Mens Journal

NOTEBOOK TRAVEL&ADVENTURE

Alaska’s Wildest

We i rd est Fro nt ie r

Near the far-western end of the Aleutian Islands amid the crumbling remains

of a former military base is America’s most far-out town.byABE STREEP

On Adak an island

halfway between

Alaska and Russia

there’s a thin line

between domesticated

and decaying.

BEN HUFF

MEN’S JOURNAL 26 SEPTEMBER 2016

N

EARANOVALBAYJUSTa few miles

from an abandoned McDonald’s

salmonarecrossingaroad.Twenty

or 30 humped-out pinks f lop into the dirt and

then onto the tundra for no apparent reason.

Maybe they made a wrong turn missing their

spawning stream. Or maybe they’re the betas

squeezed out of the water by stronger f ish.

Thebayinfrontofusroilswithfins.You

could walk across them. They’re all pink

salmon which many Alaskans see f it only for

dogs but I have a perfectly good smoker at

home. After four or f ive casts into the water

Ibreakmyrodtryingtoreachdownfora

fat ocean-fresh f ish. My girlfriend f ishing

nearby chivalrously offers hers. After four or

f ive more casts t hat rod too is in shards. Our

friendandguideElainemeanwhile silently

hauls in f ish. Elaine used to guide bear-hunt-

ingtripsontheAlaskanmainland.Shedidn’t

like the work. “It was more like babysitting”

she says. A former shareholder in the Aleut

Corporation a for-prof it enterprise owned

by native Alaskans she now holds multiple

jobs: store owner city council member

salmon harvester.

After pulling in a dozen pinks Elaine

walks to the trunk of her Clinton administra-

tion–era Chevrolet pulls out a cooler cutting

board and knife and surgically fillets them

holding the f ish in her left hand and slicing

with her right. A harbor seal approaches the

anadromous bacchanal. “Oh oh oh!” yells

Elaine who has subsistence-hunting rights.

“I should have brought my gun!”

THERE’S REMOTE.There’s wild. And then

there’s Adak. An unbelievable place in the lit-

eral sense of the word. The name stems from

the Aleut forfather. The Aleutian Islands cre-

ated thousands of years ago by volcanoes that

stillbelchreachfromAlaskatowardRussia

in a scimitar-like curve separating the Bering

Sea from the North Pacific. Adak Island sits

near the end of the line. Its namesake town

setinanaturalharboristhemostwesterly

municipality in the United States. Russia is

just 750 miles away a proximity that explains

the military presence. The Navy housed a sta-

tionhereduringWorldWarIIandlaterit

became a Cold War surveillance base. The

Navy began leaving in the mid-Nineties and

the Aleut Corporation eventually took over

much of town offering houses to its members

for next to nothing. Not many took the offer.

Elaine did and voilà there it was: an unten-

anted land of caribou rugged peaks tundra

abandoned spy buildings and unexploded

military ordnance. A place to tread lightly.

We a r r ive on a w h i m. My g i rl f r iend i s

Alaskan and has visited Adak before. Her

pitch went something like this: Caribou are

everywherethefishingisgreatthere’san