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Salmon Paradise Under Fire
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photo: Hal Herring
Salmon Paradise Under Fire by Hal Herring
There are places in this world, if you are a hunter and a fisherman, that own a kind of mythical power, places where every one of the basic elements of what drives us are intact, and present. If we are lucky, some of those places are close to home. But most exist far away, in the vibrating silences of unbroken wilderness. One of these is the Mulchatna River in southern Alaska, where giant salmon, predatory veterans of lives spent in the far blue reaches of the oceans, roll in the shallows. These are fish that answer a call to come home to reproduce, to leave the oceanic vastness for the narrowing of fast Arctic waters, exchanging the threat of bluefin tuna and great white shark for sure death, after the spawn, in the jaws of bears and eagles. It is truly a passage between worlds, one only the strongest and luckiest fish ever complete.
Fishermen come to the Mulchatna to tap into this, to experience the adventure of being in a place where the old powers - fish, bears, wolverine, caribou, wolves, rain, and wind - still own it all.
There are places in this world, if you are a hunter and a fisherman, that own a kind of mythical power, places where every one of the basic elements of what drives us are intact, and present. If we are lucky, some of those places are close to home. But most exist far away, in the vibrating silences of unbroken wilderness. One of these is the Mulchatna River in southern Alaska, where giant salmon, predatory veterans of lives spent in the far blue reaches of the oceans, roll in the shallows. These are fish that answer a call to come home to reproduce, to leave the oceanic vastness for the narrowing of fast Arctic waters, exchanging the threat of bluefin tuna and great white shark for sure death, after the spawn, in the jaws of bears and eagles. It is truly a passage between worlds, one only the strongest and luckiest fish ever complete.
Fishermen come to the Mulchatna to tap into this, to experience the adventure of being in a place where the old powers - fish, bears, wolverine, caribou, wolves, rain, and wind - still own it all.
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Alaska is one of the few remaining places in the U.S. that offers anglers true seclusion from the modern world on rivers touched only by lucky visitors, wolves and bears. Hal Herring's slide show chronicling a recent trip to one such place will have you ready to book a trip, but the Alaskan Pebble Mine might change your plans. Story by Hal Herring |
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