A five-part story written by Rie Muñoz,
published in the Alaska Sportsman magazine in 1962.

PROSPECTING

Is Our Life

By Rie Muñoz

Part four

Having a boat the size of the Pushka was an advantage at the Salt Chuck. When we or the loggers ran low on supplies, everyone would contribute to the running costs and we would make the trip to Ketchikan. On one trip we bought a seventeen-foot skiff and outboard motor, as the Pushka was much too big for easy use in the chuck area and the tender much too small.

Then, after a few harrowing experiences on the Ketchikan trip, we put the Pushka up for sale and returned to the chuck by plane. The relief of not having to cross Clarence Strait was well worth the air fare.

The Cliff Gardners owned the only radio in the chuck, battery-operated, of course, as there was no electricity. They kept us abreast of what they deemed the important news, such as major events in the sporting world and goings-on in Hollywood. Later in the summer, however, Cliff came running to our cabin and yelled, "Have you heard the news?"

Not waiting for the obvious answer, he continued, "There's a big fire along the waterfront in Ketchikan! A store has gone up. and a small apartment, and Elliott's Boat Storage, and seventy-five boats! The Pushka is tied up there, isn't she?"

Before we had time to answer, a plane buzzed us and we all ran outside. It was an Ellis Airlines Cessna, and as the tide was in, the pilot managed to taxi within a stone's throw of the cabin. The three of us waded over and hopped onto the pontoons.

"Juan," said the pilot in a somber voice as he opened the small door of the cockpit, "Rie . . ." and he paused significantly. "There's a fire raging along the waterfront. When I left, the Pushka wasn't on fire yet, but the boat tied alongside her was. Bill is phoning around town like crazy to find out whether you had her insured, and if he finds out you didn't, he'll try to get out there and save her."

No, she was not insured. It had cost too much, and we had let her coverage expire a month earlier. Even so, when we learned a few days later that the Pushka had indeed burned, we breathed a sigh of relief. No more would that unstable craft threaten us with a watery grave.

We now ordered supplies by letter and they were sent out by mail boat. The fifty-eight-foot Eureka. owned and operated by Fred McKay, put in to Kasaan once or twice a week. Then one of the loggers or Juan and I would make the sixteen-mile run to Kasaan by skiff to bring back everyone's supplies and mail. Juan hated these trips, but I enjoyed them and would gladly have gone alone if it hadn't involved loading some awfully heavy stuff. About sixty people lived in Kasaan, and we knew a dozen or more of them from times we had met them at the chuck.

When the tide was just right, Fred McKay could run into the Salt Chuck. A sharp blow of the familiar whistle would bring everyone to life. "The Eureka is in!" was the call, and we'd all go out in our skiffs to meet her, regardless of the time of day or night. Sometimes there would be passengers aboard, cheechakoes or old-timers going to one of the many jippo logging camps on Prince of Wales Island, and we would stare at each other with mutual curiosity.

The prospecting was coming along fine. The government had made an aerial magnotometer survey of the eastern side of Prince of Wales Island the year before, and had published the results on a map made available to the public. The map had shown a number of high anomalies, one of the highest pinpointed in the vicinity of the Salt Chuck. It was for this reason that we'd stopped here first. The plan was to check out the "Salt Chuck Anomaly," stake it if it was good, and then go on to the next and the next until we had checked out each favorable possibility.

It is one thing to pinpoint an anomaly on a map, however, and quite another thing to pinpoint it on the ground. What we'd expected to take a few weeks was taking considerably longer.

A Good Life

But neither of us complained. We were living an enjoyable and inexpensive life in the chuck. Our neighbors were congenial and Juan, with the aid of his magnotometer, was making headway with the anomaly. Periodically he declared a holiday and we would go fishing or exploring, or hop into the skiff and visit one of the nearby logging camps. In time we knew every trail and creek, and we even discovered and named a small lake that was not noted on any maps. We had long since given up the ambitious idea of checking every anomaly that summer, and were content with the good one we had.

New boats and new faces in the chuck aroused varying degrees of excitement among the residents, and none could enter without our seeing it from the old mine site. When a new boat came in there was always much discussion about who it might be, and then someone would hop into a skiff and go find out. Before long most of us would venture to the strange craft like so many natives rushing out to a steamer to dive for pennies.

Juan was always apprehensive about strangers in the chuck, lest they be prospecting parties looking for "our" anomaly. and the others in the chuck soon became equally apprehensive for our sake. Juan had done no staking so far, as he had not yet learned the entire dimensions of the anomaly, and until the ground was staked it was open to anyone.

If Juan was in camp when a new boat came in, he would go to meet it himself, but often he'd come back frustrated because he didn't feel it proper to say to a group of strange men, "What's your game, boys?" We women would have better results. We could get away with almost any question asked in apparently innocent curiosity, and often did. Also I knew exactly what to look for and the other women soon learned.

Like the morning Betty, Joyce and I went out to "greet" a beautiful boat soon after she anchored in the chuck. Two older men and a group of college boys welcomed us aboard, and as coffee was being poured for all we began our sly detective work: Were they hunting? Oh, just sight-seeing? Had they been to Old Kasaan where the ancient Indian cemetery is? Oh, they mustn't miss that! And the wonderful fishing in Karta River, and it wasn't far upriver to a beautiful lake! Golly, look at those charts! No, they're not charts, they're maps! Say, this looks like one of those old-time gold pans! Do you know how to use a gold pan? Imagine! Might be fun to try it. Oh, there wouldn't be any gold around here . . . but wouldn't it be something if ...

