Tide, Feather, Snow_ A Life in Alaska - Miranda Weiss [32]
Cynthia was in her mid-thirties, nearly ten years older than I, and she had become my closest friend. I didn’t think she’d ever understand the accumulation of my inabilities, but I felt close to her anyway because she had a secret sweet tooth, despite an otherwise wholesome diet, and because of the way she seemed to hold within her, as I did within myself, the desire to talk about things that often went unsaid. From time to time she would ask me to cut her curly brown hair. I would pull a stool into the middle of the kitchen, wrap a towel around her shoulders, and snip curls inexpertly, until they were all a few inches shorter but no less wild.
The five of us—John and I, and Cynthia and her children Kaya and Ghen—would go up together that Saturday. The kids, now seven and five, would stay on the beach while we took turns fishing. We checked the tide tables to figure out when to head up to the river. Cynthia, who had fished there before, said that we should plan to arrive before high tide and stay until it was nearly low tide. Because the river’s mouth opened farther up Cook Inlet than our bay, the tides were about two hours later there than they were in Homer. Cynthia and the kids pulled up to our place before 8:00 A.M. The day was overcast. We strapped the nets to the roof of John’s car—a ten-year-old Jeep he’d bought off someone in town when he realized that his old Volvo wasn’t much good in the snow. We packed lunches, snacks, and water, fastened the kids’ seat belts, threw the waders in the back and took off.
The drive up the highway was one we, like everyone else in Homer, were familiar with. It was the only way out of town, the only route to Anchorage and to a medium-sized town along the way that was primarily a strip of gas stations, fast-food restaurants, and souvenir stores. Though it wasn’t much more populated than Homer, people drove up there anyway to shop at an enormous supermarket where you could buy everything from winter boots and California oranges to clam shovels, underwear, and kitchen tables. West, to our left, a string of volcanic peaks stretched along the far side of the Inlet. On clear days, from town, you could often see the two highest peaks letting out dainty puffs of steam. Along the right side of the road, stunted spruce grew at the edges of bogs and around small lakes. A tiny espresso stand had sprung up just before the bridge over a narrow, clear-running river, and houses intermittently dotted the edge of the highway. When the trees broke to our east, we could see the northern arm of the range of mountains that curved around the bay.
After a little over an hour in the car, John turned left off the highway onto a road that bowed out along the shore of the Inlet. Spruce- and birch-flanked driveways led to hidden houses off the paved road. A few miles later, we made another left onto a gravel road down to the beach. The Inlet opened up in front of us. The snowy peaks across the water scraped a high, white ceiling of clouds. The sea looked gray and cold. Small waves purled down the beach. John put the Jeep into four-wheel drive and drove it off a wide parking pad onto a well-rutted track in the beach. The back end of the car swung sideways as it lost traction in the soft sand. The kids were beginning to fidget in the backseat. They craned their heads to look out the windows because they knew we were almost there. Up ahead, a clutter of trucks and cars parked on the beach.
As we approached the mouth of the river, a haphazard encampment came into view. Scores of cars and trucks were parked on the beach near the edge of sandy dunes. Among them, people had pitched colorful tents that were ringed by coolers, tubs of gear, beach chairs, campfires, and stacks of firewood. Clothes hung from makeshift lines strung between driftwood poles and dogs barked from where they were tied up at the camps. John parked the car next to a large pickup that sat diagonally