Rain Forest Reverie : Getting Away From It All at a Remote Wilderness Cabin

KETCHIKAN, Alaska —  The skies are angry with threatening rain clouds, but the locals say that’s typical for Ketchikan. Although this fishing village on Revillagigedo Island in southeastern Alaska can get 200 inches of rain a year, no one around here seems to complain about the weather. But Jim and I aren’t as concerned about the possibility of showers this morning as we are about the lowness of the clouds. In about an hour, some wild-eyed bush pilot whom we’ve never met is supposed to fly us over the storm brewing east of Ketchikan to a remote cabin we’ve never seen in the midst of a wilderness called Misty Fiords. The problem isn’t that we don’t know what to expect--which we don’t; we’re just concerned the visibility will be too poor for us to land.

We didn’t come to Alaska just to see some wilderness from the deck of a cruise ship or the shade of an RV, which is how most visitors experience the state; and we didn’t want to have to backpack for days to get away from civilization. So when we heard the U.S. Forest Service maintains nearly 200 public-use cabins in remote parts of Alaska’s Tongass and Chugach national forests, I thought we might have found exactly what we were looking for.

It seems the cabins come furnished with wood-burning stoves, some firewood and an ax, and an outhouse. Many are located on lakes or streams with a rowboat included, and all can be rented for up to 14 days at $20 a night, which barely covers the Forest Service’s fly-in maintenance costs. Within a week of sending our reservation to Misty Fiords, an official permit arrived in the mail, complete with hand-drawn map showing our cabin on Manzanita Lake. Also included was a list of what the USFS would provide and what we would need to fly in. It sounded like the real wilderness and became the ultimate destination of our trip.

We gave ourselves a week last June for the drive from Santa Monica to Boundary, Alaska, on the border of the Yukon. After days of driving through the expansive Canadian Northwest, we were totally psyched for a larger-than-life land where fist-sized gold nuggets wash down the creeks in spring; where frozen is the natural state for much of the terrain, and nothing but microscopic ice worms consider glaciers a living habitat.

By the time we had crossed the interior and reached the Pacific Coast at the Gold Rush town of Skagway, we were ready to trade in the road for the state ferry system, which connects the coastal islands and towns. We had reservations on a ship called the Matanuska, and wound up spending two relaxing days floating at an unhurried pace past rugged fiords through the endless islands of the Inland Passage. Now that we’ve finally arrived here in Ketchikan, we only need to locate our bush pilot to reach our wilderness goal.

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A couple of shirtless guys direct us to an unpretentious shed down on the dock. There we meet our bush pilot, Dave, who turns out to be a surprisingly normal looking, no scruffy-bearded crazy. Having just called to check the local weather conditions, Dave isn’t too sure himself if we’re going to be able to land at Manzanita Lake. But he feels confident we’ll at least be able to take off safely, as long as we leave during the next half hour.

Misty Fiords National Monument begins two-thirds of the way across Revillagigedo Island and continues eastward across a wild expanse of glacially carved coastal mountains on the Alaska mainland. And suddenly there it is--Manzanita Lake, a pristine crescent-shaped body of water in the midst of a rain forest with cascades splashing down granite cliffs. I spot the rowboat pulled up on the rocks before I actually make out the cabin itself, nearly hidden by the abundant overgrowth in spite of being set back only 20 yards from the lake. As the plane taxis up to the shore, Dave quickly helps us unload our gear. The skies rumble and the drizzle starts. Moments later we find ourselves with our possessions getting rained on as we watch the retreating Cessna beat the incoming storm, disappearing over the treetops and leaving us alone in the middle of nowhere. Undaunted, we barely get our gear inside before the heavens finally let loose with a vengeance, as if they had only been waiting for us to reach our goal.

The cabin is cold and damp but somehow looks as if it has the potential to be cozy. Through each of the cabin’s windows you can see the incredible vegetation all around: centuries-old Sitka spruce towering overhead, giant ferns, devil’s broom with overgrown leaves, all contributing an utterly primeval feel to the forest.

It never stops raining. Occasionally we get a dry spell of 10 or 15 minutes, which gives us a little time to reduce a slab of tree trunk to a sizable woodpile. But most of the time the weather ranges from heavy drizzle to total downpour: hence the term “rain forest.”

Yet the chance to be so completely away from it all is everything I want. Whether we’re outside in the rain watching ripples on the lake or holing up inside the cabin cooking food, there is a visceral feeling of utter remoteness knowing that we’re the only humans within miles. There is the satisfaction of reverting to a back-to-basics life, if only for a few days. The very act of walking up to the outhouse, with its rock-and-tree-root path overgrown with lilies-of-the-valley and tiny floral sprays, is a walk through a world of fantasy.

I’m not the only one who’s had this response. The guest logbook holds pages of enraptured journalism by former tenants of the cabin. The fishing people mostly note what types of salmon are biting where and when (the most prolific seem to be kokanee in July) but other items include a saga about the nightly visitation of mice (we never saw them) and the arrival of some lusty Sasquatch in search of women (I think we heard them).

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Ordinarily I would have taken most of these entries for tall tales, what Alaskans call bull-chitna . But this land has a reputation for the unpredictable and the capacity for doing weird things to your head. In fact, on our final night in the cabin--and mind you, this is already pretty late in June--overnight the temperature abruptly nose-dived and dropped below freezing, and an unexpected blizzard came up across the lake.

Luckily, we had enough cut wood so the stove kept the cold outside of the cabin. But the strangest thing happened around 4 a.m., when the temperature dropped to its lowest. Ice worms started crawling out of the frozen surface of the lake--I guess unable to handle the extreme cold--and began chirping, of all things. Neither of us would have seen them but they were chirping so loud they woke us up. The only thing missing was the Northern Lights, but aside from that we finally got a dose of the Alaskan wilderness.

GUIDEBOOK

Play Misty for Me

Getting there: Alaska Airlines has connecting flights to Ketchikan; round-trip fares begin at around $500. Flights from Ketchikan to Misty Fiords: Dave Doyon, Misty Fjords Air & Outfitting, 1285 Tongass Ave., Ketchikan, Alaska 99901; tel. (907) 225-5155; two passengers about $400.

For state ferry reservations: Alaska Marine Highway System, P.O. Box 25535, Juneau, Alaska 99802-5535; tel. (800) 642-0066 or (907) 465-3941, fax (907) 277-4829. Skagway to Ketchikan: one-way ride including on-board accommodations, $176 per person, double occupancy; plus $254 for transport of sedan.

Cabins: Misty Fiords National Monument, 3031 Tongass Highway, Ketchikan, Alaska 99901; tel. (907) 225-2148.