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| February 21, 2007 Red Alert by Soren Wuerth, insurgent49 Lessons
Two high school boys sat at the edge of a lake. One had a BB gun and, as we approached, he aimed it at various points on a thin sheet of ice coating a brown lake. They were busy there, on a sunny tongue of land jutting into the lake, below the rampart of a short dam, and just beyond the reach of a mountain’s chilling shadow. While his friend pumped his gun, the other boy sat with a remote control, steered a red, electric boat across the water. It nudged against the ice then mounted it. The boy with gun fired toward the boat. “Hey, you hit it,” the pilot yelled. “No I didn’t. I just shot the ice nowhere near your stupid boat,” said the other boy. As the tip of the BB gun fell to the ground, a waterlogged toy boat angled back to its harbor at their feet. The pilot held it up against the sun and found a hole its palm-sized hull. “Beautiful day,” I called down to the boys. “It was ... until he ruined my boat,” said the boy, pulling the brim of his cap down. I wagged my head slowly, sighed, and turned away. We walked through the forest on a wide, rocky trail and stopped at a clearing. A duck paddled across the lake toward the dam. “Oh, no. Turn around, turn around,” I thought. The duck glided in the glinting sun. Then I heard a boy cry out, “a duck, a duck!” I turned back down the trail at a run. Just as I emerged from the woods, I saw the boy send a shower of red pellets from a plastic jar into the lake. “Hey!” I called. The both looked at me, and then turned to each other. “What are you throwing into the lake? And are you going to eat that duck?” I could see they were talking as I walked toward them. As I stood above them on the dam wall, I pointed to the hundreds of red pellets dotting the shallow water below them. “Did you know this is fish habitat?” They stared into the water. “We weren’t going to shoot any duck.” I warned them about litter fines, though I knew if litter laws exist in Ketchikan, they are flagrantly violated. When I joined the others back up the forest, they were talking with a man who was searching for mushrooms, branches or logs for carving stock. He wore a leather cowboy hat and a gray beard, and spoke in a plain, slow way. He said he used to guide tourists up around these parts. He tried to get into the local tourism market with a small outfit but was shut out by the big players. “They have it rigged for the tourist shops to corner the market,” he said, looking out across the lake. “I just wanted to guide folks, but would have to pay a lot of money, much more than I would’ve made.” I told him about the two boys. “That ain’t good for trout,” he mumbled. When we returned to the dam, walking with Tom, the forester, the boy with the gun was still there. “Who put those red pellets in the water?” Tom growled. The boy looked up. “I did.” “Well, you know those aren’t good for the trout ...” I leaned in toward Tom. “Well, at least he’s telling the truth,” I said. Tom looked down at the boy, then turned slowly to me. “Yes. He is.” The boy climbed back to the dam wall. I noticed as he walked off, his camouflage clothing for the first time. Besides his BB gun, he had a plastic pellet gun and a plastic water gun slung over his shoulder. He stopped at a post and added a metal detector to his burden. We watched the soldier trudge along the dam abutment, leaving the sunlight for the dark mountain shadow, adjusting a strap, boots clumping as if in sand, head down. Tom looked at me through polarized glasses, then up into the sky. “Sure is a beautiful day, though.” Soren Wuerth is perhaps Alaska's best known community activist, and is the winner of the Alaska Press Club's 2006 'Best Columnist' award. He resides in an undisclosed location in rural Alaska and can be reached at soren@insurgent49.com. 'Red Alert' appears on insurgent49.com every Wednesday. |
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Reserved. in-sur-gent (in sur'jent), n. 1. a member of a group which revolts against the policies of its leadership. |
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