The flight isn’t long by any stretch of the imagination, but it takes less than a mental gymnast to become enthralled by the scenery passing below—and for the occasional moment, next to—the airplane’s window. Crossing the Alaska Range in a Navajo Chieftain is part of the experience, I tell myself: typical to this state in the fact that it’s like nothing to be found anywhere else.
In my guise as an itinerant angler, I’ve certainly lucked into more than my share of fishing in places with names that most others recognize for entirely different reasons—the Bahamas, Mexico, Costa Rica, Argentina and more. However, I probably only realized the degree of this disconnect between myself and the average traveler while sitting in an open-air hotel bar in El Pueblo, a shopping, dining and entertainment complex done up like an old Spanish village in downtown San José, Costa Rica. With approximately half of Canada bombing around the cobbled streets in flowered shirts and promoting a shamelessly carnival atmosphere, it was pretty obvious that there was fun to be had in-country without the amount of gear I’d lugged along. But, unable to talk authoritatively, or really even feign much interest in the rainforest, the volcanoes, white-sand beaches or mating turtles, I simply retired to my room and the leader material needing to be knotted into passable tarpon connectors. By the time they got the karaoke fired up downstairs, I was reduced to wondering whether or not this trip could ever produce fishing.
I’ve never had that problem in Alaska, of course, where one never seems to be more than a couple hundred yards from fishable water. And just as importantly for the traveling psyche, I’ve never been asked whether I wasn’t missing something critical by concentrating so feverishly on the fishing available in a place instead of, you know, the place itself.
Given the realities of modern airline travel, most trips begin in a city, some of them quite famous and probably filled with historic sites and interesting things to see, but since certain combinations of glass and steel combine to make me feel queasy about any need for dry flies, I tend to spend my city time holed up in a hotel room or nearby bar sweating over the possibility of missing my connecting flights. In Buenos Aires, for instance, I saw little more than the lobby of the Gran Hotel de la Paix, which is really anything but grand, primarily because it took more than a day to get there and I thus felt enormously invested in making it to the water at some point. Only after being fleeced by the baggage handlers at the Aeroparque Jorge Newberry and finding myself safely en route to the nether regions of the Chubut Province did I relax and then realize that I might have checked into tango performance or watched a soccer riot or something to give the voyage more of a local flavor than brown trout can provide.
Similarly, I’ve had two opportunities while visiting islands in the Bahamas to witness Junkanoo parades, and on both occasions I opted out in order to be well-rested for the morning tides. It seems a little obsessive, I’m told. But then again, I could map from memory the first thirteen miles of the Bighorn River near Hardin, MT, while I’ve never even thought of visiting the Little Bighorn Battlefield or attending Crow Fair. I don’t see that those other trips should be any different just because I took a passport along.
That’s another part of what makes Alaska seem so special to me, I suppose. Yes, there are all manner of other things to do and see, but fishing is so deeply woven into the fabric of the state’s history, and so much a part of both its present and future, that one can be forgiven for a preoccupation with rod and reel. Plus, our greatest tourist attractions happen to be natural companions to water.
In the end, that’s why there is no anxiety to overcome as the little plane glides between peaks, over glaciers and great swathes of alpine tundra. I’m simply able to look out the window and watch it all go past, secure in the knowledge that I’m seeing a big part of what Alaska has to offer. There’s also the relief of knowing that wherever we set down, there’s sure to be fantastic fishing, as well as plenty of opportunity to view up close the fauna and flora of the 49th state. I’ve got the same type and amount of luggage as everyone else, and it finally feels good to be average.
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