Category Archives: Alaska

The Boombah Haulage Company

The Boombah Haulage Company, president, CEO, and sole employee.

All those artisanal, hand-crafted heat candies created in the woods behind our house (the Boombah) have to travel to the wood shed somehow to realize their purpose. Yes, they’re pieces of dead trees, but they’ve been diced up into 16-inch lengths for a reason. I generally cut the trees as soon as possible after they die, so they are usually still green and the pieces of future firewood are heavy. So I stack them in the woods for a year or so to begin the drying process. Like a squirrel with little food caches scattered about, I can usually remember where the piles are. I haul them out on a network of foot trails one load at a time on my shoulders. It’s a great workout. I peck away at it when I feel like it.
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Double Dipping

This was our 20th year fishing for salmon in the Copper River. You’d think we’d be experts by now and get our limit every time. Ha! If you want to be sure to come home with fish, go to the store. This fishery is a uniquely Alaska experience, a personal-use fishery open only to state residents. You use big nets on long handles. It’s a longstanding traditional way to harvest salmon for the table, and the fish, the Copper River red salmon, is probably one of the best food fishes in the world. We enjoy them immensely. And, while it’s serious work, I still enjoy going to get them.
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Faster Than a Dead Tree

It was a lovely, picture-perfect day to go out into the woods up the hill and create some future firewood that hadn’t fallen yet.
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Heat Candies

This past winter I accomplished a life goal that I didn’t even know could be a life goal. I can start fires in the woodstove without small pieces of wood for kindling. This pinnacle of personal achievement, which I enjoyed performing every day, dropped accidentally into my lap through a combination of hard work and laziness.
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Images of March

March is my favorite month up here. The light, snow, and temperatures combine to make it a time you wish could last well through April.
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