Fishing the Mighty Kenai

Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach

When I was 62, I had the great pleasure of working once again in Alaska. I love Alaska, I’ve starved and frozen there, worked there many times. I’ve also made good money there, and it’s always been piles of fun.

I was finishing up as the Construction Manager of about a seven-million-dollar construction project in Fiji, which included the model villa, a portion of which is shown below. That was a good job, with good people, but poorly structured financing as many such resort projects have. They say the third owner of a resort is the first one to turn a profit … in any case, my work there was done, and the villa is stunning.

A friend named Ryan who I surfed with in Fiji had worked up in Alaska as a sport fishing guide for a decade or so, ever since he was 18. He worked there summers and spent the winters in Fiji, where we’d hang out together and surf weekends when I wasn’t working, play guitar, and he’d surf all week and live the brutal island retirement life. He’s now running his own fishing business on the Kenai.

Another surfer buddy of Ryan’s and mine had wangled a job working alongside Ryan for the same lodge, but it would be our friend’s first time guiding, he’d have to get all his licenses first. Both of them were going north to work at RW’s Fishing Lodge, guiding for salmon on the mighty Kenai River. Here’s a picture of RW himself in his element, along with an idea about the size of the salmon there … logs. RW’s beard is whiter now, but that just makes him a better fisherman.

So I figured what the heck. I’m about to retire early once again, I’ll invest a month in Alaska and see if I can scrabble up a job guiding on the Kenai with the boys … which proves there’s always room for one more fun-filled mistake in a man’s life. It was among the hardest jobs I’ve ever done … but one of the most rewarding jobs, too.

Plus, I always love fishing for salmon, it’s such a magnificent creature. I’ve written before about how it was a very important fish in prehistoric times. Some of the Early Asian Immigrants that lived in the northwestern US, long before the arrival of the Later Melanin-Deficient Immigrants, had a lovely ritual that some of my fellow fishermen and I used to observe some years when I’d trolled for salmon off of the North Coast. It had to do with catching the first salmon of the year.

Particularly for the inland tribes living well upriver, the return of the salmon was essential to life … and of course, there was no way to know how many, or even if, they would return in a given year. It was always a question, would they come back? The salmon that they depended on to get them through the winter had always returned before, but would they come this year?

So the catching of the first salmon of the year was a huge deal. In many cases, it meant the tribe would survive. Some of the tribes would take a plank of wood down to the river, and they’d lay out the first salmon on it. Then the fishermen would hoist it up, and they would carry it in triumph through the town, singing songs in praise of the mighty salmon tribe, and extolling the virtues of this particular salmon. And of course, tacking on some boasts about what great fishermen they were, after all, they were fishermen …

They would cook that first salmon, and hold the annual Our Really Cool Village’s Official First Salmon Festival in honor of the fish, and everyone would join in, the tribe was happy, the salmon were coming back, and they would eat it, carefully saving all of the bones.

When the feasting ended they would reassemble all the bones on the same wooden plank in the proper lifelike order, from jaw to tail fin, and once again singing and carrying on, they would parade the bones back to the river. There, they would speak to the salmon respectfully, as befit the Ambassador from the Tribe of Salmon, and tell it how much it meant to them, and how honored they all were that it had chosen to come to their very village. They told it that theirs was the finest village of all because, as the salmon had seen with its own eyes, they had the best, most extravagant feasts in honor of the whole salmon tribe, and the nicest music and dancing, and they held the salmon in such high esteem.

And then they placed the board carrying the bones in the water, and held the board with the salmon’s head pointed downstream. They told the salmon that they were sending him back to his friends downriver, the ones coming upstream, and they asked him to spread the word about the great time that he had partying in their way awesome village, and about the lovely singing and the dancing, and the honors, and the feasting. And then they released him, to go downriver and spread the good news to the rest of the tribe.

Now, did these Early Asian Immigrants really think that the fish would come to back to life and talk to its tribe? Don’t be daft, they’d seen more death than we can imagine, and like us, nobody ever came back, even if you did reassemble their bones.

But the spirit, ah, the spirit …

They did it because that is how we should respect the spirit of those beings who give up their own lives to keep us alive. And sometimes we used to do it as well, because to me, that is the proper mindset, particularly for the salmon like the kings of the mighty Kenai river.

So what is the Mighty Kenai when it’s at home? Why, it is nothing but the birthplace, and final destination, of the largest King Salmon on the planet, is what it is. In fact, all five different kinds of salmon found in Alaska, kings, coho (silver), reds (sockeye), pinks (humpies), and dog salmon, all run up the Kenai. You can see their pictures showing the differences here (PDF). It is a river that absolutely teems with fish at times, some two million and more red salmon come up it every year. Million. Here’s the layout of the lower river, from the bridge in Soldotna down to the mouth, where most of the king salmon fishing goes on. The upper river above Soldotna is fished, but that’s more a trout fishery (and a world-class one also).

I flew up to the town of Kenai, at the top left of your picture there. My friends picked me up, and we went to RW’s place. I met him, he said if I could get my licenses in order he could probably use me as an extra man when there was enough business. RW is a good man, he took a chance hiring me and my buddy as rookies, was a fair boss to work for, did well by us, and has my high regard. Didn’t pay much, he’s a businessman, has to be … but the tips were good, and he knew that, so it balanced out, I have not one complaint about working for him.

So since it looked like at least I might have a job, me and my surfer friend who also needed his various licenses struck out for Anchorage to go to the school for taking the Coast Guard Examination. It’s a three-hour drive, and about an hour in, up in the mountains, the two of us saw a lynx crossing the road a ways ahead, then stopping and looking at us from the shoulder after crossing, then taking one soaring leap way over the roadside ditch to vanish in the bushes .. magical.

Lynx

Nearing Anchorage the road drops back to sea level and runs alongside the Turnagain Arm of the Cook Inlet, with ocean on the left and often sheer mountain face on the right. By pure chance, we saw the tidal bore was actually breaking! The tide changes are huge up there, sometimes 10-14 ft (3-4m), and only at certain times of the month, the incoming tide forms a single breaking wave that persists for miles and miles. The two surfers in the truck agreed, it was clearly rideable.

And further along, on a near-vertical face, we saw three or four Dall sheep perched on the rocks … how can someone not have a passion for Alaskan summers?

