Ode to October

The October of the Lower 48 is a gentle shoulder season, a month that spawns romantic words about pace, coolness, crispness, cider and Octoberfest beer. During my time as a California resident after college, I remember friends getting excited about the prospect of driving two hours to Christmas tree farms, paying $45 to rent a saw and taking a tree before heading back to the lodge for cider or hot chocolate. It’s an expressive time in which people spend too much money on Halloween lawn inflatables and though the weather doesn’t require it, puffy jackets, scarves and beanies are reintroduced to the clothing rotation.

I’d fish an October caddis for brown and rainbow trout in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest and expect the weather to be in the high 60s during the day and low 40s at night. If it did rain, it was rarely noteworthy.

The Southeast Alaska October experience is different. October is not hay bales and pumpkins. It’s small craft advisories and wet, numb noses. It’s the angry, stormy breakup with summer. It’s not pleasant.

September is playful. October is belligerent.

October in Southeast Alaska is one of the reasons I went to college in Arizona. October is commercial grade fishing weather for hunting and eye rolls at the latest $600 breathable rain jacket built to last through an afternoon thunderstorm in the Rockies. Legit downpours no doubt, but it’s no October weekend in Southeast Alaska.

At the beginning of the month the alders have leaves, by the end they are gone with no fanfare in between. Though patches of the region have yellow streaks that make a more fall-like setting it doesn’t evoke a Robert Frost poem about apples and it’s obvious nothing gold can stay in this climate.

October marks the end which brings a beginning. Rotting salmon, fuzzy and white in death, are flushed from the rivers. The ships stop docking and the jewelry stores and seasonal workers migrate south. The off season begins when just about everything is in season.

The waterfowl that linger make you take a shotgun on a deer hunt just in case. Of course you leave it in the boat because dividing your attention and attempting to merge tactics often makes you fail at both. And what is a silent stalk through the muskeg without spooking a dozen geese when you only have a rifle?

Early in the month it can seem a little too late to find deer up high, but not quite time to prowl the muskegs. But you could do either and you will hear about people tagging deer at both elevations. October is a month that provides an excuse for the gear you bought on sale last January during that expensive stretch of restlessness. You had rut in mind when you pulled the trigger on the pants, pack, game cameras, boots, jacket, gloves or waterproof gun case and October will be the first real opportunity to validate the purchase.

Maybe it’s the hunting that keeps October from dragging. The list of potential activities is short thanks to the weather so some weekends pass with ease, while others require you to put on your Alaska pants and endure it.

October also brings a depth of intimacy with Nature. It’s not that you’re careless when you anchor in a cove during July, but the consequences of being stingy with scope or not paying attention to the tide are more severe this time of year.
October demands attention and narrows your focus in the woods.

As bad as it can be, before you know it, October is over.