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" Walking along the ridge on Mt. Ripinsky high above town the other day, I broke into song like I usually do at the sight of the snowcapped mountains and blue-green inlets that surround my home in Haines, Alaska. I yodeled the old ballad, &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;ll build a sweet little nest somewhere in the West and let the rest of the world go by.&amp;quot; I am about as far as I can get from the New York suburb of my childhood. It&amp;#039;s not just the scenery that&amp;#039;s different. You can smell the Last Frontier in the crisp air and taste it in the food that comes from these waterways, woods and mountains.   While life here is not exactly like Little House on the Prairie, we do live close to the land\u2014hunting and fishing on public land is encouraged\u2014and there are movements afoot to foster even more local eating. Last winter, there were classes at our library for newcomers in gathering, hunting and preserving traditional Alaskan foods. After this summer, pantries and freezers will be full of jams, berries, smoked salmon, canned beach asparagus and, if the weather is good, canned carrots and beets.   I&amp;#039;m not sure if pioneer schoolteacher Solomon Ripinsky ever climbed the mountain named for him while playing his accordion and singing Polish folk songs, but I have read his poetry, and know that he fished for his supper off the town dock and grew his own vegetables in a garden behind his little house.   By August the flanks of Mt. Ripinsky will be covered with blueberries. When the news travels that the bushes are heavy with fruit, my neighbors and I will fan out in the old clear cuts with pails and recycled yogurt containers hanging from strings around our necks and pick until our hands are purple. We&amp;#039;ll gather gallons of berries to freeze for baking and smoothies, and make jam or even cordials for the holidays with the rest. Later in the fall, my husband and I will hunt for a mountain goat and a moose. When we cut and wrap that meat, he&amp;#039;ll say, like he always does, &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re living in the land of plenty.&amp;quot; It still takes work to harvest everything, though.   Right now it&amp;#039;s salmon season, and next weekend my husband and I will take our skiff out at dawn, drop our net in the inlet and wait for fish to strike it on the incoming tide.   At home, we&amp;#039;ll clean the dozen sockeye on a table by our smokehouse and dump the scraps on the beach in our backyard for eagles and gulls. I&amp;#039;ll smell my neighbor&amp;#039;s electric smoker already going. Farther up the river, the cabin-size smokehouses in the Native village of Klukwan have been full all week, smoking hundreds of fish that will feed families there next winter, as they have for centuries.   Our family will picnic on the beach that night, we&amp;#039;ll invite friends and grill as much salmon as we can eat over a driftwood fire, serving it with the season&amp;#039;s first garden greens and a rhubarb crisp. The late northern sun means dinner may not begin until nine, and might last until eleven. Just about all of the meal will be from within a few miles of home.   By then our smokehouse should be puffing sweetly as well, since my friend Linnus and I will have filled it with brined salmon chunks. I like to add a little wine or spices to the brine, but Linnus is a traditionalist, and a third-generation Alaskan, so we stick to her tried-and-true recipe and soak the fresh fish for a few hours in a darkbrown sugar and kosher salt solution.   The smokehouse looks like a tall, thin outhouse, but instead of a crescent moon over the cedar plank door, there is a carved salmon. Linnus built it, while I handed her boards, as I am a little accident-prone and avoid power tools like chop saws. Because Linnus is an artist, the smoker is attractive in a simple, functional way. It has handsplit cedar shingles on its roof and a driftwood door handle. We poured a concrete base to prevent it from burning down, and on top of that set a legless barbecue grill Linnus found at a garage sale. We build small fires in it that let smoke seep up through chicken-wire racks supporting the fish.   Once the smokehouse is full, we&amp;#039;ll sit nearby on upside-down buckets like old-time whittlers, scraping the bark off green alder branches we&amp;#039;ve cut from a nearby hedge before setting them on the coals to smoke. (Bark makes the fish taste bitter.) On cool, still mornings the smoke hangs around us like fog, while we drink hot coffee. On breezy warm afternoons the coals burn hotter and we add larger pieces of alder and sip cold beer. No matter what the weather, we always talk about everything: our families, friends, the state of the world and the condition of our town. Because the smokehouse burner is so small, and it takes about 24 hours to cure the salmon the way we like it, we can&amp;#039;t leave it unattended for long. It is pleasant to have a chore so all-consuming yet restful. There&amp;#039;s not much to do but talk, watch the fire and wait.   When the fish is done, Linnus will set hers in a basket in her wheelbarrow and take it across the road to her own kitchen to can. I&amp;#039;ll do the same, cutting and gingerly packing the smoky-sweet orange pieces into hot sterilized pint and half-pint jars so they look pretty, the way she has taught me. Often my four grown daughters help. They know exactly what to do\u2014carefully placing on the lids and tightening the bands before stacking the jars in pressure cookers and heating them up on the stove. We hover close by, like angels of the pantry, making sure the gauges don&amp;#039;t drop below the minimum pressure for 100 minutes.   After the lids have sealed with a reassuring pop and the jars are cooling on dishtowels on the counter, I am so proud I leave them on display for days. It seems a shame to hide them in the cupboard. I have smoked salmon for more than 20 years, but each time I do, it seems like a miracle. I can&amp;#039;t believe I can make something so beautiful and practical.   Author E.B. White wrote that he felt a kind of reverence for creation in the barn of his Maine farm. He said that when he entered it, he removed his hat. That&amp;#039;s how I feel when I see those jars and when I&amp;#039;m outdoors finding my food. And what I do know deep in my soul is that eating the food you harvest and preserve yourself from a place you love makes you a part of that country in a way nothing else can. It makes me love my home fiercely. Next time I climb Mt. Ripinsky I&amp;#039;ll bring smoked salmon for lunch. Before I open the jar, I&amp;#039;ll say a little grace. I&amp;#039;ll give thanks for the fruits of the forests, hills and waterways below me. They all have sustained families here since before Solomon Ripinsky, before the first Fourth of July\u2014since, as my Tlingit neighbors say, &amp;quot;time immemorial.&amp;quot; I am grateful for my little link in that long chain.   Heather Lende is a contributing editor to Woman&amp;#039;s Day. Her most recent book is Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs. She lives in Haines, Alaska.  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.womansday.com/life/real-women/a5722/personal-story-alaska-the-bountiful-118727/>