It had looked like a perfect set, at first. A week before, we were driving upriver when I saw some fish finning right next to this very beach. The net was ready to go, so I leaped out and walked the beach with one end of the net while Lee backed away from the beach with the boat, the net tumbling off the bow until he had it completely deployed. The net drifted downstream for half a minute, gradually drifting into an arc downstream, and then I anchored it while Lee motored back to shore, circling the group of fish. When we pulled the net up on the beach, we had caught 89 fish, within two minutes of first seeing them.

This time, however, things didn't go quite so smoothly. . . I backed out into the river quickly, everything looking just right. But the river was a bit lower than it was the week before. Suddenly, the bow of the boat swung upstream. Uh oh. We had hit a snag. I hadn't seen it at all, because the lead line (a rope filled with weight that hangs at the bottom of the net) drags 8 feet below the corks. Acting quickly, I pushed forward on the throttle, running upstream to unhook it. But I wasn't quick enough. I did get it free, but not before the force of the river had pulled the other end out of Lee's grasp.

Now I was drifting downstream with a 120 feet of net trailing off the bow of the boat, headed right for three partially submerged snags. The jet didn't have enough power in reverse to pull the net around them upstream, so I tried to thread the net between one of the trees and the other two. I missed.

We couldn't even figure out how to cut the net free. We yanked, tugged, pulled, pushed with paddles, twisted, and cursed for two hours, before we finally got the worst section untangled. But the leads were still stuck on the tree, down in the dark depths. I tied one end to the boat, while Lee held the other, and I gave it all hundred and ten horses before it ripped out of Lee's grasp. When the boat stopped oscillating, we pulled the two ends back in--and the leads were free. Yes! We tore the remaining tangled mesh free, and spent the next two days mending the net.

Out here, in the middle of the wilderness, we are totally dependent upon the machines of the modern world. Is it possible to enjoy living so close to nature, without the aid of technology? We get so excited by little improvements in our machinery. Last week, we got a new chainsaw blade. Suddenly cutting logs for firewood is fast and easy. Teeth on the body of the chainsaw grip the wood, keep the logs from spinning under the blade. Before, I would use these teeth to lever the blade through, to apply pressure so it would grind through. Now the blade slices cleanly, all by itself, and I use the teeth to help guide. The ability to cut wood so easily makes us giddy.

The airplane that brought our new chainsaw blade also brought our supervisor, Louis, to check up on us. As we pulled away from the gravel bar on the Porcupine where the plane had landed and entered the mouth of the Sheenjek, the motor sputtered and died. We had had problems with the 115-hp jet ever since leaving Circle; it didn't have the power it was supposed to have. But it had never died on us. Louis and I both fiddled and messed with it, but couldn't get it running again, so we putted up the river with our 15-hp spare. Instead of a twenty minute trip, it took us 2 hours. Finally, near the camp, we got the jet going again, but Louis decided to bring his spare 110-hp out, and not leave us with an unreliable, under-powered motor for the 135-mile trip home.

So the next day, a STOL (Short Take-Off and Landing) aircraft called a HelioCourier flew the 300 pound spare out, landing on the gravel bar in front of our camp. With the aid of free-pivoting spoilers on the front of the wings, the HelioCourier can take off and land in under a hundred yards. The pilot helped us wrestle the motors around, disconnecting and removing the 115 hp, and connecting and mounting the 110.

Suddenly, the boat moves like it should. It starts planing almost instantly, and we have to slow down for the bends in the river. It is like driving a car, it moves so fast. Between the new motor and the new chainsaw blade, Lee and I were jubilant, cruising up and down the river, and even a short ways up the Porcupine. After all, the newly rebuilt motor needed to be broken in.

But the HelioCourier didn't fare so well. We heard, a week later, that a rock had hit its propeller, causing a ding that cost $6,000 to repair. And that's not the only mishap we've had with aircraft out here. The first plane, bringing in Lee and our supplies, a large single-engine plane called a Cessna Caravan, flew in the day after I arrived. After unloading everything, the pilot taxied to the end of the gravel bar, started turning around, and dug his wheels into the softer gravel at that end of the bar. This was no light bush plane, either. It took the three of us three hours of digging and pulling, straining to get it free, while the pilot gunned the motor.

