Bland

The summer of 1977 I headed north, as far as the road would take me. The road stopped at the Yukon River, in Circle, Alaska. There I met another visitor, Bill, camping in his station wagon, but he had not come by road. He came in an aluminum canoe from upstream; the car was his home in Circle while he waited for a check to arrive from Seattle, where he had sent his annual take of furs.

Bill was talkative and friendly when he wanted to be, though perfectly satisfied with silence. He and I got along. He beat me at pool and I beat him at ping-pong at the local store/tavern. I told him that a friend and I had come from Michigan with plans to build a cabin in the woods and live there for a year. But the BLM told us they might come by when we were gone and blow up the cabin; we were not allowed to squat on government land. Bill laughed, "You want to live in the woods?" He pointed. "There's the woods."

A day or two after I arrived, a barge stopped in Circle. The barge owner/operator offered to hire Bill as a deckhand, but he wasn't interested, so I took the job. Richard, the other deckhand and sometime pilot, said Bill had a reputation for being a little crazy. He lived in a tiny cabin where he could barely stand up at the ridge line. Someone gave him a couple dogs once to help with his trap line. Bill ate the dogs.

A few weeks later, with the barge stuck on a gravel bar in the Black River north of Fort Yukon, I was back in Circle. Bill had gotten a check for about $1500, driven to Fairbanks to get supplies, and was getting ready to head back upstream to his cabin.

There's an excerpt in John McPhee's Coming into the Country that might refer to Bill:

I was in the Yukon Trading Post in Circle one time when a man about forty came up over the riverbank and bought six bottles of Worcestershire sauce, twelve packets of yeast, a case of matches, some Spam, sardines, hot dogs, three pounds of tea, a hundred and fifty pounds of cornmeal, and two cigars. He counted out three hundred and forty-four dollars cash, laid it on the counter, and went back to the river without so much as a word about the weather. Frank Warren—pilot, trapper, keeper of the Trading Post—remarked that he had happened by that man's cabin one day and had thought to pay a visit. It was a small cabin, eight by ten, without windows. As Warren approached, he heard a voice. The man was telling himself a joke. Reaching the punch line, he erupted in laughter. Warren tiptoed away.

If it was Bill, I think he would have appreciated a visit. Unless, perhaps, he and Frank were not on good terms.

I gave Bill a 3-lb. can of coffee in exchange for his stories and his appreciation. He talked about food. Beaver tail was especially good, he said, "really bland." Any meat he liked he referred to as bland, as if there were no higher praise. Compared to pine martin, lynx, and huskies, I guess bland would be welcome. (Not that I would know.)

For Christmas this year, my son and daughter-in-law gave us some thin slices of Iberico ham. We shared them at a post-Christmas get-together. We didn't know what to expect other than that we should be impressed, given the price. We agreed it was surprisingly bland.

Bill would have approved.