This story is featured in the August 2012 issue of Canoe & Kayak Magazine which can be purchased here.
Words: Anonymous

The Alsek Poach
On the last morning, I packed at dawn in eerie storm-light to the unexpected sound of distant thunder. Later I realized I was hearing the grinding of the glaciers that surround Alsek Lake. At 3 a.m., I floated silently past the
ranger's cabin. By 5, a seal was showing me the channel through fog-shrouded tidal flats. At 7, I braced into the Pacific shore break, dragged my kayak up the beach, and pitched camp.
I was feeling good. I had survived the Alsek, my bush plane was due in 24 hours, and the ranger station was far behind me. A permit, you see, was one piece of equipment I had failed to procure. They had all been claimed, mostly by parties of well-heeled rafters who portaged Turnback with helicopters. If there was anything more antithetical to that raw wilderness than bureaucracy, I thought, it was helicopters. I paddled with a clear conscience.
I was quietly watching the surf when people, the first I'd seen in 10 days, came walking down the beach. Naturally, we chatted. They failed to mention that their afternoon plans included lunch with the ranger. When I saw a park service hat approaching through the dunes hours later, my heart sank. We made small talk. He read me. I read him. After an agonizing 30 minutes, he finally dropped the bomb: "One more thing, I need to check your permit." Things went south from there.

Alsek Lake
In those days I often worked as a boatman for the Park Service. When word reached my home river, a local ranger began bragging that I would "never work here again." The thing is, he didn't know what I looked like, and I rowed one of his Park Service boats away from the ramp under contract with the federal government the next spring. I thought of my salary for that trip coming from the same faceless bureaucracy that took it on the previous one. In sum, money changed hands, people were busied, and the rivers flowed, indifferently.