Alaska Miracle part 4

I don't know how long I was asleep, but when I woke up it was dark and very hot inside the small confines of the camper shell. I turned off the heater and started to think about what had happened to me.

Was it real or a dream? There was only one way to tell, see if the canoe was still under the bridge.

The wind was still blowing very hard as I grudgingly stepped out of the warm camper, though this time I had on my raincoat. When I got to the bottom of the embankment I saw the canoe right where I had tied it to a small sapling. In the canoe was the one duck I had shot, that proved it was real. Now my head really started spinning!! How had I made it back against a forty or fifty mile an hour wind? After I had passed out? Was it God, an angel, maybe aliens? This was really messing with my mind! I put the canoe back on the top of the camper, and decided to spend the night here as the wind was still blowing very hard and the road was covered with an icy slush.

When I awoke the next morning the storm had passed, so I started on my way back home. Looking at the river I noticed it had risen about three feet and was moving along quite swiftly.This was common for rivers and streams in Alaska, as it was a mountainous region and these waterways drained vast areas.

Along the way home I noticed that all the streams were high and fast. It was about nine in the morning when I pulled into the mobile home park where I lived. I had just stepped out of my truck when I heard a woman's screaming down by the creek in back of the park, this creek usually about thirty feet wide, was now a raging torrent about sixty feet wide. I ran over to see what the woman's problem was. As I got closer I could hear her shouting, "My little girl has fallen in the water!"

I started running down the creek side and after about one hundred yards I saw the child's face down in the current, as fast as the creek was flowing I knew I had to get ahead of her to have a chance of reaching her before she reached a rocky rapid area that would probably be fatal.

Taking off my jacket and boots as I ran, I got about ten yards ahead of her and jumped in the water, WOW! THIS WATER IS COLD!! I swam as hard as I could, and after what seemed like hours ( probably 20 seconds ) I had her in my grasp. Swimming hard I made it to shore just before the rapids, which could have been fatal for both of us. The water was so cold, even spending less than one minute in it, hypothermia was affecting my arms and legs. It was hard just to crawl out of the water. I immediately saw the child was not breathing, so I laid her down on my jacket and started CPR. After about ten repetitions she coughed up a bunch of water and started crying. Wrapping her in my jacket, I shouted to her mom to get in my truck! The hospital was only a few minutes from where I lived. We made it there quickly, and soon the girl was in the care of a doctor. A half hour later the mom came out and said her child was going to be fine, and I might as well go home as her husband was coming to pick them up.

On the way home, my head was really spinning, was this just a coincidence, or an act of God? I will never really know for sure, but since then I have become a devout believer in God!

A short time later, as I entered the house, my wife asked rather angrily, "Where the hell have you been?!"

"Don't ask, " I said, "You will never believe it anyway!!"
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Alaska Miracle part 3

I have no idea how long I drifted away from the truck and deeper into the wilderness, this river also had a sizable salmon run along with many bears on the shallow fringes. When not unconscious, I tried to stay in the deeper water in the middle so as not to infringe on any of the bears turf. When conscious, if I unknowingly got too close to a bear, one blast from the shotgun fired into the air would have then running away as fast as they could! But if an unconscious human drifted up to their feeding ground, I don't know how they would react.

Suddenly I felt a "bump" and the canoe quit its violent rocking. What is going on? With all my willpower I opened my eyes, I saw a shadowy shape above me, part of me wanted to go back to sleep, while the rest screamed " Open your eyes! " With all the strength I had left I forced my eyes to focus!

OH. MY. GOSH. It was the bridge I had left from just a few hours ago. How had I got back here? The wind was still howling like a banshee, blowing directly away from the bridge and right in the direction I would've had to come from. No time to wonder how or why, I knew if I didn't get out of these wet clothes soon, I would die. I crawled up the bank and into the camper shell on the back of my pickup, I got into my extra set of dry clothes, lit my catalytic heater ( one that has complete combustion and burns safely with no fumes ), crawled into my down sleeping bag and passed out.
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Alaska Miracle part 2

The rain was really starting to come down, the temperature had dropped 20 degrees, and the wind had started gusting to 30 MPH. The storm was barreling down on me straight off the Aleska Glacier, although it was midday it was starting to get really dark. The rain had turned to sleet and was coming down at a 45 degree angle, but even worse the wind had picked up to the point to where I could not paddle the canoe against it. I was paddling as hard as I could, but could not make any progress against the wind.

