New from author Seth Kantner, writing from Northwest Alaska: Perfection, far away on the horizon
KOTZEBUE — A few days ago on a sunny spring evening, I took young Johnson Black Jr. hunting for ptarmigan. He doesn’t get to go out on the land as much or as far as he would like — partly my fault for being busy — and he was excited to be on a snowgo, with his rifle slung over his shoulder.
We stopped, and Johnson aimed and hit perfectly, in the head, his first shot. He wanted me to congratulate him, which I did, but not repeatedly as he wished. I figured there would be more birds ahead, more shots, plenty that might go poorly. Hunting is that way, a teetering balance between perfection and an unproductive unpleasant mess.
“People used to make tool bags out of loon skins,” I told Johnson. “They said the greasy skin kept your tools from rusting. We’d sew the neck and wing holes closed, and sew an old zipper up the back.” We were on the lagoon ice, almost home, when I looked back. Johnson wasn’t behind me. He was zooming east, toward the ocean. In my shack on the edge of town, I built a fire but didn’t take off my gear. I texted his mom to see if he was home. I had seen I had a text from Ambler, reminding me to call my own mom — it was her birthday — and another from a Fish and Game biologist, Brendan Scanlan, saying his team had arrived by snowmobile from Noatak.
“I don’t know that word.” I grinned suddenly. “As a kid we called them ‘mean’ trout! The fat silver ones we called ‘nice’ trout. Back then I thought they were two different species.”
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