Dall sheep

Too soon, though, we were back in the city, Anchorage, for the schooling. See, if you are taking paying passengers out in your boat, even on a river, you must have a Coast Guard License proving that you have the knowledge and the experience to be in charge of four innocents. And reasonably so, it’s a dangerous business going out in the cold Kenai, it’s killed more than one person, and you have lives in your hands, old folks, kids. To get the Coast Guard License, you have to pass a specialized test and also have notarized statements about the time you’d spent at sea. I’d gotten the statements together, time at sea was no issue for me, but I knew I couldn’t pass any specialized test without specialized training. Well, except for the drug test, no special training is needed for that, just go in the cup. I had to do that too, plus random drug testing any time during the season.

So I and my buddy went to the special one-week school to learn what the Coasties wanted us to know … how many lifejackets, required safety gear, all that stuff, the majority of which (except the detailed and specialized Kenai regs) we already knew. I also had to renew my Red Cross CPR and First Aid licenses, they’d run out. So I got my Red Cross tickets stamped, and we went to Captain’s school, we took the test, and we both passed. He had a job for sure as soon as we could get the licenses … me, maybe.

We went down to the Coast Guard office, and we got fingerprinted on the 21st-century CSI kind of machine where there’s no ink. We had to fill out our names and driver’s license numbers, passport numbers if we had one, place of birth, the whole deal. Because since 9/11, every applicant for a Coast Guard License has to undergo the full, in-depth, alien anal-probe level of security clearance … don’t want guys filling their fishing skiffs with explosives and taking out the Soldatna Bridge, I guess. Gotta be a true-blue 100% American to be a fishing guide on Alaskan rivers.

And then, after we’d finished all the easy stuff, they said … Son, have you ever been convicted of any crimes?

So we had to fill out a form listing every bad thing we’d been convicted of, with an explanation if one was warranted.

Now, I figured I was in pretty good shape in that area. After all, I’d never been even indicted, much less convicted, regarding those unfortunate misunderstandings about what you could bring across the border from outside the US.

And there’d never even been any charges filed when a bunch of friends and I kidnapped the California Governor, Ronald Reagan, and kept him prisoner for a couple of hours in some innocent professor’s unoccupied office at UCSC and wouldn’t let him out, because the clever Governor ended up outsmarting us all, he walked away shining his halo and buffing his nails … but I digress, I was filling out the Coast Guard form.

That meant that all that was left was to report the twenty days I’d been fed and clothed as a guest of the state in Santa Rita, the Alameda County Jail, which is a whole ‘nother story … but again I digress.

The official charge was “Disturbing the Peace”. But because I had the chance to explain my heinous crime, I wrote in the small space provided that while they called it “Disturbing the Peace”, we called it “Disturbing the War”, and that it was a peaceful sit-in with a whole bunch of folks in front of the Oakland Army Induction Center in maybe 1969 or so … and I guess that must have been good enough for them, because after the three weeks to check with Washington and Interpol and the CIA and Homeland Security and the FBI and the Military and the aliens and whoever else, they gave me the official Alaska Inland Waterways Coast Guard Captains license.

They told me not to laminate it, and that I always had to have it, along with my guide permit, and my fishing license, and a photo ID, and my CPR card, and my First Aid card, and my drug testing information card, with me on my boat at all times. They didn’t mention my Ham Radio Licence (Hotel Forty-four Whisky Echo), or my Masseur’s License, or my Marriage License, or my Morse Code Proficiency Certificate, or my Universal Life Church Ministers License, or my PADI Openwater and Rescue Diver’s Licenses, so I left them ashore. I figured that the reason the Coasties wanted me to have my photo ID and stuff on board was to make sure nobody was impersonating me to use the boat for immoral purposes, which made me feel all warm and protected. I figured it was a kind of doppelgänger insurance.

My poor surfer buddy, though, he’d actually believed that when his local Court had told him something would be expunged from his record, they meant it actually would be expunged from his record, ho ho ho … so he’d left off a DUI he’d gotten and then had jumped through all the hoops to have expunged, and so the Coasties wouldn’t give him a license. Go figure.

As a result, when my license finally came in, his was still in the wind, so I went to work right away taking his slot until his license came in. Of course, I was still working with him, writing letters on his behalf to the Coast Guardians to see if we could find a way that he could get his license, and he finally did, so that all came good and he took his place, and by that time we had plenty of work for everyone. He turned out to be an excellent fisherman, no surprise to me or Ryan, he’d spent a lot of time fishing salmon in other rivers, from boats and from the shore.

The marina at RW’s, just off the Kenai River. Folks getting ready to go out. Ryan’s in the guide seat at the back of the second boat working on a rod. Our other buddy is in the back of the near boat. The guide’s office-style chair is loose, the four guest chairs are bolted to the storage boxes.

Now, while we were waiting to get our licenses, we started going out on the river as much as we could, to learn from Ryan because he’d worked there before. It was crucial that we learn the local waters, and how to fish the Kenai river, especially for me. Here’s why:

I’d run boats on rivers a lot, I could read the water surface and know the sub-surface contours and obstructions starting from when I was a gold dredge diver. I’ve handled small boats all my life.

And I was a bonafide serial salmon killer, I’d done in maybe a hundred … I mean a hundred thousand … seriously, that many salmon in my life to that point.

And I was a good river and stream fisherman, I’d caught trout in crazy places, I was hot with a rod and reel of any kind.

But the sad fact remained that I’d never ever done one single day of guiding sport fishermen, and perhaps more to the point, I had never once caught a salmon in a river, either from a boat or from the shore, and I’d never even caught a salmon on a rod and reel. Ever. I was a commercial ocean salmon fisherman, a net and trolling guy. I was used to fishing for salmon like this …

… and this way …

… but never by rod and reel, and never this way:

But my logic ran like this. I already know how to fish. And I know salmon. I know small boats. I know fishing rods, and I know rivers …

And therefore, I must already know how to fish salmon from a small boat with a fishing rod in a river. At least that was my theory … must have worked, I ended up with my guests catching decent numbers of fish, not the best by any means, but far from the worst.

Ryan was one of the reasons we were able to pull it off. He showed the two of us the places the fish would congregate in, or pass through, showed us the good and bad spots, pointed out the gravel bars, explained the different kinds of fishing customarily done on different sections of the river. He was a gold mine of information. We spent hours on the river soaking up his knowledge and learning about the gear and the fish and the boat and the mighty Kenai. And of course, we did some fishing as well, hey, guides don’t get to fish much. You can’t touch a rod on a boat if you’re guiding, so we fished and Ryan guided. It was on one of these learning trips that I hooked my first salmon on the Kenai, a big king salmon.

