SO, MY DAD bought this defunct gold mine about a hundred miles south of Denali, at the confluence of the Nakochna and Kichatna Rivers. It was five acres with a couple of run-down buildings and an overgrown, uphill airstrip with a rusty 500-gallon fuel tank parked on one side.
The first time he flew me out there, the airstrip was more alder than gravel. We got a little too close to some of them and the prop threw up enough cut leaves to render the windshield opaque. “Good thing we were landing,” I said.
Dad grunted. Before we took off again we had to engage in a little remedial land clearing.
An old trail ran up the Kichatna to the mine, abandoned when the gold there was found to be so fine as to be unprofitable to extract. As far as Dad was concerned, the real gold was in the remote location, and in the run of kings up the Nakochna. Many were easily Kenai-sized. Which in turn attracted more than a fair share of bears. Dad wouldn’t let anyone go to the outhouse in the middle of the night without a .357 in hand.
He and his wife Jeannie fixed up the camp so he could make it self-supporting, renting it out on occasion to Outside hunters and fishermen. When Condor Airlines started flying direct from Frankfurt, that included German businessmen. Perhaps expecting a more, ah, deluxe experience, some of them did not behave well.
And there you have the setting, and the plot, for Hunter’s Moon. Okay, I admit, plus a little inspiration from Richard Connell and Agatha Christie.
Oh, and the story about Kate shooting the boombox? True. One summer my dad flew out to a peaceful creek next to a deserted airstrip to go fishing with a couple of friends. After they’d set up camp, another pilot showed up. He had his teenage son along. First thing the son did was haul out a boombox, turn what from Dad’s description sounded like heavy metal up to nine, and hang it from the branch of a tree.
Dad said he stood it for the length of one alleged song, before he pulled his .357 and blasted the boombox to smithereens.
The other pilot never said a word, just packed his camp and his son back in their airplane and took off. But as he was taxing for takeoff? He turned his face so his son couldn’t see him, and gave Dad a big ol’ grin.