When we climbed down to the skiff, thanking them for the coffee and urging them to come and visit the camp, we had determined that this was a Ketchikan boat under charter to a large mining company, one of the older men was the chief of exploration, the other skipper and cook, and the college students were the leg men.

One visiting craft was a wanigan, or floating house, anchored in a quiet spot in the chuck. We made the usual pilgrimage and were greeted by a bearded young man named Walter. I don't think we ever learned his last name, but he willingly revealed that the men aboard were from the Ketchikan Pulp mill, in the chuck for timber cruising. The wanigan would be there a month and we were invited to use its laundry facilities, which consisted of a gasoline-powered washing machine and mangle! Wash days that month were occasions for coffee, homemade cookies and much gay chatter with the jolly cook while the washing machine did its duty.

Walter came often to our cabin for dinner or evening bull sessions with Juan and the loggers. Once, after an excellent meal with Walter on the wanigan, he offered us the use of the library, and as he led us to the well appointed shelves he explained with a straight face that one of the men had gone to great trouble to sort all the books into categories.

Here in neat rows were hundreds of pocket books, and glued to the shelves were small labels designating the various categories: sex fiction, sex nonfiction, sex historical, sex hunting, sex biographies, sex autobiographies, sex poetry and sex miscellaneous.

As the summer progressed, Betty and Joyce Gardner grew larger by the day. One morning Russell Simpson, a bush pilot, came in and flew Betty to Ketchikan to await the birth of her child. A few days later it was announced over Ellis News, a five-minute radio program sponsored by Ellis Airlines primarily for those in the bush, that Mrs. Mick Gardner and infant boy were scheduled to fly home to the Salt Chuck. Of course we were all at the dock to welcome the new Salt Chucker.

Not many weeks thereafter, Joyce, wife of the other Gardner brother, flew to town for the same purpose. This time I had my camera ready and took a series of photos when mother and daughter returned.

A few years later, when I was commissioned to do a mural for a new restaurant in the Ellis building, I chose to do a composite of the out-of-the-way places served by Ellis Air. At one end of the wall I painted a picture of an expectant mother waiting as an airplane came in for a landing. The background was obviously the Salt Chuck. Then came other scenes familiar to local people, and at the other end the same background as the first scene. But in the foreground this time was a much slimmer woman, and in her arms a bundle being admired by father and bigger brother.

The two scenes made quite a hit, especially with the Gardners, who produced a total of five children while they lived in the Salt Chuck.

The Kasaan people, mostly Indians, periodically came to the chuck for several reasons. One or two would often bring Charlie Wong's groceries to save the old man a trip, and perhaps three or four would come if it was observed that the groceries included a bottle of whisky. They came for the excellent deer hunting. They came also if they needed a particular chunk of metal or bolt, as it was a fairly sure bet that by scrounging long enough in the abandoned mill or tool shed, the desired piece would be found.

Frequently someone from a nearby logging camp would come to the chuck to shoot a bear for a rug. There were certainly plenty of bears. Any time of day you could see one somewhere along the beach, lumbering along and overturning boulders in search of tiny shore crabs. The bears were easy enough to shoot, but skinning one was a long, painstaking proposition.

Every so often a man would be midway in the tedious skinning job when night would fall and he would leave, probably with the idea of returning to finish the job next day. Chances were good, however, that the man would not return, and the carcass would lie there to rot.

Warren Pellet, who turned crimson when a bear hunter approached, tried to solve the problem of wasteful killing by scaring the bear into the underbrush before the hunter was in range. Warren had a gun with which to shoot over the bear's head, but he rarely had bullets, so at times we would see Warren running over the mud flats, waving his arms and shouting like a man possessed. His scheme worked, though, and in time the hunters became so disgusted that they went elsewhere for their bear rugs.

To us the bears became somewhat of a problem. They came after the garbage daily and it took a great deal to chase them away for keeps.

The Gardner women were particularly afraid of bears when their young children were playing outside. Ann Pellett, mother of six, had no fear for the sound reason that "six kids together make so much noise, no bear would dare come within a hundred yards."

One morning before the Gardners were up, they heard something crash against the house. Cliff ran to the window and saw a young bear standing in the garbage pit and heaving out the cans, one of which had hit the house. Cliff yelled and the bear fled, but that evening it returned for dinner. Again it was chased off, but it persisted in returning at dawn and dusk for snacks, and it got so annoyed with Cliff's attempts to chase it away that it began to growl and show its teeth.

In the meantime Joyce and Betty were afraid to let their children play outside. Cliff finally had his fill of the bear's insolence, and one rainy day he shot it. "I'll skin it tomorrow after the rain," he said, "and we'll have a fine bear rug."

Tomorrow came, but with it more rain, and so on the next day, and the next. The bear lay where it had been slain, and when the sun did break through again, the carcass was bloated and covered with bottle flies and Cliff had lost interest in a bear rug.

More as a joke than anything else he came by our house and asked me whether I wanted a bear rug.

"Sure," I said eagerly.

"Well, it's over at our place," Cliff said with a broad grin. "All you have to do is skin it."

I'd seen the bear the day before, from a distance. "Will the fur still be okay?" I asked dubiously.

"Go pull on the hair," he said. "If it doesn't come out, the hide is fine."

I went over, waved the flies away, and yanked. Nothing gave. I went home for our sharp skinning knife, the whetstone and a "bug bomb," and Stationing Rickie Gardner beside me with instructions to squirt the bomb every time the flies came close, I went to work.

Several hours later the bear was skinned, and the rug now decorates our living room floor. To anyone whose glance falls upon it I say proudly, "That's the bear I got in the Salt Chuck," but I usually fail to add, "after Cliff Gardner shot it."

click here for part five