Kuskokwim River

Yeah.

Yeah, I don't, it's funny because I got hired at that lodge, the Stony River Lodge, which is west of Anchorage, west of the Alaska range in the Kuskokwim drainage, got hired to be a, you know, to work in the kitchen and help clean the rooms, you know, the lodge for the guests.

And then when it came to be hunting season, the boss said, okay, well, I need you.

And then my friend Janelle, she and I met there.

Yeah.

So in Alaska, Mary Peltola, who was a former Alaskan congresswoman who grew up fishing for salmon on the Kuskokwim River, is now running for Senate and she's got a good chance.

But the New York Times ran basically like an expose on her temper because I guess she's kind of mean.

And I just want to say that I don't care about mean women.

"Ms.

Peltola, an Alaskan native, grew up fishing for salmon on the Kuskokwim River, was well-known and well-liked statewide, even by Republicans."

Can I stop you right there?

Yeah, that's such a perfectly-

It's not contributing anything to the GDP.

So the, the question really was, are these management bodies taking into account the needs of the people who are really living off the land? And, you know, the, the reason I ran in 2022 was to elevate ish issues, and specifically the issue of the lack of salmon in our two biggest rivers, the Yukon River and the Kuskokwim River.

For seven years running, people on the Yukon River have not been allowed to fish for salmon, and we're talking about hundreds of tribes.

We're talking about hundreds of communities that have been there for thousands of years based... and, and the reason they're there is based on their relationship with salmon and this understanding that salmon would be coming back every year and are a fun- you know, foundational to our food, food supplies.

But whenever he spends time alone in the wilderness and thinks back to that day, the memory still causes the hair on the back of his neck to rise.

In May 2012, a small plane departed Bethel and headed upriver along the Kuskokwim River.

Spring breakup was underway.

The snow had mostly melted, though many large lakes remained frozen.

During the past winter, the members of the exploring parties that visited Alaska last year have carefully canvassed geographic knowledge of that country with special reference to determining in what localities exploration might be most advantageously carried on this summer.

The large unexplored area lying south of the Yukon and west of the Alaskan mountain range about the headwaters of the Kuskokwim and including the towering peaks of Mount McKinley and its neighbors is a district of special interest toward which future exploration may probably be directed.

But careful study has shown that, because of its inaccessibility except by river, no adequate returns could be expected from an expedition to that region this year.

The experience of last season, when the exploring party could advance against the current of the stream, but from one to three miles a day, and hence consumed all the time in getting there, has proved that the streams must be ascended while they are still frozen.

That river.

I won't spot burn them, but there's a small creek that feeds into the south fork of the Kuskokwim.

And we crossed that river, that small creek, 200 times over the course of that hunt and the sheep hunt that I did four years previous.

And all the little... crossings and nuances didn't change in that four years.