It was a monster, a huge, beautiful fish. We carefully brought it just alongside the boat, put the tape measure along it for length, estimated the girth by hand, and set it free again. When we looked at the length/girth/weight charts, they said it weighed just over 50 pounds (23kg). It swam on upstream, still on its end-of-life quest to maintain the species.

I have never personally fished for king salmon in the Kenai since then, not once. I’ve just guided.

I figured, how could it possibly get any better than that instant, in a boat with my good friends, laughing and learning, catching that monster fish with the sun’s rays dappling through the trees, and then watching him swim free upriver? I knew I’d just beat my head against the wall trying, and catch smaller fish, where’s the good in that? Plus that way, I figured I could tell my guests that I’d never once caught a king salmon in the Kenai weighing less than fifty pounds … and then I’d explain why, to get folks laughing, because tense, worried amateurs are not a good thing to have in a boat. So I’ve only ever fished for reds in the Kenai since that day.

RW’s marina, with boats lining the bank, and the Kenai River on the left.

The Kenai is a tough river to fish. It’s glacier-fed, so it has that pearlescent gray-green color that you can only see down into a foot (30cm) or so. As a result, it’s hard to tell when you’re running into the shallows. You need to be able to read the underwater changes from the ripples and slicks and eddies on the surface, to know from those subtle indications that down there is a rock which would happily rip your outboard off your boat, and over there a gravel bar has been filling in for a couple of months and is now just shallow enough to nibble the edges right off of your propeller …

We fished what’s called “back-trolling”. In back-trolling, the nose of the boat points upriver, but the boat is moving backward downriver because the outboard power is so low. You want to keep moving against the flow just enough for your lures and baits to get good action, but no faster, so you’re drifting backward downstream. Usually, about a high idle.

The problem with back-trolling is that the instant that you let go of the handle of the outboard, the unbalanced forces take over. The river is pushing the nose of the boat downstream, and the motor is pushing the back of the boat upstream, so the boat wants to spin. The nose of the boat immediately swings to one side or another and the boat goes way off course, in seconds your guests’ lines tangle, it’s not pretty. So the guide can’t leave the helm, he can’t walk away from the engine in general, for more than a few seconds. Basically, you’re lashed to the outboard handle the whole time. But that’s not the only problem with the job.

Now, I’ve done some really hard jobs in my time, grueling endless physical labor, among them things like moving and stowing 350-pound (160kg) bales of pulp inside a ship’s hold, working twelve- and fourteen-hour shifts to get the ship loaded before the deadline. And I’d spent years working as a commercial fisherman, which can be brutally exhausting work.

But I’ve never had a job as mentally hard as guiding on the Kenai. The problem is that during each shift of fishing, morning and afternoon, there’s never a moment to rest.

Now usually, when people say they don’t have a moment to rest, it’s a figure of speech—even the hardest fishing I’d done, there were always times when I could just lean up against the stack and close my eyes for thirty seconds and catch my breath. Back when I was loading pulp in Sitka, we’d relax when we were walking the hand trucks back to the pile to pick up a new bale, plus 15 minutes break every two hours. But that was easy compared to this.

Because if you lose your focus for thirty seconds on the Kenai, you’re toast.

To start with, you often have four total novices sitting in the four guest chairs. They wouldn’t know a fish was on their line if it sent them a telegram. They may have never even been out on the water at all. I had a guy ask me which way the ocean was, upriver or downriver. So you have to watch four fishing lines constantly to see if a fish is on, so you can tell the fisherman. And you have to make sure they don’t poke each others’ eyes out or drop a rod and reel overboard—nothing is foolproof because fools are so ingenious, particularly in a totally unfamiliar environment.

Then, of course, there’s a whole bunch of boats in the river, hundreds. A good stretch of water may have a string that is maybe twenty or thirty boats long and three or four or five boats wide going down it constantly, with boats running along the sides of the river to get back to the top after they’ve drifted and backtrolled down to the bottom of that section.

So you have to watch out for the other boats, are you getting near them, is one of them drifting towards you as the whole fleet drifts downstream … and if any of them gets a hookup you need to get your guests’ gear out of the water at once.

You also have to watch your four fishing lines for snags. If a lure gets snagged on the river bottom, the boat continues downstream right over it and then the line is trailing out behind your boat, and there’s a line of boats right upriver and moving down with you. If you don’t catch the snag immediately, and yank it off the bottom, it will tangle with the next boat’s lines … not pretty. So you watch the rod tips to see if they’re constantly twitching, if not they’re snagged and you have maybe half a minute to fix it before it gets really ugly.

Then, of course, you need to watch out for underwater obstructions, sandbars, snags, and boulders, the list is long. And every year, the icing over of the river, and then its breakup, and frequent spring floods, and just the normal current, all change the river constantly. Any given gravel bar is either getting shallower or deeper at any instant, you need to keep a close watch on the mighty Kenai …

And even if you do everything right, it can still go sideways instantly. Like one day we’re fishing our way downriver next to a gravel bar. A guy in the front hooks a fish, and won’t listen when I tell him to come to the back of the boat because the fish is headed that way. So the fish goes around the back, and his line wraps around the outboard. I throw my length over the top of the outboard and lean way down, and I’m able to grab his line and pull it out and over my head, so that’s good, it didn’t get cut by the prop, hooray … but the weight of my body on the engine turns it, and it runs the boat right up on the bar and the prop hits the gravel with that ugly sound, beating up the edges of the propeller. It’s a penetrating grinding sound, you can hear it a good way along the river, and all the guides in earshot turn and point and laugh … I netted the fish, the client was happy, I got a fat tip, that was the good news. I  spent an extra hour after work hammering and filing out the edges of my propeller, with the boys giving me grief,  that was the bad news.

As a result, if you stop the constant scanning for even fifteen seconds, you can be in a world of hurt. So your eyes are always seeking, searching, taking the trip around the rod tips, see if anyone’s hooked a fish or a snag, looking behind you, judging the distance to the boats on all four sides, watching for hookups (the signal is when you hookup, someone holds the dip net vertically, to show which boat has the hookup), getting your guys out of the water and out of the way when necessary … truly, you have to maintain total and unbending attention to your surroundings, without the slightest pause, for six hours in the morning, then collapse at lunch, and then another six hours in the afternoon.