Both of these incidents paled to insignificance after the near disaster of our last supply plane. Two bigwigs from the Anchorage headquarters were flying in, visiting all of the field camps in the area. They came in a Cessna 185 on floats, the first floatplane to visit us. After circling camp, the pilot decided to land downstream, just below the end of the gravel bar our camp sits on. He set the plane down, and started turning around, to taxi back up to our gravel bar.

But the current and the wind slowed his rotation, and pushed the plane right towards a logjam where the current splits, part of it forming the main river, the other part flowing into a side slough.

"Be ready to get out quick!" he yelled at his passengers, as his right pontoon slid sideways into the logjam. He gunned the motor and the float pushed over the logs, coming out of the water, nearly capsizing the plane.

By the time we arrived with the skiff, the plane was beached in the side eddy, and the pilot was pumping water out of the float. "I beached it hard, in case we were going to sink," the pilot said. A small stick was planted in the pontoon right below the top seam. You could see where it had hit, left a dent, and then slid to the seam, where it couldn't slide anymore so it punched through. Another expensive repair, but not too critical. The pilot sealed it with silicone while our visitors examined our camp and collected their nerves.

All these machines definitly add work to our lives. But they are essential for our project, and some of them make life much more pleasant out here. We have solar panels charging 12-volt batteries, that run a small refrigerator, power the sonar, and our short-wave radio. We also have a radio-telephone, like a walkie-talkie, with which we are connected to the Fort Yukon telephone exchange. It's very tempermental, but it provides us with regular contact with the outside world.

By connecting a coil of wire to our shortwave radio's antenna and a ground, and looping it around an AM radio, we can tune in most of Fairbanks' stations, and at night, we've listened to radio from Vancouver, Bakersfield, Sacramento, and China. Lee has become the latest Bruce Williams' fan. But the strongest, and most entertaining station is KZTA, Fort Yukon's radio station. KZTA plays National Public Radio shows--when they feel like it. They seem to think it's very important to give their station identification, so they give it about 8 times an hour. A spacy voice created from feedback loops interrupts reports of the NATO bombings in Bosnia to inform us that yes, this is Klondike Public Radio. Favorite songs on the station seem to revolve around getting drunk, or making fun of Indians. (Fort Yukon is an Athabascan Indian town.) "Help me make it through the yard," is followed by "They're my Indian In-Laws," followed by "If Whiskey don't kill me I'll live 'til I die. . ." One morning the DJ had a new album of Hollywood sound effects that he had to play for the audience. So at the end of a song, you hear this awful shreiking and crying, that sounds totally fake. "That was the sound of somebody crying," says the DJ. Okay.

Another afternoon, the DJ was playing Name That Tune with the audience. She played the opening of a song about 6 times, asking for people to call in and guess the artist and name of the song. "Come on guys, somebody call, please!" she said in frustration. We have had many hours of entertainment from Klondike Public Radio.

We've had a few visitors here and there. An airboat with four hunters went upstream for a couple weeks, looking for caribou, but they ran out of fuel before they reached the foothills. One day, a boat came up to the camp with three people, and Roland, the driver, a native from Fort Yukon, said "What's this? This is my allotment!"

We asked him about the most famous Fort Yukon resident--Don Young, Alaska's Congressman For Life. No, nobody has seen him around for years. . . Where would you stay, given the choice between a comfortable mansion in D.C, or a run-down plywood shack in Fort Yukon? One woman informed us that "I think he finally put a roof on his house. . ."

Surrounded by our space-age devices, utterly reliant on the inventions of the 20th century, we find ourselves in true wilderness. Once we may have been comfortable living out here without electricity, without petroleum, but that time is gone. Some 50 miles up the river lives a man who has struggled for most of his life to live off the land with a minimum of technology, running a trapline. A few years ago he gave in and bought a snowmobile, so that he could be with his family for more of the week. This year he bought a television.