The day had started out so nice I was only wearing my down jacket, but didn't have a raincoat. The down jacket would keep me warm as long as as it was dry, but now it was soaking wet and I was starting to shiver. If I would have brought my raincoat to keep my cloths dry! I could have tied the canoe in the lee of some thick bushes and waited out the storm, still cold but not life threatening. Now I was shivering uncontrollably and my arms were numb, I could no longer paddle and an unthinkable thought entered my mind, I'M GOING TO DIE, I WILL NEVER SEE MY FAMILY AGAIN, HOW COULD I HAVE BEEN SO STUPID TO HAVE LEFT MY RAINCOAT HOME!!

That was the last thing I remember as the wind blew me farther from my truck and I slipped into unconsciousness...
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Alaska Miracle part 1

It was a beautiful Fall day in Alaska, the sun was shinning, the temperature was in the mid 40's, and it was a perfect day for duck hunting. I left Anchorage a little past daylight and in less than an hour I was near the end of the Turnagain Arm ( a 30 mi bay ). Several Rivers came out of the mountains at the head of the Bay. On one of the rivers a short canoe trip of 1/2 mile put you in some great duck country, a shallow marshy area of about 500 acres containing many small to medium size ponds.

This was right on the Arctic flyway and many thousands of ducks and geese stopped here on their way south to escape Alaska's winter. In the canoe I had my shotgun and camera, I mostly used the camera to "shoot" the ducks, but usually shot one or two with the shotgun, as they provided a delicious dinner for my family.

When I first got to where the ducks were, I usually hid the canoe in the bushes and just enjoyed the amazing amount of duck and goose talk going on, and taking a roll or two of film before choosing the ducks I would be taking home to ( for ) dinner. I was enjoying the scenery and the birds so much I didn't pay much attention to the clouds building up overhead or the wind which had went from dead calm to about 10 MPH. Suddenly I felt the first raindrop and noticed the wind was getting stronger and was coming straight from the direction I had to paddle in to get back to my truck....
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Up in Alaska part 3

My brain was in warp drive, and I'm sure the bear's was too. Telling the story takes much longer than actual real time happenings, I imagine maybe 1/2 second elapsed from the time the bear stood up and woofed at me until I had my 44 magnum out of the holster and put 6 special Alaska bear loads in the bear. Now remembering that prudence was the better part of valor, I quickly scurried up the closest tree to reload my pistol. Bears are really hard to kill, especially with a handgun, the short barrel does not build up a lot of muzzle velocity. The long barrel of a rifle puts a lot more punch in the bullet. The bears skull is shaped much like a football, and bullets tend to glance off the thick skull bones, the only real place you have of stopping these giants with a pistol is aim for the heart / lung area and hope one or more of the slugs hit the area between the ribs and penetrates inside where enough damage will be done to stop him in his tracks ( the bears rib bones are very thick and a bullet hitting them dead on may not penetrate far enough to do anything more than piss him off ). He may die in a few hours or days but in the meantime he will do serious damage, probably fatal, to you!

Any time you enter an area inhabited by large predators, you must know enough about their habits to have a good idea about how they respond to different sets of circumstances and what your response should be in order to have the best chance of survival. In this case I had unknowingly snuck up on the bear and startled him / her, if it was a male it would attack me because I was intruding on his turf which he would defend from all intruders. If a female and she had cubs nearby, she would attack to protect the cubs, in either case I was going to be attacked. I had to shoot the bear in self defense, if I saw the bear 40 yds away, a shot fired in the air will usually frighten them away, farther than that, you just quietly go in the opposite direction.
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Up in Alaska part 2

This part of Alaska was open to bear hunting, and the bears were wary of humans, and usually ran away fast when a human was detected, either smelled or heard. I usually did not fish alone in bear country, but I had heard from some friends that the King salmon had arrived in force, but all of my friends had to work and could not get off to go fishing.

Imagine, putting work before fishing, how ridiculous is that?! What could be more important than fishing?

So here I was in bear country, where I had broken the two most basic rules: Don't go into bear country alone! Always make plenty of noise to warn bears you are here! Now I was in a dangerous situation, make the wrong decision, and I would fish no more.
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Up in Alaska part 1

It was a beautiful day in Alaska, the sun was out, it had finally quit raining after 4 days of drizzle. I was hiking up Sheep Creek for a day of salmon fishing. I was about a mile from the road, and had already caught three nice silver salmon on my fly rod. I released them knowing the deep hole just about a quarter mile upstream usually had some nice King Salmon up to 30 lbs holding in its deep water.

Anticipating the larger fish just up ahead I was in a hurry and forgot one of the cardinal rules of hiking in bear country, make lots of noise as you hike because the bears are here for a salmon dinner too.

I was hurrying through an alder thicket, trees about six feet tall that grow thickly in creek bottoms, when it happened. A very large bear that I had wakened from his snooze in the alders stood up not 20 feet in front of me. Had I been making noise the bear would have heard me and slipped away into the woods before I got there. Now I was in a very dangerous situation, nowhere to run before the bear would be on me.
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