I host an annual hunting retreat every fall at our remote fly-in log cabin in the beautiful Iliamna River country of Alaska. This year, one of our regulars decided to include his twenty-year-old son who is just beginning to sort out his future. Among the interests his father is encouraging, is a love of reading. As we both sat on the screen porch of our cabin where so many of my books take shape, we discussed writing and reading and how well-crafted fiction can be a window on the world. As we talked, one of the locals came by for a visit, one of the highlights of life at the cabin.
Just two weeks after we closed up the cabin for winter, I got a frantic call from the owner of a fishing lodge downriver. A ROGUE grizzly had just clawed his way into his lodge, destroying the inside. He made similar calls to others who have cabins in the area. This led to a friend traveling from a nearby village to check on our cabin. He found that two lodges and 14 cabins within a twenty-mile radius of the Iliamna River had experienced similar damage. As for our cabin, the bear literally tore out the back wall, then systematically shredded the inside, destroying the cabinets and emergency food supplies, furniture, refrigerator, stove, radios, lamps and kerosene fuel cans and a window.
Our friends from the village raided a small business on the lake for plywood to board up the damage and sent these pictures. Our attempts to fly in to check on the damage failed when snow closed the small airstrip we land on. So, what is normally a two-day trip to open up the cabin next spring now will require a week of work. The guys I hunt with will all pitch in to repair the structure. Transportation challenges will probably mean that replacing what was destroyed inside will take all summer. But it will not delay my next book. Oh, the joys of true wilderness.