Yet the wilderness is still here. Last week we found ourselves staring at a black bear on the shore, while he stared at us in the boat. After a good long look at each other, he decided we weren't that interesting, so he left.

The colors have turned. Only the spruce are still green, everything else has turned yellow and red, and our weir fills with leaves overnight. The fish surface and jump as they pass our camp. The woods behind camp are filled with rabbits that stare at you with fear, and then scamper through the bramble. You see their white ears through the brush, holding still, hoping to be invisible. Ruffed grouse fill the brush. Going back to get one for dinner is as easy as going to the neighborhood grocery store for chicken--you take the shotgun, go for a walk, and come back 10 minutes later with dinner. Ruffed grouse meat is light, fluffy, and delicious, even better tasting than chicken.

But most wonderful of all out here, is the Aurora, the Northern Lights. Several nights I have put my sleeping pad outside and snuggled up in my sleeping bag, watching the lights dance and swirl overhead. They've put on a display almost every clear night we've been here. One time they were a brilliant red, orange, yellow, and purple band across the sky, a night-time rainbow. But usually they are green, ranging from a ribbon of color to dancing sheets. A couple of times I saw them swirling in patterns and shapes, like a moving billboard programmed by aliens.

We are only visitors here. In less than two weeks, we will be back among our own kind, leaving this gravel bar to the bears, the moose, the rabbits, the fish. We are both more than ready to leave, ready for a faster pace of life, our bodies yearning to shake off the sluggishness from lack of aerobic exercise. Yet our visit to the Sheenjek inspires us to question the reality we left behind, in "civilization." We listen to our society on the radio, discussing Windows 95 and the Internet, and then go dig a new latrine. The politics of the country, the International Women's Convention, seem so very far away, as we attack the logjam with our chainsaw, cutting and working for what will keep us warm. What is real?

Our final adventure was the voyage up the Yukon. We got a late start, leaving camp around 2 pm, but figured we had plenty of time to make it to Circle before dusk at 8 pm. We thought it would be a 5 hour trip. We were wrong.

From Fort Yukon to Circle, the Yukon river is wide and braided, filling a broad meandering bed 10 to 20 miles across--the Yukon Flats. Several main channels divide, recombine, wind and twist around islands and gravel bars. The biggest channel is about a third to a half-mile across. With our 110 hp jet, travelling at 30 mph, the river banks were so far away that it seemed like we were walking, going nowhere. Hour after hour we drove, 45 minutes zagging in one direction, cutting the corner, then 45 minutes zigging back. Imagine a freeway, 15 lanes across, with no traffic, going back and forth in a jagged line between two mountain ranges. You just can't go fast enough.

We ran out of light about 7:30. We could see the gravel bars, and the banks, but could no longer read the river, couldn't see the whirlpools and boils in the current. We drove by feel: if the boat rocked gently from side to side, we were still in good current; as soon as it became calm, we knew we had taken a wrong turn and left the main channel. After three wrong turns up side sloughs, it was getting black out. We could see the searchlight from the Circle Airport--we knew we were close.

The jet sputtered and cut out. We had run out of gas. Lee started filling a tank with our last barrel, as I dug out the oil and poured in enough to mix it. But the starter wouldn't engage. As I dug around checking the battery connections, a Kotex box filled with excess food kept falling on me, getting in my way. I tossed it overboard.

No luck getting the starter to work. I tried rope starting it, but the oil wasn't mixed well, so the few pulls I did didn't fire up right away. I had a hard time aligning the rope on the flywheel, and 3 times out of 4, it would fall off as I pulled. We had drifted a couple miles downriver, and we were a long ways from shore. Lee shined his light on the motor to help me align the rope, and the beam hit a shape in the water. The Kotex box, still floating right next to us.

We finally fired up the spare 15-hp motor, headed for shore, and pitched the tent. The next morning we reached Circle in half an hour.

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