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In 1778 while in search of the fabled Northwest Passage,
Captain James Cook sailed up what was then called Kenai Bay and probed the
coast of the inlet that now bears his name. Now, I don’t know how the good
captain felt about the Kenai, or if he even took much notice of it, but more
than two centuries later, after wandering through a maze of spruce and
cottonwood trees, I stumbled into contact with the river myself. What I
discovered induced a Copernican reshuffling among the hierarchy of streams
flowing through my heart.
Since that initial Kenai outing, I’ve come to
understand that anglers pile up firsts like lumberjacks accrue cords of
wood. There’s always another stream to stalk, more piscatory puzzles to
unravel, a last cast to toss. While venturing upon these angling
expeditions, some of the gleam from the old is undeniably dulled in the
glare of the new, though a few isolated waters will always be lit with
distinction—and probably even devotion—in an angler’s mind, much like a few
solitary days never fail to stand apart from the rest of life.
The Kenai River I discovered on that late June day has become such a
place for me. And after many subsequent visits, it’s still the river I
remember, not the fish.
Looking back, I can see that the Kenai and its environs are blessed with
a special allure, as the area commanded attention long before the Gore-Tex
clad conquistadors of today ever drifted a clump of roe. From the Danish
captain Vitus Bering and his Russian backers to the ill-fated Englishman,
the Kenai has always drawn a crowd. By the early 1790s, the area had become
the Russian center for Cook Inlet fish and furs, and Nikolaevsk Redoubt
(Fort St. Nicholas) was built on the Kenai Bluffs to accommodate the growing
trade. The Europeans, however, had arrived a tad to the side of fashionably
late. Before them, and for the bulk of the millennium that just ended,
Dena’ina Athabascans had called the area home, establishing a village called
Skitok (from the Dena’ina Shk’ituk’t: “where we slide down”) at the present
site of Kenai. For the two thousand years that preceded the arrival of the
Dena’ina, Kachemak Riverine culture had flourished along the river.
Many factors combined to propel the Kenai area into a continued
importance, most of them relying upon not the beauty but the bounty of the
peninsula. Soon, as the salmon run increased in commercial and economic
importance, the population swelled, as it did again when Russian mining
engineer Peter Doroshin first reported gold along the river’s banks. Through
the years of the First World War, sailing ships were bringing supplies to
the community each spring and then hauling out the year’s catch after the
salmon season ended. There were three canneries operating by then, the
Northern Packing Company (built in 1888), the Pacific Packing and Navigation
Company (originally built by the Pacific Steam Whaling Company in 1897), and
Libby, McNeil & Libby (built in 1912). Kenai was a fishing community, first
and foremost. Then in July of 1957 oil was discovered at the Swanson River,
initiating another period of growth.
The Kenai remains the center of life on a diverse and magnificently
endowed peninsula today, its appeal as potent as ever before. A commercial
fishing presence still looms large, although in recent years burgeoning
tourism and sport fishing industries have been among the newest discoveries,
their growth and success predicated upon the very things that have made the
Kenai precious for over three thousand years. Unfortunately, the human
history along the river has not always been as harmonious as the natural, as
many of the river’s settlers clashed early and clash still. In 1797 the
Battle of Kenai flared between Dena’ina Athabascans and the Lebedev Company,
who had founded Nikolaevsk Redoubt. The pioneers of the last few decades
currently wage war over the river’s famous fish, each side navigating
rhetorical minefields to lob shells of vitriolic correspondence at one
another, both fearing their prize is being loved to death.
But for me the river will always be special, its mystique, its vitality,
and its raw splendor raising it above such quarrels. In fact, I forgot many
rivers the first time I saw the Kenai, and while I’m aware my discovery,
like Captain Cook’s, had been made many times before, I never thought to
care.
I know now that discovery itself is an internal phenomenon. Armed with
rod and reel and a list of waters Aleksandr Baranov never had, I can amble
through the forests of spruce to explore those rivers I’ve never fished and
see those things I’ve yet to see. The exact details of most will be
forgotten almost as soon as I leave, but some, a very special few, will take
up permanent residence in my heart. It’s in that enchanting, and
everlasting, sense of novelty that great rivers are born. And I’m happy to
know that as the first of this season’s kings begin to sniff at the margins
of their natal streams, anglers from all over the world will drive past a
century-old Russian Orthodox church, wade into a stream that’s been fished a
million times, and find delight in the knowledge that no one has ever been
there before.
—Troy Letherman
Editor
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