I’d never done anything like it, before or since, that total mental focus and concentration. It is eternally demanding, with no breaks, no few seconds to rest, for six long hours.

Something that really got under my skin, though, was not being able to leave the helm. I didn’t like that at all. I thought (and still think) that it is a safety issue. But I was a single-handed sailor, I knew the answer to that problem. So after a week or so where I couldn’t leave the outboard for an instant, I went to the local library in Soldotna, got on the web, and ordered myself a tiller-type autopilot like they use on small sailboats. It fits on the tiller of a sailboat, the wooden handle that’s connected to the rudder. I figured I could just jury-rig it to an outboard handle instead of the usual tiller.

Simrad autopilot. The left end attaches to the boat, the shaft on the right snaps on and off a small ball-and-socket setup on the tiller for easy connection and removal, and the shaft pushes in and out to keep the boat on a magnetic compass course.

So I did that, and it worked stupendously from my perspective. For the first time, when something happened, say someone’s reel came loose, I’d just pop on the autopilot, stand up, walk forwards, fix the reel at my own speed, walk back, sit back down in my office chair, pop the autopilot off, and resume steering.

When it really shined, though, was netting the fish. The guide always nets the fish, and before the autopilot, it was always a juggle, take the engine out of gear, run to the front, fish won’t cooperate, see I’m drifting sideways, run back to the engine, move away from shore, take it out of gear, go forward, it was crazy and dangerous. But with the autopilot, I’d just set the course, and then I could go way up on the bow, hang out, net the fish, and come back, and the boat would be solid as a rock. The other guides thought I was nuts, fishermen are among the most conservative folks I know. That kind of conservatism is a wise choice out on the water, where a new untested move can kill you … but I loved my autopilot, it set me free.

There were some good stories on the river that year. One was about a guide that worked for our outfit, I’ll call him Greg. He was a loudmouth, not always pleasant, but an excellent fisherman. He usually got good tips, too, because he had a curious talent. He could make a sound with his voice and throat that would call the bald eagles right out of the sky. No kidding. They’d fly down, swoop low above the boat, sometimes you’d see eagles circling over his boat from way up or down the river.

One day he had a bunch of rich Japanese fishermen for his guests. They all had the very best gear, their own personal rods and reels because the boat gear wasn’t good enough for them. And they were dressed in the very finest that Cabelas can offer, the $280 fishing jackets with all the bells and whistles, the matching $260 pants, the whole thing.

Greg figures he’ll get a great tip out of these guys, they’re rolling in bucks, so when he sees an eagle flying overhead, he goes into his act. The bald eagles love the salmon runs, they come down and feast on the dead salmon that float downriver after spawning throughout the season. Plus any salmon that might die from mishandling by a fisherman or bears or the like, they all end up as food for the eagles and the gulls and the foxes and the like. Salmon feeds the multitude and even enriches the soil of the riverbanks. Here are some eagles I saw one day arguing with gulls over a salmon …

One gull will tease the eagle, and the eagle will rush after it. Meanwhile, the gull’s amigos sneak up behind and steal the eagle’s food. It’s hilarious to watch what happens when Baldy stops chasing the first gull and turns around to strut back to his interrupted meal, only to find thieves raiding the larder …

So it was no surprise that a bald eagle came by that morning, and Greg stood up in the boat and gave his magical call, and the eagle came over to investigate. It swung in circles around the boat, the fishermen were entranced, they all had their $900 video cameras out filming the whole scene, as the eagle swooped lower and lower, and then came in right low over the boat, closer than any of them had ever seen a majestic bald eagle … a majestic bald eagle that promptly took a majestic bald eagle dump right down the front of a brand new, just out of the box, $280 Cabela’s fishing jacket …

Now, you’ve seen bird poop before, the spots on the hood of your car, and such. You need to get that picture out of your mind entirely, we’re in another league here. Forget those tweety birds, clear away your preconceptions—this was something completely different.

This was maybe a half-liter (a pint) of semi-liquid, semi-digested rotten salmon, complete with chewed-up bones, plus bonus mystery objects whose provenance didn’t bear thinking about, splashed liberally over the entire front of some poor fisherman’s lovely new outfit …

Of course, with cell phones, the news was all over the river by noon when we came back to the lodge for lunch. Greg came in, tail dragging … before anyone could say anything, Ryan pipes up, all innocent like, “So Greg … how were the tips this morning from those rich Japanese guys?” …

Another story from that summer was about Tall Dan.  He’d been a guide on the river for RW the year before. He came up with some other guys, friends of his, for his bachelor party. They had a boat. All was going well until they hooked into a big salmon. Tall Dan leaned way out of the back of the boat to net the fish. Just as he got the net around it, he overbalanced and went involuntarily bathing in the Kenai, down in the lower section below Mud Island. None of his friends were much into boating, so the skiff mostly just drifted on downriver while they were trying to figure out what to do.

Tall Dan came up sputtering. He started to swim to the far shore, a distance of maybe 25 meters (yards). Anxiously watched by all the other fishermen in the dozens of boats within eyesight, he dog paddled slowly to shore and waded and staggered up on the far flat, up to his calves in the mud, shook himself … and pulled his fishing net out of the water, and held it up … with the king salmon still in it. The entire fleet of watching boats all erupted in cheers.

Third story. The Make-A-Wish Foundation got in touch with my friend big John, the owner of Reel Adventures. Seems there was a kid without long to live who wanted to catch a Kenai king salmon. Johnny volunteered his boat and gear and gas and time, Alaskans are generally good that way.

The kid was in a wheelchair, so Johnny had to make minor modifications to the boat so he could secure him down safely. Then they had to get special permission from Fish and Game. Johnny knows all the F&G guys, which was good because it’s illegal for anyone but the fisherman to handle his rod, and the kid might need help. Plus it’s illegal for one fisherman to fish more than one rod, so they set it up with Fish and Game, a special exemption so Johnny’s boat could fish four rods as usual, and the kid would take whatever rod hit first.

SOURCE

On that most special day of days in that young man’s too-short life, they set sail into the morning mist on the Kenai, with the kid well lashed down, bundled up and grinning, and his assistant, and Johnny and his offsider, with four rods busily fishing for one small personage of indeterminate temporal duration. Johnny’s one of the best guides in the fleet, so you know the kid got his fish. Johnny said the boy fought it with all the strength he had, he refused to give up. He fought and rested and fought it again all the way up to the boat with just a bit of assistance. And when Johnny had netted that fish and brought it on board, he said he’d never seen another human being so completely and overwhelmingly happy in his entire life. He thought the kid was gonna explode with pure joy.

