you.

Somewhere near milepost 50, where we stopped briefly, just to see if there were berries present. There weren't, but there would have been plenty not far away.

As we neared Fairbanks, two men on big Harleys zipped past, going north. This is the guy who was second in line.

Alma dropped me off at Alaska Airlines, pretty close to the last possible moment. Soon, I was on the jet, headed home to heavy rain, Margie, and a troubled sleep in my own bed.

Perhaps, even as I write this, Fat Cat is safe in that woman's home in Circle. I hope so. I think the odds are reasonably good, but for now I have no way to know.

Tomorrow, I will begin to earnestly post a series of images and such from last week's Gwich'in Gathering.

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Back online at Fairbanks International Airport, enroute AKP - to ANC

This is Anaktuvuk Pass, this morning about 8:00 AM. I will make a couple of good reports from Anaktuvuk -maybe three or four, perhaps even more, but this post is not one of them. This post has but one purpose - to let you know that I am back online and to get something up at a reasonable hour of this day.

I am online because I am at Gate 1 at the Alaska Airlines Terminal of the Fairbanks International Airport, where my plane is scheduled to board, shortly. The airport has free wireless - as, indeed, all good, full-service, airports should.

This is Nasuġraq Rainey, formerly Higbee, but as of yesterday afternoon, Nasuġraq Rainey Hopson, her cat, Harley and her sister, Angela. Eventually, I will prepare a good report on the wedding of Rainey and B-III, and I will also give Harley a post all of her own, because she certainly deserves, but I will not do so now.

Right now, I just have to get something up, so I can catch my plane.

And here is Payuk, with one of Rainey's puppies. The puppy's dad just might be a wolf, who Rainey spotted one day eyeing a penned dog in heat. Maybe the wolf figured out how to get to the dog.

And here I am, in the plane, wishing that it was my plane, as the pilot prepares to lift off the runway.

And here we all are, the pilot, me, Byron and Alvira, airborne, leaving AKP, headed to Fairbanks.

And here we are, flying through the Brooks Range.

There are wildfires burning and so the air is filled with smoke. Two days ago, enroute from FAI to AKP, the smoke was so thick that we could not even see the Yukon River when we flew over it.

Today, although hazy, we could at least see the Yukon.

And here we are, landing in Fairbanks.

This is all I am going to post for now. My plane is scheduled to begin boarding in 11 minutes. I want to get a treat before it boards.

Update, 2:45 PM:

Well, my flight has been delayed. By an hour-and-a-half.

Damnit.

Guess I will sit here and web surf.