Alaska's Copper River Basin where the O'Brien creek feeds into the Copper River is some of the most treacherous, wild, beautiful country in the world. You can take a picture of it like this one:

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Chitina_dipnet.jpg)

But it only tells half the story. It can't tell you how the glacier fed, silt laden river flows by like liquid mud. How it can swallow a tree whole and spit it out miles downriver like your grandfather spits a cherry pit. Or how where O'Brien creek feeds into it you get an effect like swirling cream into coffee.

It doesn't tell how the silt that is deposited on the banks as the river shifts course and rises and falls turns into 6 ft high cliffs of impermanence. How when the wind kicks up, that silky light remnant from before history was made, takes flight and gets into everything.

No picture can capture the purity or the utter cold of O'Brien creek. How the water is so close to frozen that it feels stiff going down.

The smells, the silence underneath the rushing sounds of the river, the unbridled wildness of nature...

A picture just isn't enough to capture any of that.

I spent part of every summer there in that place. From the time I was a tot and the Native women fed me fish eyeballs to gross out the white people to the year I graduated highschool. I didn't appreciate it then. I enjoyed it, but I had no idea exactly what it was I had. To me it was just the place we went every year to dipnet for salmon. The awe didn't come until years later when I had moved far away from there and discovered that there aren't many places left as unspoiled and unfettered by civilization as that place.

The last summer and 4th of July I spent in Alaska, I spent there. My parents didn't go that year. Even then it was one of my favorite places and I wasn't about to miss it because my parents had better things to do. So I finagled my way into the group from the church that went every year to show the all the young visiting missionaries what real Alaska and dipnetting for salmon was all about.

The bonus of that arrangement was that my best friend Linda's dad and Linda herself went with the missionary group every year. Linda's dad to be the guy who made sure they didn't do anything stupid and get sucked into the Copper River and to show them how to dipnet and Linda herself because she was daddy's little girl and did everything he did.

The other good part was that Harvey Fiskeaux, the preacher from the fellowship meeting I attended, was going to be there.

I don't have many fond memories of the people in the church I grew up in. I never fit in well. I questioned everything and didn't know how to fake acceptance. Most of the people in charge didn't quite know what to do with me but they didn't particularly care for my tendency to stir things up. I remember pursed church lady lips under disapproving eyes looking at me and hurtful comments filtering back to me about me.

That's one of the reasons I was so fond of Harvey. They didn't much approve of him, either. He wasn't nearly dignified enough for them. He liked to play and laugh and exult in life. And he wasn't married. That just wasn't done for preachers. And that guitar of his. Preachers should play hymns and if they must play an intrument it should be a piano or an organ. Not some sticker bedecked guitar on which he brought forth music that sounded suspiciously like Rock 'n Roll.

I related to Harvey. He didn't fit, either. He tried sometimes but he was too happy in who he was for it to stick for long.

Dipnetting for salmon is not an easy thing to do. The current in the Copper River is a strong insistent thing and standing there with a pole that is longer than you are tall fighting the river until a fish wander into your net is wearying. It turns your arms to rubber and when you sleep that night you sleep so soundly and so well that you don't wake easily.

I'm not great in the morning as a general rule. Standing all day with a net dragging on my body made me less great in the morning. The second day we were there I did not want to get up. People came and went from outside my tent, trying to get me to crawl out of the soft warm womb of my sleeping bag. I wasn't having it. I was staying there until I was good and ready.

Harvey took it upon himself to get me out of the tent and into the air. First he sang at me. As beautiful a singing voice as Harvey had the song Good Morning ToYou was still ungodly obnoxious to be serenaded with when I wanted to go back to dreamland. When he opened my tent flap I threw my rubber boot at him.

This did not stop Harvey. He gathered a percussion band and led a march around my tent chanting a morning cadence that went,

Up in the morning with the rising sun!

We are gonna to bang all day until the morning's done!

