FUN MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD IN ALASKA
Ed Cheverelle and The Hunt
Our family’s first real home of our own in Alaska was a barn. Literally!
We were living in downtown Anchorage – I was perhaps five – and needed to vacate the house we were house-sitting. My parents wanted to move out of town where they could be more independent: After all, in Anchorage at that time we might have had two or three other houses on our block and real gravel on our streets; there was running water for our taps and a sewer main for our toilets. This was far too structured an environment for my parents!
So, they purchased a piece of property some miles to the southwest of Anchorage in an area known as Spenard. In later years, Spenard Road would become the main highway from Anchorage to the new Anchorage International Airport.
But when we moved out there it was a muddy trail servicing some small number of homestead farms, an occasional grocery store and several trappers’ cabins. Across the road from one farm, and perhaps a half mile down the road from the Spenard Grocery, was a several hundred yard long, even muddier one lane trail without a name. On this trail were two houses: The first was about half-way from Spenard Road to the end of the lane; the second was at the very end. They were both on the south side of this trail. Not another building was visible from the woods surrounding the trail.
My parents purchased property directly across this little trail from the first house and had the barn from the farm across Spenard Road dragged on skids to a small clearing on the property. That barn, still sitting high above the ground on the logs used as skids, still reeking with the odor of cow dung and hay, still nothing more than timbers nailed together – that barn was home.
We named the trail Sunset Lane, an auspicious name for little more than a set of tire tracks through the grass and weeds. And we introduced ourselves to our neighbors: Ed Cheverelle and his wife directly across from us; Duane (Butch) Coomer, his mom and two younger siblings at the end of the car tracks.
This incident and the following ones are outstanding in my mind, highly memorable for a five year old.
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The first winter in Spenard, Ed Cheverelle boasted to my dad and oldest brother, who was then fifteen, what a great hunter and outdoorsman he was. In fact, he bragged, he could take them deep into the woods, shoot a moose and bring it back without taking anything more than a rifle and hatchet. No matches. No tent. No sleeping bag. No food. No other gear.
He was the ultimate woodsman. He would “live off the land”.
Now, neither my father nor oldest brother, Skip, was so naive that they believed this for one minute. Both had hunted deer in the mountains of Pennsylvania so they knew just a little about hunting, tracking, bagging and skinning a game animal, camping and keeping from getting lost in the woods. But they were certainly willing to let Ed, whose log house was filled with stuffed squirrels, mounted moose and caribou heads, racks of rifles and other hunting accoutrement, show them his stuff.
One day in late September 1947, just as fall hunting season opened, Ed took my father and brother on a hunting trip. True to his word, he carried only a jacket, a hatchet hanging from his belt, and a 30.06 rifle with scope. Our two representatives on this outing took full packs with waterproof matches, dried foods, extra clothes, sleeping bags, hatchet, knife, rifles and more. Ed told them to be prepared to spend anywhere from a couple days to a week “deep in the woods” while they stalked their prey.
For the trip into the wilds, Ed had them take the train a hundred miles or so north of Anchorage. There, in the middle of the woods, with snow starting to fall, Ed had the engineer stop the train to let them off. This, we knew, wasn’t unusual, as the Alaska Railroad was the only real access into the untamed country between Anchorage and the next largest city, Fairbanks, some 400 miles to the north. The train made the round trip every several days.
The engineer said he’d stop at this place exactly three days later and wait ten minutes. If they weren’t there, they’d have to catch him the following trip in seven days.
With that, our intrepid hunters disembarked and the train – we all called it the “Moose Gooser” for the oversized cow catcher on the front – chugged away.
Ed started them out by walking directly away from the tracks. “This is north,” he told them. “I know this because of the shadows.” Walking last in the single file formation they had agreed to use, my brother checked his compass.
Due east, it read.
“We’ll keep going ‘till we see something moving,” he continued. “This wood’s full of moose. And we’re the only ones out here according to the engineer, so we can take our pick. You fellas tell me if I’m going too fast for you. I don’t imagine you did much hiking when you were in California.”
During our several visits to his house our family had related the recent move to Alaska from Long Beach, but hadn’t really said much more. But Ed didn’t know that my brother was a Civil Air Patrol (CAP) cadet who had been going hunting since he was a pre-teen. Nor did Ed know that my father was a government civil engineer, responsible for mapping many of the wilderness areas between Anchorage and Fairbanks similar to this one. He was experienced and extremely resourceful in the woods.
But they never let on to Ed any of this.
They tramped a ways from the tracks, turning down this gully, trudging up this knoll, traipsing single file “so they wouldn’t leave too many tracks in the snow.”
As night fell, it was still lightly snowing and perhaps six inches had accumulated on the ground. Ed found a campsite spot next to a stream, began cutting live branches from the surrounding trees and stacking them.
“We’ll make ourselves a campfire,” he explained, “and I’ll show you how to start a fire without matches. I learned this from my pop in Tennessee.”
Dad and Skip exchanged glances: Is this guy serious?
Ed cut two spruce limbs that were about one inch in diameter and perhaps six inches long. He squatted beside the stack of green boughs and began sawing one limb across the other. Keeping this up for several minutes he was soon covered with sweat.
But no spark, no fire, no nothing.
After a quarter hour of futile effort he asked Skip if he wanted to learn how to do this. Skip declined.
My dad, meantime, had moved up the embankment and had cut a number of pine boughs, laying them under a large spruce whose limbs were heavy with needles and grew close to the ground. On these cut boughs he laid out his and Skip’s sleeping bags, then covered them with a deep layer of boughs. This would be their lean-to.
