Quick trips in the outdoors

We all lead busy lives and as we age, time seems to just fly by. Some folks are busier than others, but we all have our days filled with activities. For most, work takes center stage. For thousands of valley residents, getting to work means making the daily commute to Anchorage. That’s another three hours of the day committed. Been there – done that!

Then there’s getting the kids ready for school and helping with homework, harvesting the garden, last-minute yard work, splitting firewood, grocery shopping, the post office, walking the dog, and a zillion other things that take up our free time. Seems like there’s always something!

Recently, I got caught up in this “busy life” syndrome a bit more than usual and my ramblings out and about were necessarily shortened to just a few hours for several days. However, these short trips were more memorable than several all-day excursions I have taken.

One morning, I went grouse hunting and moose scouting for a couple of hours in an area a few miles from my home. Not much for moose but the grouse were dazzling – not in numbers but in the show one male spruce grouse put on.

I encountered him on a ridge top. He was strutting back and forth on a log about two feet off the ground. His breast was jet black with contrasting grayish wings. He had the distinctive bright red combs above his eyes. As he strutted from one end of the log to the other, he would fan out his tail and cup his wings, displaying an unbroken rusty-orange colored band across the tips of his tail feathers. He was calling to a female grouse in the tree over my head.

I watched this display for several minutes while only about fifteen feet from the male grouse. I think he knew I was there, but he was more interested in the lady above me. The female called back to him and after several strutting trips up and down the log, he decided it was time to leave and flew off through the trees. That was a memorable encounter.

Another morning, I decided to try out my four-weight fly rod on some trout in a stocked lake near my house. I took only the fly rod, knowing that if I brought the ultra-lite spinning rod, I would soon abandon the fly rod I was still learning how to use for my more familiar spinning outfit. I canoed around the edge of the lake, looking for some surface feeding activity to indicate where the fish might be. I saw none.

Just before completing the loop around the lake, I saw a fish jump near the last dock before the launch site. I maneuvered the canoe into position and started casting, working out about twenty feet of fly-line in addition to the nine-foot leader. I was intentionally trying not to “overcast” and, instead, let the rod and line do the work for a change. I managed to place the fly (a single egg pattern) about five feet from the dock without looking too amateurish (a more experienced fly fisher would be proud of me).

As the fly started to sink, I began a slow, jerky retrieve of the floating line. Just as I had taken up the slack in the line, the trout hammered the fly and the fight was on. As the trout moved out into deeper water, towing the canoe and me with it, I realized this was a larger fish than normally found in this lake. I was extra careful to keep the rod tip up and the line tight.

The fight probably only lasted a couple of minutes before the fish tired, and I picked it up in the landing net. The rainbow was seventeen inches long and, as they say on the TV fishing shows, had “big shoulders.” That one fish made almost two meals for my wife and me.

Another time, I walked out of my garage one evening with my little dog. She ran along the driveway and started barking and chasing something. I looked up and saw her flush a grouse into the large spruce tree beside the driveway. I went in and got my air rifle and, after a half-hour wait to find the bird high in the tree, brought it down with one shot.

If all you have is an hour or two, you can still have a memorable trip in the outdoors of the Mat-Su Valley.