Read-aloud uses AI-generated Orakel narrator voices when available. Voice names are Orakel styles, not provider names.
Book: Stories by Mike Doyle Subtitle: An Orakel Family Archive Edition Author: Mike Doyle Story: When I Was Young and in Alaska Mode: Author-owned family archive companion. Boundary: Preserve the story's original wording and family-memory context. Do not invent biographical facts. When asked for context beyond the approved story text, say what is known from the archive and what would need family confirmation. Spoiler rule: Stay inside this story unless the reader explicitly asks about the full collection.
Approved story text: Back when I was about 18 I spent a season in Alaska working in the salmon cannery. After the canning season was over I stayed and that is when this story takes place. My friend, Ed Jackson, and I had talked about going to Idaho to work in the potato harvest there. Ed and I met while we were both working in the peach harvest in central California. One day Ed said, "Mike, let's go to Idaho and pick up potatoes.
We can make a fair amount of money and have a good time doing it, too." Well that sounded fine to me and I said, "Let's go." So we went. We got to Idaho after the harvest had started, but we found jobs easy enough. Picking up potatoes may be the hardest work there is, it is at least as hard as any other work I know. The pay isn't real good either. Ed and I were having lunch one day when this older fellow came over and began talking to us.
This old guy was probably 50 years old, but we thought he was much, much older. That was because I was 18 and Ed was 19 1/2. Mickey was this old fellow's name. Mickey began to tell us about the years he had spent in Alaska, working in the salmon cannery and fur trapping in the mountains in the wintertime. Mickey began to talk about making 10 times as much money as we were making picking up potatoes. Well, we perked up our ears and listened hard then.
We asked if he knew anyone we could get a job with in a salmon cannery. He gave us the name of a man to talk to and we quit our potato picking job and headed to Alaska. Ed and I got to Alaska just at the beginning of the canning season and both got jobs with the man Mickey had told us about. Ed didn't like his job, which was easier than mine, so he quit and said he was going back to California. The pay was real good and I decided to stay with it. Besides I really liked Alaska.
It is a beautiful country and has many animals of several different kinds. The hunting and fishing are about the best in the world. It was going well for me in Alaska. I had made a few friends and quite a bit of money. One of my new friends was an old trapper who was going to retire to Florida, where the sun "always shines." In winter it is bitterly cold in the fur trapping regions of Alaska and this old-timer said he had had enough.
The old trapper told me where his cabin was and he said that I could use it if I wanted to try trapping for a season or so. This sounded fine to me and I asked where was this cabin and where were some traps. He said he had the traps and for a few dollars I could buy them. I just gave him the money ($15.00) and said, "Done and done!" I arrived at the cabin just before the first snow and fixed up the cabin a little. It wasn't too bad, just needed cleaning more than anything else.
The traps were there and in real good shape just as the old trapper had told me they were. I found his trap line, which is the area on a creek where traps are set out. I began to trap animals for their fur. It's a little cruel to kill animals for their furs I guess, but they make good warm coats and boots and such. Each day or so I would walk my traps and skin any animals I found in the traps. As winter wore on I began to get low on food.
I killed a moose and butchered it and hung it from a tree so it would freeze and the wolves couldn't get my meat. It was brutally cold later that winter and I would have to use an axe to cut off moose steaks so I could fry them for my supper each day. There were fewer and fewer animals in my traps and there were fewer animals for the wolves to eat. One day I noticed that there were several animals that had been eaten from my traps.
It was the wolves because I could find their tracks in the snow around the robbed trap. On this particular evening I was very tired and it was super cold. It was getting just dusky dark and I first heard a sound to chill the blood in my veins. The howl of hungry wolves. They were trailing me! I could hear them following along the creek where I had just been walking. I began to walk very fast, almost running. I threw my furs down to go faster. I was trotting now and it was hard to see being so close to dark.
It was beginning to snow and the wind was blowing cold. I could hear the howl of the hungry wolves getting closer and closer. I was really afraid I was going to be eaten by wolves on a cold, lonely trail in the mountains of Alaska. I wish I had seen that big bear trap before I stepped in it. Boy, that did hurt. I just about started to cry, but it hurt too badly. Besides the wolves were real close by this time.
There I was, in a bear trap, the wind was blowing, it was snowing, it was just about dark and there were starving wolves on my trail. I was afraid I was going to die. Then I got angry and decided that I was NOT going to be a meal for mangy old wolves. The bear trap was rusty and I couldn't open it off of my leg. There was only one thing to do and I did it. Oh, it was a hard thing I had to do! I was going to have to leave my foot in the trap. So I took my hunting knife and cut my foot off.
It hurt so badly that I cried and my tears froze on my cheeks and added to my misery. I crawled on hands and knees to the cabin just ahead of those blasted wolves. The wolves had stopped to eat my foot and this is what gave me the time to make it to the cabin. I spent the rest of the winter carving a wooden foot for myself and eating moose steaks. The wooden foot turned out so well that even now, I can't tell which of my feet is real and which is made of wood. You don't often find a wooden foot carved that well.
I don't much like moose steaks though. I never did learn to cook them real good I guess. However, if you ever need someone to carve you a wooden foot, I'm your man. You can't tell which of my feet is wooden, either. It was some time, the time I spent trapping in Alaska.