While visiting Copper Center, Alaska, we took a short drive to see the beloved fishwheel that served us during our ninteen years of residency. I walked down the familiar, worn wooden ramp and checked the box where two fresh red salmon were flopping, straining to escape. I miss my daily walk down the dusty lane through the forest of paper birch to the fishwheel. Things haven’t changed much, the river was full and raging from the summer heat, a few more houses are sprinkled in the woods, and my onetime neighbors yard sports a lush vegetable garden nearly as large as the one I’m growing in Palmer. Life in the Copper River Basin during summer is good, but I don’t miss the severe, difficult winters anymore.
Gail Niebrugge, Alaskan artist
