Page 3 of Colton in the Wild
Spence blinked. The holiday rush wasn’t over for him, by a long shot, but he was more puzzled by the question.
“You’re asking me?”
They both had lived here longer than he’d been alive. Not by much, true, but still…they knew the local environs as well as anyone, and better than most.
“We know all the usual spots,” his uncle said. “But we want someplace we’ve never been.”
“For a nice, long, uninterrupted day,” Dad said pointedly.
“And productive, fishwise,” put in Uncle Will.
“And scenic.” Dad again.
“And private.”
“And a ways out there—”
“I get it, I get it,” Spence said, laughing now. “You want a day where nobody will find you or bother you or ask you to talk or expect anything trickier than reeling in a ton of fish.”
Both men grinned at him. “Exactly.”
“I knew you’d get it,” Dad added. “It’ll be our last chance before things start getting really hectic for the rest of the summer. So you know a spot that meets all that criteria?”
Spence grinned back. “Most of Alaska?” he suggested.
“Yeah, yeah,” Uncle Will said. “But specifically? We know the closer-in spots, but they’ve gotten a bit more populated than we’d like for this. Hence we ask Mr. No Place Too Far.”
Spence couldn’t deny he felt a bit flattered that these two men, of all people, were asking him where to go.
“You want to hike in or fly?”
“Weather looks good for the next week, so I can fly us in, in the company helicopter,” Dad said. “It’s clear on the RTA schedule for that long, nobody signed up for the more inaccessible locations. And the first ones who do, Hetty can fly in aboard the plane, now that the ice is pretty well broken up on the lakes.”
Spence grimaced, but only inwardly. He had a couple of backcountry trips booked, and he’d hoped to use the chopper for at least one of them. But his father and uncle so rarely asked for anything for themselves, he wasn’t about to put a damper on this.
“So, can I safely presume you don’t want to just jump over to Robe Lake?” he asked teasingly, referring to the closest to town and therefore most popular lake.
“Along with every summer tourist arriving in the next month? No, thanks,” Dad said.
“Figured,” Spence said with a crooked smile to tell his father he’d only been joking.
He walked over to the big map on the back wall of the office. He studied it for a moment, eliminating the most popular places and the places he knew they had already been, although he doubted he knew them all. Alaska was simply too big to know everything. Shelby alone was close to eight national parks and wildlife preserves, plus had about twenty tidewater glaciers that ended at Prince William Sound, the highest concentration in the world.
Someone had once said Alaska was forged by fire but ruled by ice, and Spence thought that was a good description. It was huge, vast, magnificent, forbidding, and often deadly. Visit But Don’t Stay was Spence’s motto when it came to their clients, who had no idea of just how dangerous this place he loved could be. This place with fifty active volcanoes, two of which usually blew up every year. This place bigger than the next three largest states combined, yet with only five thousand miles of paved road, a thousand less then New York City alone. No, it took a certain kind of spirit and heart to call this wild place home.
Finally, he reached up and tapped a spot on the map.
“How about Tazlina Lake? If you can dodge all the rafters who want to tackle the river, there are a couple of good fishing spots. Especially at the north end. Weather can still be iffy up there this early in the season, so you’d have to pay attention to that, but I’d bet there’d be nobody else to bother you.”
“Sounds good to me,” Uncle Will said.
Spence opened his mouth to warn them that they’d be heading into higher country, and that while there might not be many two-legged visitors, some of the four-legged inhabitants could get interesting. He shut it again, knowing they both knew that perfectly well and would appropriately prepare.
“Good call,” Dad said, his smile telling Spence he’d known exactly what he’d been about to say. “We may have sort of retired, but we haven’t forgotten a thing about living in Alaska.”
“I pity the bear or moose that tries to take you two on,” Spence said and all three of them laughed. “So, when’s this expedition taking place?”
“Assuming no shift in the weather pattern, we’ll be off in the morning.”
