Tide, Feather, Snow_ A Life in Alaska - Miranda Weiss [87]
Leaving a man you love, a best friend, feels irrational. There is no way to think your way out of it. So I read novels that sucked me in while dozens of crows gathered on the metal roof above my bed. I left the television on for hours, the radio on after that. I shuddered at the thought of the pain I’d caused John. I knew it was harder to be left than to leave.
Through the kitchen window, I watched sea otters on the ice. Whenever I saw these animals, usually floating on their backs with their blond faces to the sky, I thought first of what he had taught me—that sea otters have more hairs per square inch than a medium-sized dog has on its entire body. This density of fur keeps their skin dry even when they dive. It is also what makes their pelts so valuable.
Although they had been hunted to near extinction, first by the Russians and then by Americans, the otter’s life seemed a carefree one. They spent their days in the open water or slipping clumsily across the ice. They dove for crabs and urchin and ate their catch while floating on their backs. They played with each other in the surf.
THE DAY I found the dead otter on the beach was a mild one. Continents of clouds moved quickly overhead and wind stroked dark patterns on the surface of the bay. Later, I wouldn’t remember exactly why I walked back to the house, drove my station wagon down to the beach with a wheelbarrow in the back, and wheeled the carcass over loose cobbles to bring it home. I knew that taking any part of a sea otter was illegal. But at that moment, there didn’t seem to be any way around it. I felt I had to.
The animal was heavy, perhaps sixty pounds, and I used a piece of plywood to lever it onto an old garden table in the yard. The otter stretched about four feet long and its dry fur was a rich brown, like good earth. I turned the carcass over and found no wound or sign of disease. Then, it was like being on automatic pilot. I went into the house and sharpened a small, wood-handled knife against a slate I found at the back of a kitchen drawer. I collected my leather work gloves.
The first cut was hard; the skin resisted the edge of the knife. But when I pushed the tip of the blade into the belly of the otter, it slid in easily. As soon as the carcass was open, I felt terrified and disgusted with myself. But I worked quickly, remembering the cuts I had seen a man make on a dead seal at the local museum. I made shallow slices nearly perpendicular to the skin, detaching dark red muscle that connected the skin to the tissues beneath it. The pelt slowly unpeeled, revealing a sea-green network of tissues that encased the body like woven cloth. A faint smell of rawness dissipated into the winter air. Nothing was stiff like I’d imagined it would be. Yet there was something familiar about the feel of the pelt—its weight and suppleness and the way its edges curled in—though I’d never felt a fresh skin like this before.
I worked all afternoon and when it got dark, I moved into the porch and kept cutting under a yellow light. By then, the burgundy-colored muscle had become blaring red from exposure to the air. It was hard to cut around the legs where a mess of pink fat clutched tightly to the skin. When I got to the first paw, I held it in my hand, and it felt very much like my own. It was worse at the head, which appeared, as animals often do on close look, quite human. The otter’s eyes were closed, and small, leathery ears stuck out on the sides of its face. Its jaw was clenched shut, hiding short, sharp teeth, but there was a slight smile on the face. I cut around the head as if slitting the animal’s throat and then the pelt was completely free. Exhausted, I covered the animal and fur in plastic, took a shower, and went to bed.
The next day, I drove to the small library in town and found books on preparing hides. I brought home a few small volumes in old-fashioned type written by fur trappers and homesteaders. The hardest work, I learned, was yet to come. Over the next weeks, I would