Alaska moose float simple salmon.

It'd started in a DeHavilland Beaver eight years, my senior, ascending over Cook's Inlet, entering the stunning Alaska Range, faces glued to windows as we watched rugged, glacier-tortured topography slide by. Only an hour by floatplane from Alaska's biggest city, it's a marvel of spookily broken country. It's understood that a forced landing, as many have done, witnessed by the occasional glints of shattered aluminum, wouldn't be pretty. Here the face of creation takes in everything with a level stare; the rocky spires and icy precipices, aquamarine glaciers and thousands of jeweled rivulets pass like a lazy motion picture. A couple hours later I'd grown stiff in my confined seating, shifting like an antsy child, tempted to ask, "Are we there yet?" but for the fact no one would hear over the roaring radial engine.

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We broke out of mountains, like passing through the gates to an ancient city-state, nothing but unbroken, mirror-pocked, emerald green as far as the eye could see. But looking more closely I understood I was all wrong. It's a twisted, serrated landscape interspersed with too many rivers and creeks to contemplate, each punctuated by poplar and alder just beginning to turn the color of sunflower, large swatches of stunted fir interrupted by open patches of delicately hued moss and lichens, mountainsides and snaking ridges of stark shale and finally the welcoming blank of Whitefish Lake, our destination.

We slid onto the choppy lake and taxied to shore and without undue flourish disgorged gear willy-nilly, our pilot anxious to be on his way. Then we were conspicuously alone, the silence accumulating around us like a world filling with water. We took stock, breathed the resinous air before attacking the work necessary to be underway; inflating the sizable raft that would represent our world entire in coming days, organizing and securing gear. Steven Tisdale and I've been sharing bowhunting adventures some 20-plus years. We complete any task small or large with the synchronicity of migrating waterfowl. We're to conquer 200 miles of wild river in the coming 12 days--a river which annually chews up the unprepared. If they're lucky it spits them back out.

Some serious miles lay between us and moose ground, a full day's investment of time and muscle. So we took our chances, taking the oars in shifts. That's not entirely correct. At first we dragged that pig of a raft as much as rowed, bouncing down the constricted channel like drunkards in a bumper car, laughing like hyenas, diving for dislodged gear, turning my recurve bow inside out twice that first day. As other creeks and rivers converged we gained momentum, exiting the raft only to address logjams, which were frequent and potentially, deadly. On quiet stretches we talked, really talked, about the deeper issues often avoided by even the closest friends, about family and life and the real fears and gripes regarding each.

We soon observed salmon, rafts and strings of shifting, red-hued Cohos. It didn't take long to joint my four-piece 8-weight, screw the reel home, knot on an ugly amalgamation of gaudy marabou, tinsel and lead. A spinning, hurried raft creates a poor fly-fishing platform and it was many casts before the line came up tight. The salmon was summarily brought alongside and scooped into the puddled raft floor. Then the river split into many intricate channels and the bumper-car routine started anew and it was decided the expensive rod should be returned to its tube if I cared to fish later in the trip.

And so it went; the weather better than any man deserved considering the place we occupied, though we knew it couldn't last. With the sun roosting deep in the poplars and firs we sought a camping site offering a swatch of clear, reasonably flat ground large enough to accommodate a six-man geodesic tent. There were many aborted landings, before finding, in the nick of time, a mossy cavity beneath rearing firs. We unloaded the raft in the alpenglow of a dying day. With full dark we had shelter, light and a snapping fire. It was time to deal with life's other necessities; food and an adult beverage to smooth the kinks and wrinkles of the day.

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We had a 10-pound salmon to deal with, one turning the color of rose petals that no self-respecting Alaskan could've dealt with seriously. But we were not in a position to quibble. We were ravenous. While Steven started chopped bacon rendering in a large skillet, a foil packet of dehydrated rice-and-sauce concoction simmering beside it, I filleted our prize down on the riverbank, removing the skin and cutting the clean, pink meat into bite-sized chunks. We relegated the crispy bacon to the rice pot and reserved the smoking-hot fat, dumping the salmon chunks in and cooking it hot and fast, keeping it moving with a wooden spatula, watching the edges blacken, the natural sugars caramelizing to create a deep-brown crust. When I guessed the fast heat had just touched the salmon pieces' interior, maybe three minutes, I squirted a generous half cup of lemon juice straight into the pan, creating a literal explosion of flame (something best conducted out-doors, or only with great care at home), shaking the pan to shift the pieces and coat them evenly. I sprinkled some salt and pepper onto the glazed fish and removed from heat. Simple.

Steven dolloped some Famous Grouse into icy stream water (as precaution against harmful microbes of course) while I dumped the steaming contents of the pans atop plastic plates. Steven hoisted a tin cup, "Well, here we go again," he said smiling, something roughly translating into "This is another fine mess you've gotten me into." We each took a gulp and felt the magic of Scotland tickling our spines.

Days and hundreds of miles from sea, it might've proved the best salmon I'd ever eaten. We seemed somehow surprised by that, releasing those involuntary grunts that result from unimagined hunger. "Nothing wrong with this," Steven offered, washing it down with another slug of single malt, shivering and adding, "Nothing at all."

Tomorrow we'd pursue moose with bows and arrows. We were tired and sore and vaguely stunned, staring into that popping, dancing fire, contemplating fate and our futures, but knowing that for the time, life just wouldn't get any better than that.