One of the best times I had on the river, though, was the morning I had the good fortune to have the Old Man and the Kid on my boat, with a couple of other folks filling the other two seats. The two of them had known each other during the Vietnam war.  Back then everyone had called one guy the Old Man because he was 26 at the time, clearly over the hill, and called the other the Kid because he’d just turned 18. During the war, the Old Man was a door gunner, and he had saved the Kid’s life more than once … but then first one and then the other rotated back to The World, and they lost touch with each other.

Fast forward forty years or so, and the Kid is now about 60. He gets on the web and tracks down the Old Man. The Kid invites him to Alaska, his guest, they’ll do the state right, his treat. He wanted to pay the old man back for saving his life more than once in the war.

So they land on my boat at five-thirty in the morning. I’ve been up since four AM, it’s been light since two AM or so, never got totally dark. I shower, have some breakfast, make up my thermos of coffee, and walk over to get my salmon eggs out of the refrigerator in the barn, where we store the eggs of the salmon we’d caught, cured and used for bait. I cut up slices of herring that I’ll lash cut-side out to the lures just before they go in the water for extra juicy tastiness. I walk over to the boat at five AM with the bait and eggs and check over all four of my rods—one for each guest, plus the spare, make sure each one has their lures set up and ready to go. Swap out the empty outboard fuel tank and the empty spare tank for two full ones. I’d washed and scrubbed the boat down the night before, so the boat is clean, with no scales or salmon eggs. I take off the garbage bags I’d put on the seats to keep off the heavy river dew, as sitting in water is no fun, and stow them under the seats for emergency raincoats for forgetful clients.

When everything is all set, that’s about when the clients start arriving, I never have any clue beforehand who I’ll get. And jeez, when the Old Man gets on board, he’s maybe 70 or so, I don’t know, but he looks like he’s about 97. He’s wheezing like a leaky bellows, and despite that, he’s puffing on a cigarette when he steps on the boat. The Kid gets on board, and the other two, everyone sits down in their chair. I write their names in the log book as they sit down, by chair in the same order each time so I can remember their names, I write their license numbers. When they’re settled, I give them the standard safety spiel before leaving the dock:

• Lifejackets are to be worn at all times.

• Other safety and first aid gear is under the bow.

• Watch your rod tips when you’re handling your rod, we’re close to each other and to other boats.

• If you fall overboard, don’t worry—I’ll dip you out with my fish net like an oversized salmon. Just kidding, but I will get you out, you’ll be cold but fine, just don’t panic, the life jacket will keep you safe.

• If I fall overboard, do nothing except kill the engine by pulling this red coiled cord here on the engine—unless I’m unconscious, I’ll be right back triple-quick, that water’s cold …

• Someone has to be the captain on every boat, and on this boat it’s me. If I have time to explain why you have to do something important, I’ll gladly explain it beforehand. But if you hear me say something like “Sit down!” loud and clear, you need to do it really fast, and when I have time I’ll explain whatever the reason for the urgency was.

• Please stay seated unless you are fighting a fish.

• I have the net, and I’ll net any fish that you catch.

• Don’t worry if you’ve never done this before, that’s why I’m here, no experience necessary. I’ll explain everything you need to know as we go along.

• Don’t expect miracles—they call it “fishing” and not “catching” for a reason. Most trips a boat will catch one, maybe two king salmon. What some of you have may be a wonderful, exciting, and interesting excursion on the Kenai river … and as always, my firm goal is a fish for every guest.

• My job is to run the boat, to keep you from unintended bathing, and to give you all the assistance and information you need or want about the river. Your job is to enjoy the adventure, and I trust you’ll do it well. Guides never fish, we’re here to serve your fishing.

• Tips are an optional acknowledgment of good service, and guides don’t make much of a wage.

True all, that. And with the Coast Guard-mandated safety briefing out of the way, we idle slowly out of the marina and into the open river, I pick a direction where I fervently hope the fish might be at that time and tide, and put the hammer down, the cold morning wind in my face as I stand up and steer the boat at high speed along the river to the chosen fishing area.

Wherever we’ll be fishing we want to be there before 6 AM, because that’s when the bell rings and the guide boats can start fishing. The private boats can fish any time, but the guide boats can only fish from 6 AM to 6 PM. On my first day guiding I blew it badly. I told my guests to put their hooks in the water about five minutes early, I was busy watching them and the other boats and the river, not the clock, new to the job, took a quick look, and thought it was six … I got a phone call from Ryan down at the other end of the river about five minutes after six o’clock, wondering what the hell I was up to … modern fishing. I told him it was my bad, it wouldn’t happen again. It didn’t.

So we start fishing at precisely six in the morning, not one second earlier, and as usual, I start talking story with the guests, putting them at their ease, inviting them to tell their stories, talking about the river and the fish. The Old Man and the Kid explain what their whole deal is, how the Kid has this blood debt to the Old Man for repeatedly saving his life way back in Vietnam, and he’s paying it back by showing him a great time in Alaska.

So we fish for a while, no bites. But that’s no surprise, because like I’d warned the folks, most days a guide boat fishing king salmon on the Kenai for a half-day trip will catch one or maybe two fish between the four guests, occasionally three, very rarely four. You go skunk, no fish, maybe one half-day trip every three days or so … and of course, you take grief from the other guides for it, hey, we’re fishermen. So most of your time is spent drifting and talking and enjoying the river.

And the fish gods are capricious. Often the nice deserving person who I’m hoping will hook the fish catches nothing, and the unpleasant loudmouth gets one. So I was hoping against hope that the Old Man would catch a fish. In the meantime, I point out the momma duck and the nine or ten ducklings hanging out on the logs, and we swap stories as we drift downstream waiting for a bite, then maybe pick up and run a bit to the next hole, fish some more … nothing.

Murphy, the Greek God of Going Wrong, must have been asleep that day, because to my surprise, around ten that morning, after four hours without even a nibble, the Old Man hooked into a whopper. We put up the net for a signal, and I worked the boat out of the fleet to a clear area near the river’s edge where he could fight the fish. He stood up and started reeling, and I looked at him and thought Oh man, this joker is gonna drop dead on me for sure, right here and now, I gotta put 9-1-1 on speed dial soonest.

