On My Own

On My Own

Bud Crawford

Copyright 2011

by Bud Crawford

Smashwords Edition

One of my favorite stories as a kid was the ones about the mountain men of the early eighteen hundreds. I did my best back then to copy everything I could from those books and live off the land off the land. I never thought it would be more than a fond dream until the opportunity presented itself in Alaska during the mid 70’s. This is my story

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Starting Out

Chapter 2 Settling In

Chapter 3 A Trip to the Store

Chapter 4 Heading Back

Chapter 5 Taken a Break

Chapter 6 Fishing

Chapter 7 More Work

Chapter 8 The Trip

Chapter 9 A Problem

Chapter 10 Hunting

Chapter 11 More Hunting

Chapter 12 Ready for Winter

Chapter 13 Trapping

Chapter 14 The Companion

Chapter 15 The Devil and Me

Chapter 16 An Ending

Chapter 1

Starting Out

This little trip happened before I moved back to Seattle. I was looking for something back in those days. I didn‘t know what it was but I figured I’d recognize it when I saw it. I’d wandered through California, Nevada, Origen and Washington without really finding anything when I happened to get an opportunity to go to work driving a truck in Alaska. I flew from Seattle up to Fairbanks where I met with the company and took a little driving test around town. They must have really needed drivers because once they hired me. I found out I wouldn’t be driving around town but up the pipeline road which was frozen solid. No wonder the guy giving me the test kept asking if I had every driven in ice and snow. It really wasn’t a bad job and let me tell you they paid really well and since I was single and more or less living in the truck it didn’t take too long to save you a nice little nest egg. The only drawback was that it looked like the job was only going to last through the winter. I was in Fairbanks shooting the bull with some friends when I heard there might be a chance to homestead over in eastern Alaska by Circle on the Yukon River. This just might be what I was looking for. I’d been trying to be a mountain man since Stanley and I was kids and this would be the chance to see if I could really cut it. I checked it out with the Alaska D.N.R and found out there was some land over there that might be open for homesteading. They weren’t a hundred percent sure since the native Alaskan bill was still in the works and they didn’t make it sound very good. The only way to get to the property would be by walking or by boat trip on the Yukon River either from Circle or Fort Yukon. There was no electricity and never would be to any of the properties plus a generator wouldn’t do you much good because you’d have to haul fuel up or down the river. The only water would either be from a hand dug well or we would have to get it from rivers or creeks. I would have to live on the property and do improvements on it each year for at least five years in order to own it. There were a lot more regulations I would have to meet but the more I thought about it the more this seemed like something I could do. I had to make a few more trips with the truck so I could save up some more money but since my job was mainly through the winter I’d be ready to go as soon as the ice melted. When I decided to call it quits with the truck I caught a ride with a pilot friend since there was only one road to Circle and it was a lot quicker to fly than to drive. I hung out in town for a week getting all my supplies ready and trying to learn all I could about the area I was headed to.

I bought a fourteen foot canoe from a guy in town and this time it was an aluminum one. I really like wood strip canoes but the previous summer I had decided to take a little canoe ride down Snake River Canyon. Everything went fine on that trip until I decided to jump a four foot waterfall. I paddled like crazy and shot off the top of it just like I had planned. But then I hit the water below hard enough to drive both of my knees through the bottom of the canoe and break it clean in two. So there I was at the bottom of the canyon with two choices, I could try to float the next twelve miles down a very rough river with lots of rapids, or I could try and climb out of the canyon. I decided to climb. I was doing pretty well and was almost to the top when I heard a bunch of people yelling at me. I looked up to see people leaning over a fence waving at me and two firemen working their way down to me on ropes. It turns out that I was trying to climb out right below a view point for tourists. One of them had seen me on the canyon wall and thought I had fallen from the top so they called the fire and rescue people. The firemen were really nice about it once I explained what had really happened although they thought I was a little strange for deciding to climb out. After that trip I swore off wood canoes.

I also loaded up with firearms getting a 30-30 rifle, a 41mag pistol, a 22 rifle and a 12 gauge shotgun. Between the guns and my fishing poles I figured I ne good to go as far as food went. But just to be on the safe side I also loaded up on beans, rice and flour plus whatever else caught my eye at the store. Most of the food stuff I was taking would be dry goods because I knew there would be no way to refrigerate anything until cold weather came along. On a sunny spring day I figure I was as ready to go as I ever would be.

I loaded up my canoe with all the tools I thought I would need to build a cabin plus what I assumed would be more than enough food and supplies to last at least thirty days before heading downstream. I had rented a small garage while I was in town and was able to store part of my supplies in there until I could make another trip to town. The stuff I did pack to take with me made for an extremely overloaded canoe. I had just enough room in the back to work the paddle with a mound in front of me that I couldn’t see over. There was still snow on the ground and ice along the edges of the river even though it was early spring. Everyone in town had told me that it wouldn’t all be melted off for at least another month but the river was open and I was ready to go. My destination was a small sandy beach about 30 miles down the Yukon River where a small creek flowed into it. I had never actually seen the area I was going to but I was sure I could find it from the maps I had. I’d never really seen the Yukon during spring flood either. If it’s true that ignorance is bliss then I was definitely in hog heaven.