Having seen all that he wanted to see of Ed’s increasingly panicky efforts, Skip rounded up a number of dead and broken tree limbs. Making a fire pit out of the larger rocks on the stream bed, he laid the dead pine branches on the bottom, being careful not to knock off the dried needles. Then, he added other dead branches on top. Finally he took out his canister of Army surplus waterproof matches and lit the dried needles. With a satisfying crackle they ignited, bursting into a flame that quickly spread to the other dried wood on top. In minutes he had a nice fire going.
Ed watched in quiet envy.
“Since I’ve already got this one started, Ed, why don’t you help me get some more dead wood to put on it. You can show me your method tomorrow.”
Without a word Ed joined Skip in gathering branches. By now my dad had found a couple dead alders and began chopping them. They would burn much longer than the pine boughs, though they weren’t nearly so easy to light.
“I’m going to find me some berries to eat,” Ed told them. “I told you we can just travel light and live off the land.”
Dad and Skip declined again. “We’ve brought some K-rations, but thanks anyhow.” Army surplus stores were nearly as numerous in post-war Alaska as were bars; you could practically outfit an army for cents on the dollar. Anyone who didn’t take advantage of the gear offered by these stores wasn’t using very good judgment.
Soon Ed returned, thrashing and crashing through the tree limbs and underbrush in the dimming fall light. “Real good of you fellas to keep that fire burning,” he said. “I sorta had some trouble finding my way back.”
He hadn’t found any berries although he was certain there would be some near the creek. “I’ll have to stock up tomorrow when it’s light.”
My dad offered him a can of K-ration. Ed accepted it and mumbled his thanks.
“You all go ahead and sack out,” Ed told them. “I’ll just stay here by the fire. ‘Long as I have a fire at night I don’t need a sleeping bag. This is plenty warm.” With that he sat down on a pine bough, drew his legs up in front of him and closed his eyes.
Naturally, my dad and brother were extremely curious by now: Was this guy a real mountain man from the Tennessee woods as he claimed, or was he a certifiable nut case?
They hadn’t been in their bags very long when Ed came puffing up the stream bank to the lean-to. “You guys think there’s room in there for me? That fire’s gone plumb out and it’s starting to get cold.”
They looked through the boughs at him: The snow had been falling on his clothes and was an inch deep on the bill of his hat. He was shivering. The confident arrogance that had been his earlier demeanor had been replaced by self pity.
No, there really wasn’t much extra room under the lean-to and besides, there were only two sleeping bags. It seemed Ed would have to rough it just like he’d said he would do.
He mumbled some kind of plea; wouldn’t they try to share with him? Finally, dad and Skip unzipped one bag so it laid flat, then unzipped the other bag to lay on top. Skip and Ed got between these “covers” and my dad re-covered them with the small boughs. Then he slid between the two bags. With all their clothes on except their boots, and covered with the bag and boughs, they were somewhat warm and were able to get some sleep.
When they awoke they saw that the snow had stopped during the night. Perhaps a foot and a half white powder covered the ground.
The decided to make this their permanent camp, and took with them only what they needed for the day’s hunting.
Ed led them through the woods, whispering to them how he was locating where the moose were. Dad and Skip noticed that it seemed he was going in a big circle.
Suddenly he stopped. “Shush!” he said, holding up his hand. “We’ve got company.”
Sure enough, up ahead of them was a set of fresh footprints in the snow. “We’ll follow these to see if we can find out who else is out here,” Ed whispered. “Whoever it is must be pretty smart; looks like they’re going single file just like us!” He set out alongside, tramping though the snow and mumbling to himself.
Skip and my dad again glanced at each other. Is he for real? These footprints were theirs, laid down just hours before!
They followed Ed some distance, circling around the campsite as he followed the tracks in the snow.
“Whoa!” he exclaimed. “The first set of tracks have been joined by another set. Now there’s a whole bunch of hunters out here!”
He was serious. He didn’t seem to realize he had been following their own trail and had now come upon their own second set.
“Listen, Ed, with all these other hunters out here, we’d rather not take the chance of getting shot. We’re going to just go back to camp and wait until the train comes back from Fairbanks. You go ahead and bag a moose if you want to.”
With that, dad and my brother headed back to the lean-to.
Ed stomped around some more, all the while mumbling to himself in a loud whisper. When he finally arrived back at the camp he was again cold and hungry.
“Couldn’t find any berries. Moose must have eaten them all.” Again, he was offered and accepted with mumbled thanks the food from the packs of his fellow hunters.
On the third day they agreed it was time for all of them to head back to the tracks to catch the Anchorage-bound train. Ed had had enough being cold and hungry.
They caught the train and after they were settled into their seats my dad asked Ed about his hunting experience in Tennessee and Alaska. His answer was not wholly unexpected.
With his eyes downcast and his voice low, he told them his story. “Pop could do anything. He hunted and fished. He made fires by rubbing sticks or something and ate berries and things. I wasn’t too good at camping so I never went with him. But he’d always go, with his buddies, and always tell me about their trips. Mary and I never went hunting, but she thinks I’ve been going for a lot of years.
I bought all the heads and stuffed animals you seen at my place – she thinks I caught them all. I was so sure I could just do all the things Pop had done but none of it worked out.”
He was obviously distressed. My dad wondered if it had ever occurred to Ed that maybe his pop had never been hunting like he’d said, or started a fire without matches, or lived off the land.
Because that’s exactly what it seemed like.
(Photo from author’s collection)
c. 1954-55. Taken with my Kodak box camera, this is Wasilla Lake, as viewed from our
two lots. To left of the view, perhaps a mile away, is the town of Wasilla. To the right,
just several lots away, is the home of the Blacks.
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