He was puffing and wheezing, trying to fight the fish with his reel instead of his shoulders, and paying for all those years of unfiltered Camels. I tossed the boat into autopilot so I could go stand next to him and coach him, OK, my friend, keep the rod tip up, take a deep breath, we’re in no hurry, could be a long fight, you just go easy, old-timer. I’ll tell you what to do as you need to do it. For now, pump up with the rod, and then reel back down, keep the tip up, ok, keep a tight line, he’ll get off if you go slack, now another pump with the rod, now reel again … and he stuck to his guns, breath whistling like a faulty bicycle pump, face bright red, I was just praying that he wouldn’t have a blowout in his cranial plumbing, I wasn’t ready for that at all, First Aid and CPR training or not.

But as I talked to him, he slowed down, and his face looked better. He’d pump and reel for a bit, and then rest, and then pump and reel. So things were going swimmingly. But then I looked upriver, and I saw another boat coming downstream beside the boats that were still fishing, heading right at our boat, and I yelled “Fish on! Fish on!” at the top of my lungs and held up the dip net and shook it from side to side. But he just kept coming, and he held up his net too, and like me, he yelled “Fish on!”. He didn’t have an autopilot, so he had to mostly just drift downstream, while I was holding my position.

I looked to see if I could slide downriver to get out of his way, but I was blocked by boats below. So he moved his boat over near the fleet, and I edged closer to shore, he was starting to pass by me, we were maybe 50 yards (meters) apart, and he could squeeze by … and just then Murphy woke up and went back to work, and the two fish took off straight across the river for each other and started twisting around and around, and instantly we were in the middle of what the Kenai guys call “a royal goat-rope”.

The other skipper and I each told our guy to reel in slowly. We got reeled in to the crossover in the lines before the other boat, so he just stood off, both holding position against the current. I could leave the helm, but he couldn’t, so I took the rod out of the Old Man’s hands, leaned way out over the river, and started carefully passing the rod around the lines to unwrap the fish.

It’s dangerous handling the line itself with a big fish on it, so I was careful. One time that year I was handling the line and a big salmon took off. The line wrapped around my finger and sawed halfway to the bone before I could get it off. I did what fishermen do, got the regulation bottle of superglue out of my first aid kit, glued my flesh together along the edges of the line cut, left one end open so it could drain, and kept fishing … but I digress, I just kept passing the rod around and around the other line, those fish must have done a maypole dance at the river bottom.

Finally, I got the lines untangled from each other, and the other boat went off to fight their fish.

I handed the rod to the Old Man and told him that the fish might be gone, he had to reel in the slack fast as he could. But what I hadn’t noticed in the excitement was that the tip of his rod had snapped off and slid down the line a bit, and when he started reeling in like a madman, the tip was reeled with the line back up to the rod, and it jammed into the next ferrule (the metal rings the line runs through) of his rod, the broken tip was wedged down into the ferrule with the line all caught and snagged around it. No way to reel in the fish.

I looked at that damn tip jammed up to its hips in the ferrule, and I must confess, I said very bad words. I was not a happy guide at all. After all that we’d done to save the Old Man’s fish, and now this? I sat back down with the rod across my lap, took out my Leatherman, and cautiously wrenched the tip out of where it was jammed in the ferrule. Then I snipped the metal tip carefully off of the line so the line didn’t get cut. It seemed to take forever, the line was all twisted around and jammed in the tip, and again I was handling the damn line with my bare hands … but it had taken so long that by that time it didn’t matter one bit, the line was dead slack, the fish was long gone. I took all the time I needed, I didn’t want to cut the line accidentally, and I got it all working again.

I sadly handed the Old Man back his pole and told him to reel in the miles of slack line that were decorating the river bottom at that point, said we’d try to get him another fish, told him I had a spare pole for him on board, and started cleaning up the mess and stowing the dip net. He started reeling in slowly, blowing and puffing, and then he said “Hey, it feels like there’s something on the line”. I turned, and sure enough, that fish had just been lying doggo on the bottom, he was still on the line! Blind luck, usually they spit out the lure as soon as it goes slack.

So I looked around, we still had room to fight the fish where we were. I adjusted the autopilot heading a bit to keep us out of the shallows and stood up to help the Old Man.

The salmon was still fresh, he’d been resting up after maypole dancing with that other fish, and he fought hard. But the Old Man stayed with the fish to the end, with his blood pressure steadily climbing towards four digits, likely a new personal best. I talked him through it all, told him to slow down, told him to bring the fish up just below the surface of the river, but don’t lift his head out of the water or he’ll go crazy, and then to gently swing the rod tip right over my head to bring me the fish, and when he did I reached in with the long-handled dip net and brought the salmon on board. He was a big male, starting to go red, with a bit of a hooked jaw. The Old Man collapsed in a heap in his chair, with a satisfied grin that stretched clear across his face, and lit up a cigarette in celebration.

I did then what I always did after catching a king salmon on the Kenai. I said to the salmon in a loud, clear voice, “My name is Willis Eschenbach, and I thank you for coming to end your life with me and my guests on our boat. We are honored by your sacrifice.”

It’s important to state your name clearly at a time like that, because Death is watching, so it’s no time for mistakes about who he’s there for. Particularly in this case, since it might be the fish like everyone expected … but on the other hand, it might be the Old Man, given the pallor of his skin and the beating of his heart, I could see the veins jumping in his neck as he puffed on his smoke … and as always, it might even be me, and I’m about the old man’s age, height, and build—it’s Death’s choice and who knows what’s in that bugger’s bag of tricks or how good his vision is? I always state my name out loud, so he doesn’t make a careless mistake …

Plus, I wouldn’t want to die at the hands of an unknown opponent, I’d want to know the name of the warrior who finally took my life. And I would hope that he would acknowledge the weight and the finality of the moment.

And last, and most important, life eats life to live—try as I may I cannot escape that. All I can do is treat the other lives that I kill and eat with the honor and respect that they deserve.

And as always, the strength and the nobility of the king of the salmon, and the clarity of the moment, and the shrouded form of impending Death silhouetted against the expanse of blue sky and witnessed by the ageless river swirling by … those forces conspired such that almost everyone always agreed and nodded their heads when I spoke my hail and farewell to the salmon. They knew it was not a light moment, that a fine creature would die for our sake and we needed to acknowledge and respect that … plus by then they’d usually spent a bit of time with me, heard a few stories, they weren’t surprised that I was odd, anyhow they didn’t know what to expect from a Kenai guide. And besides, most folks understand and respect that kind of reverent oddity. I can report that not one single person ever jeered or made fun of or spoke against what I’d just said, although some asked about it afterward.