I left out at daybreak just as soon as it was light enough to see. I figured it would take me a couple of days to get to the homestead and I didn’t want to rush it. With my usual lack of planning and no more forethought than Stanley and I had as kids, down the river I went. The Yukon close to Circle has to be at least a mile wide. The main channel runs closest to town and you could see the flood plain across it. All broken trees and gravel bars. I knew there were other channels over there but I never knew how many. The maps I had never really did justice to it. It was more like a swamp down home or river delta of the Mississippi. I kept waiting for the channels to come back together and make one river, but they never did. For the first few miles it wasn’t too hard keeping to the main channel because it was the deepest and fastest but then it split into three different ones all about the same. Since I was going down the left bank I ended up in the left channel and boy was that a wrong choice. By the time I finished the trip I found there were five sets of rapids in the channel I was following. I made it through the first two all right even though I was thanking my lucky starts that I had an aluminum canoe after bouncing off a few rocks. But on the third one I hit a rock dead center with the front of the canoe which shoved me around cross wise of the current and over I went. God that water was cold. I can see how people drown in the rivers up there, you hit that water and it feels like your heart is going to stop. It’s really hard to get a good breath even when you’re able to get your head above the water. Thank god I had everything packed in water tight bags or tied to the canoe. I managed to hang onto the canoe as I worked my way over to the bank and was able to drag it ashore. I had to lay there for quite a few minutes before I could get my breath back. That ended my first day on the river. I’d made it about ten miles. I had to spend the rest of the day building a fire and running around buck naked trying to dry out my cloths plus running a half mile down the river to get my paddle back. Thankfully the only one out there to see me was one bear and a moose. By the time I had everything unloaded, dried out and repacked in the canoe it was too late in the day to travel any more that night.

I hung out a little longer the next morning. I wanted to make sure I had plenty of daylight before heading out. After a leisurely breakfast I loaded everything up and started out again. Things went pretty well the first half of that day mainly because I was taking it easy and trying my best to stay in the main channel. A little after noon things started to go bad though. I ran into some rapids in the main river. I was drifting along not paying attention when I came around a bend and right into the first set. I made it through those even though it scared the hell out of me and made my way over next to the bank just in case there were more of them. It was a good thing I did because the rest of that set were the worst yet. I managed to see them in plenty of time to paddle over to a smaller channel. I ended up having to get out and wade through the smaller one dragging the canoe behind me to get around them. The bad news was that as soon as the channel I was in rejoined the river I could see rapids for at least a mile down the river. I decided to be on the safe side that day so I beached the canoe while I walked down to look around the next river bend and see what I was in for. What I saw wasn’t good. I didn’t think there would be any way I was going to be able to get the canoe down through all the rapids and around the rocks, especially not with it loaded like it was. My only option was to unload all my stuff and carry everything down to the next calm area which was about two miles away. I made two trips before dark but had to leave some of the supplies and the canoe. I got everything hung from trees so I wouldn’t have to worry about bears and headed back to the canoe and what I hoped would be a warm camp for the night.

I was up and at it early the next morning making the first trip with the rest of the supplies before daybreak. It was after ten by the time I made the last trip carrying the canoe. It was time for a little breakfast and a rest before I started reloading everything. I was sure I’d find the creek that day. It looked to me like I had about ten more miles to go and I thought I’ be at the spot by no later than three that after noon. Again the map didn’t add quite enough detail. There was one more set of rapids. This one had about three different channels, two of them were to shallow to drag the canoe through and the main one had rocks the size of Volkswagens. I figured you might be able to get past that set if you had a jet boat but there was no way I was going by with my overloaded canoe. Back I went to the piss ant mode unloading everything and carrying it down the bank. My first trip down the river held a real shocker for me. I was trucking along with my head down just trying to get to the end when I happened to glance up. There in the trail about fifty feet in front of me was the biggest brown bear I’d ever seen. The trail on both sides of us was over grown with trees and brush so there was no way for me to run even if I had wanted to. I was just standing there bent under about eighty pounds of gear to scared to run, which turned out to be the best thing. I was trying to slip my hand down to my pistol, not that I had any hope of being able to stop him at that distance. About that time he stood up to get a better look at me. He shuffled back and forth on the trail and snapped his jaws a few time and that’s when I thought he’s going to charge. He just stood there looking at me for what seemed like hours then dropped back down, turned and ambled off down the trail. I didn’t move until he was completely gone from sight then I had to sit down for awhile just to get my legs to stop shaking. I never saw him again as I finished packing my stuff below the rapids but that didn’t stop me from looking behind every tree and bush. That was the first bear I had seen up that close. Most of the others I had seen up there were all off in the distance and you just don’t realize how big they are. I had it all finished by dark after which I tried to burn up half the drift wood on that river and spent a very tense night waking up at every sound. The worse thing I could imagine would be to wake from a sound sleep and find yourself nose to nose with a bear that size. I finally made it to the creek late the next day only to find the flat bench next to the river was really a gravel bar in the flood plain and instead of just taking me a couple of days to get there if had taken me four and I