The bluffs of Cape Grieg rose like a rogue wave as we neared Ugashik. Closer, my heart raced looking up at the three-hundred-foot drop from the rolling green tundra, tracing the tan cliffs of silt and ash to the rocky beach near the north line of the district.
The sight reminded me of the White Cliffs of Dover that I’d seen in World War II movies. Always a welcome sight to the returning allied pilots. I’ve come to feel a little like that about Cape Grieg, often returning to Ugashik at the end of hard-fought seasons spent mostly in other rivers.
Away from the bluffs, we gawked at Mt. Chiginagak, a 7,000-foot glacier-clad volcano. On calm days, vapor trailed from a crevasse near the summit. Where Tit Mountain had made me ache for a caring woman, Chiginagak made me ache for the edge of death in the mountains, where I would have no bosses or homework or deadlines other than gravity, cold, thirst, and hunger.
But the season wasn’t over.
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