Then I took the king salmon’s life with my own indelibly blood-stained hands, the hands of a musician and a builder and an artist that also forever bear that moonlight pale yet strangely fade-proof crimson badge of the man who lives in the midst of life. I am not a man who eats the meat and blames the butcher, so I killed the salmon cleanly with the club, and I cut the gills to drain it, the bright red essence of his life spilling out over my knife and my hands and splashing out on the deck as the guests watched.

The Old Man held the salmon up while the Kid took pictures, and their faces showed nothing but pure satisfaction. The Old Man smiled at the Kid, and the Kid smiled at the Old Man, and I knew that whatever might transpire during the rest of their trip, I’d been given the rare opportunity to witness the payment in full of an ancient debt of honor.

Curious creatures we humans are, with blood spilled today somehow paying in full the butcher’s bill for blood saved yesterday, the sacrificial blood of old. They each carried the darkness of death in Vietnam somewhere inside them, you could tell, but today was a day of brightness, and of trading death for life, and of sunlight flashing off the water, a balm for the healing of old battle scars … I took the fish from the Old Man, and I silently carried the lifeless body forwards, and placed it gently into the fish box.

A given fisherman can only catch one king salmon per day on the Kenai, so I washed my hands of gurry and blood, ultimately fruitlessly as always, the pale mark endures, and took the Old Man’s rod, cleared and untangled the line, and stowed it in the rod holder. That’s your visible badge of success on the Kenai—your fish is in the boat, and your rod is in the holder advertising your accomplishment, saying to the fleet, ‘My name is Ozymandias, king of king salmon: look on my works, ye mighty fishermen, and despair!’ I’d swap out the rod later, it was done for the day. The Old Man was done for too, near collapse, but luckily he was also done for the day, nothing more to do but rest on his laurels, and he popped open a beer, lit another smoke, and took full advantage of the lovely morning.

I took the hose and washed the life’s blood off of the deck. I logged the death of the fish by species, one king salmon, guides have to record every fish taken, and yes, they do board your boat to check.

I took off the autopilot that had allowed me to wash and log, checked around to see if the boat was clear of dangers, no other boats flying up from behind. I twisted the handle of the outboard to run back up to the top of the hole, still an hour’s fishing to go before lunch … but no one else on the boat caught another fish.

Then the run back to the lodge at noon, standing up in the stern and blazing along the river, outboard wide open, running the shallow threaded off-river back channel short-cuts, dodging the rocks and bars, in my face the chill sea-wind that ever and always blows up the river bearing the iodine smell of my old ocean home—no worker in the world has a better office than a Kenai fishing guide … then slow down for the turn into RW’s marina, staying clear of the hidden gravel bar at the mouth, and we idle in to the marina to tie up, to keep the wake from rocking the other boats.

Unload the fish, say goodbye to the Kid and the Old Man, the Kid gave me a hundred-dollar bill, and we grinned at each other like teenage conspirators at our spectacular, unexpected success with the Old Man. The Kid was released from a lifelong burden of honor, all debts were paid, and he looked like it too, refreshed and ready for more life-threatening adventures with the Old Man.

But way too soon it’s off to a hurried lunch, then another shift, four new guests to meet.  I reveled in the endless variety of people I took out, Los Angeles businessmen, machinists from Chicago, cowboys from Colorado. The Mexican farmers and families and businessmen all were assigned to my boat because I can relate a good story in Spanish as well. No telling what I’d get, yesterday four Idaho potato farmers celebrating a good year for spuds, this afternoon or another just like it we have two retired judges and two retired prosecutors on holiday from New York, and I also face the unending hours of unflagging attention until six in the evening … and the ever-present question of where the fish might be …

My own map of the fishing holes. I made and printed them with the computer and printer I brought with me. They had length/girth/charts on the back, I and gave them to customers as souvenirs. Cost maybe a buck a page, I’d guess they increased tips by five bucks per person on average. Hey, I’m in it to retire early … plus everyone walked away with something even if it wasn’t a fish, even the ones that didn’t tip me at all, that’s just good business. I also kept one on the boat, laminated against water, to answer questions. Initially, of course, I made it up for myself so I could learn the names of the holes … remember, I was a rookie. Click to enlarge.

So they tell me they’re ex-judges and ex-prosecutors. The two judges sit in the two seats farthest from me towards the bow, the prosecutors in the two seats nearest me … and I’m sitting in my office chair, facing them and driving the boat. Two judges and two prosecutors, it feels like my bad courtroom dreams from back in the day when such things were … but again I digress, it’s a full-time job keeping this boat-borne tale on a steady course.

So we chat a while, talk about their prior occupations. Then I figured, what better time than now, it’s a lovely day and I’m talking to representatives of the judiciary, plus I had them out-numbered, there were only four of them, so I just kinda blurted out something that had been bugging me for a while:

“The problem with the American justice system is that the prosecution can bribe the witnesses, but the defense can’t.”

Well, that put the cat among the pigeons. They were all saying, what do you mean? We don’t bribe anyone. All puffed up and clearing their throats. After that, the two judges mostly sat and smiled and watched the show, but to the two prosecutors I was suddenly what they call a “hostile witness”, and they started in to question me …

I said, “You can bribe witnesses, you can force and coerce testimony out of people, and it’s legal for you to do it. And not only that. You can bribe them with the promise of something more valuable than cash or gold or diamonds—their freedom.

Well, I have to report that my true and valid accusation, that the prosecution can threaten to lock someone up on a totally unrelated charge unless they testify against you, and the defense has no such right to force someone to testify on your behalf, to give the real story … that certainly provoked what in diplomatic terms is called a “full and frank discussion.” I stuck to my guns, though, as did the prosecutors, it was a wonderful display of the cut and thrust of debate. One of the judges lit up a cigar as we drifted along, it was clearly a grand day for an out-of-doors trial and an out-of-court settlement. The discussion continued, points made and disputed, it was fun to watch powerful minds at work.

Finally, the prosecutors had to agree. The scales of justice are not balanced. The prosecution does have immense power to coerce witnesses that the defense doesn’t have. That part is just a fact, and they were honest men, they couldn’t deny it. But, they argued, it’s OK because that power was used judiciously, not to obtain false testimony but to get to the truth, and that the system and the people could be trusted to make sure that imbalance of power was not abused.