I ignored him. At this point I was thoroughly and grumpily awake but sheer bloody mindedness kept me in that tent. I wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of giving in. Not until he gave up and went away would I emerge from my tent.

After about 10 minutes of cadence and banging he went away. For a brief moment I thought I had won. Until I heard tip-toeing outside the tent and then the flap began to pull back. I reached for my other rubber wading boot to give him another thwack when the flap whipped back and I was doused in ice cold O'Brien creek water.

Of course, you know, this meant war.

I gave up and got out of the tent mostly because I was wet, cold and in need of the warmth of the campfire. I began plotting my revenge before I finished shivering my way to the fire.

The next morning no one had to wake me. I set my clock for before God awakes and stole away to O'brien creek with a large stock pot. I filled it to the brim and went to Harvey's tent.

Oh so slowly I tied his tent flap zipper pulls together. There would be no way out for Harvey. Then I took my stock pot and began to pour it through the top screen on his tent all over his peaceful sleeping head.

Harvey woke up spluttering and dove for the exit. But Harvey couldn't exit because when you tie zipper pulls together on a tent flap the one pull opens it and the other one follows right along behind it closing it.

Giggling at this point, and out of water, I went back to the creek for a refill. Harvey was yelling by this time for me to let him out. But I had no mercy; he had started this, after all. I poured the other stock pot on him before I untied the zipper pulls and then ran like a rabbit, chortling, for the woods before he could get out and get even.

Set. Match. Arlene.

But it wasn't over yet.

If you have never cleaned a fish, I'll tell you right now that it is a messy process. Especially when you are talking about salmon the size of shetland ponies. There are lots of guts and purple wobbly things. And slime. Lots and lots of slimy parts. It was the slime that Harvey chose to use in his revenge for my revenge.

Harvey got a handful of that slime, walked up behind me, and covered my face in it. I'm not a squeamish person by nature but that was just gross. That slime had been sitting there all day and getting ripe. There were unidentifiable green and purple fish gut parts in it. It smelled and there wasn't a shower for miles.

I called a truce at this point. I was lying. I was just lulling him into a false sense of security. I wasn't sure how I was going to get him back but I was going to. I just needed to find a way to do it so that he was pretty sure it was me but he couldn't prove it.

Inspiration hit as the 4th of July drew nearer. The missionaries, who were mostly 19-21 year old young men, got carried away one night and started shooting bottle rockets at each other. Not the safest thing in the world to do but no one put an eye out.

I asked one of the missionaries for a bottle rocket and stashed it away for later use. I got my opportunity when Harvey went into to town for something. There was only one way into our campsite and it involved a small foot bridge with no railing that crossed the creek at one of it's narrower points.

Crouching in the brush behind a tree I waited. I had my bottle rocket in a coke bottle aimed out at the bridge, lighter at the ready. My heart jumped when I heard Harvey singing up the trail on the other side of the creek. Right as Harvey got to the middle of the footbridge I lit the bottle rocket.

I should have gotten an award for my aim and timing that day. The bottle rocket zoomed along the bridge, cut a whistling path right in between Harvey's legs and then exploded with a bang right behind him.

Harvey jumped 3 ft. in the air and shouted "God help us!" in that Kentucky drawl he had. When he came down one foot went off the bridge and he windmilled for a moment and then went ass over teakettle into that ice cold, spring fed, recipe for hypothermia that was O'Brien creek.

While he was busy overcoming his mammalian dive reflex and getting to the point where he could breathe again after hitting that cold water, I scuttled back to the campfire. When he came squishing back into camp like a cold, wet, god of tiny puddles, I was sitting near the fire looking as innocent as you please.

Harvey looked at me. I knew he knew. He knew I knew he knew.

"Arlene, did you do that?"

"Do what?" I answered with wide eyes.

He just narrowed his eyes at me and went to put on dry clothes.

I never did confess to him that I had been the one. I didn't need to confess to win. Besides, he started it. Maybe I should email him and tell him today. He has 8 kids now is probably too busy to come after me and exact revenge.