I looked at the prosecutor who’d made the argument, and I said “My friend … America was founded by people who absolutely and completely didn’t trust people in power not to abuse that power. Why on earth should I start trusting you now?”

There was a long silence as the prosecutors frantically sought a counter argument … then the one judge pulled the cigar out of his mouth, spat over the side of the boat, and said kind of laconically  ” … Ummm …  ‘fraid he’s got ya there, Ellery” … 

YOWZA! An official Ju-dicial Opinion in favor of the rookie guide. I felt like Rocky, I clasped my hands over my head, and all five of us busted up laughing hysterically … and the afternoon and the good conversation flowed on by, points given and taken. And somewhere in there, one of them caught a fish, and I spoke my words of respect to the fish, and I killed it. I thought New York hard guys might laugh at what I said, but they were razor-sharp, they understood immediately what I was doing. The judges most of all—I learned that day from watching them that in some sense, I was the judge pronouncing the final death sentence, and they understood that ponderous weight far too well …

Afterward they all opened the beer they’d been saving to drink to the first fish, and offered me one. I couldn’t, I was on duty, so I toasted the fish with my water bottle.

Finally, the day’s over, pull the lines out of the water, sorry, guys, guided boats can’t fish past six, fire up the boat, and run back in at day’s end. Arrive at 6:15, 6:30 if you’re fishing way downriver, unload the fish, collect the tips. Each man gave me at least $20. I shook their hands, thanked each one for a lovely time. They said they hadn’t expected a Kenai guide to be like me. I said I sure hadn’t either, I was as surprised as they were to find myself guiding on the mighty Kenai, and we parted laughing, enjoy the rest of your vacation, so long …

Then take the deck hose, wash and scrub up the boat, and get the gear back in order. Wash the fish box clean of any blood and scales. Mend any breakages, tie new leaders. Wash the lures that were used, and sharpen or replace any bad hooks. Put the garbage bags back on the seats, pick up any scraps, pump the wash water overboard, and grab my thermos—the boat can sleep the night. Oh, wait … I have to trade out the Old Man’s busted rod. I walk it over to RW’s shop and find a replacement, take it back to the boat, and the boat is ready for tomorrow.

From there it’s over to the fish cleaning station, to get the eggs from the hens, meaning any female salmon that my own guests have caught, can’t take another guide’s salmon eggs. Then back to the barn, gotta check my salmon eggs in the fridge, cut the new eggs into skeins and put them in to brine and cure. Take off the rubber gloves used for brining and walk back to the trailer to make some dinner. Workday, about 4:45 AM to 7:30 PM or later … eat, sleep, lather, rinse, repeat … there were only a few guys my age guiding on the river, but I haven’t forgotten how to work long and hard, fourteen-hour days were no novelty to me. So I fished and drank and laughed and played music around the campfire in the strange slanting half-light of the midnight Alaskan semi-dusk, two guitars among the trees. Ryan brought his guitar, Johnny had one, and I kept up my end of the game with the best of them. It was an outrageous fishing season

My sincere thanks to Ryan and my surfer buddy, Johnny, RW, Pat, and all my friends along the Kenai, who welcomed me even though it was my rookie season, taught me the tricks of the wily salmon and the sneaky ways of the prop-biting Kenai, and who first laughed at each of my errors, cracked up actually, and then showed me the correct method, in the way the best fishermen always have in my experience.

Not my lashup, found in the river, but I made mistakes just as silly …

At the end, I’d made nearly twelve grand, cleared maybe nine or ten, so I figured it must be time to retire early once again.

I fully planned to go back the next season. In the spring, with the Alaskan snow still on the ground, I flew back up to the Kenai to go through the newly-required one-week Kenai River Professional Guides Association guide academy. There the guides new and old were either taught or reminded of a host of fascinating things about the history, the laws, the ecology, the regulations, and the life cycles of the Kenai. We came away with a deep knowledge of the mighty river and all its inhabitants. It was a superb opportunity for me, can’t tell you how much I learned, stuff I’d never suspected, like there’s a whole ecosystem that lives inside the gravel bars that line the sides of the river, baby fish, insects, all kinds of stuff living yards from the river, in the water that flows between the small rocks, way down under the surface of the gravel I walked on … who knew?

But then a couple of months before the season, I was getting ready to go north, and a job opened up back in the Solomon Islands as the Chief Financial Officer for a fuel importing and distribution company with sales of $40 million a year … you can likely guess what happens after that kind of offer in my life, plus I’d never been a hated oil company executive before, and I do love new challenges. It wasn’t Big Oil like you read about, or even small oil, more like baby oil … but the world needs fuel, so off I went adventuring again.

I’ve been back on the Kenai twice since then, both times as a guest, not a guide, so I sat in one of the four guest seats while one of the guides I knew ran the boat.  … and the bad news is, I likely won’t be there on the Kenai this summer to sit in that left front guest seat and hear the eagles scream and smell the wild onrush of life. Perhaps I’ve seen the Kenai for the last time except in memory, one never knows in this life … but somebody has to take my fighting chair, the fourth guest seat on the boat is gonna be empty, looks like it’s about your size …

Because I know that next year, when once again the red salmon swim upriver again in their millions, as I see them yet in my dreams …

…and the bears and eagles and people and foxes and gulls all gather ’round from their winter grounds to join in the ongoing riverside feast, it will still have that distinct Alaska summer smell, that urgent, pungent, fecund odor peculiar to the North, the boisterous winds redolent of the haunting, driving, rich breath of every single living organism fighting and eating and killing and breeding and running as fast as it can before the refrigerator door slams shut and the all-too-brief summer light transmutes into wintry Arctic cold.

I love that scent, it is the raw perfume of the seething Northern summer itself.

And the king salmon, that most aptly-named of fish, will be running in its untold numbers up the Kenai again in June and July, and behind their watery highway rises the Kenai Peninsula, rugged and feral, a mysterious forest kingdom where clans of giant bears walk upright and rule in place of the tribes of man … ah, the very thought of it makes my heart escape the ribbed bars of its cage and once again, just as I myself have voyaged to Alaska so many times in the past, it wings its way North to refresh and renew its hidden chambers with the intoxicating pure oxygen of untouched wildness …

w.

CODA:

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. 

                     Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:

And on the pedestal these words appear:

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Live while you can, dear friends, for the night is assuredly coming.