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" REAL ADVENTURES FOR REGULAR GUYS Canadians, who all hate us but are too polite to say so, have mixed feelings about Haines, Alaska. On the one hand, thousands of them, mostly the ones who live in the nearby Yukon Territory, hajj to Haines several times a year to fish, hike, kayak, and bike. On the other hand, these same Canadians resent Haines. They resent Haines because Haines, with its necklace of glaciers, its quirk-rich residents, and its abundance of bears, would be the perfect Canadian town except for the fact that a town so perfect doesn&amp;#039;t actually exist in Canada. Haines out-Canadas Canada, and the secret desire of most Canadians I&amp;#039;ve spoken with on the subject is for their country to somehow (by stealth or subterfuge, no doubt) annex Haines.  No chance: The birds mark this place as eternally ours. Haines boasts the world&amp;#039;s highest concentration of bald eagles,1 and if you look skyward almost anywhere around here, you&amp;#039;ll find you&amp;#039;ve suddenly stepped inside an ad for the U. S. Postal Service.  The eagles come to Haines for the same reason the bears do, which is, as it happens, the same reason most humans do: to fish. Due to complicated geographical factors,2 salmon spawn here later than anywhere else in Alaska. When most waterways in the state have become frigid ribbons of ice, egg-bloated cohos are still making their way to Haines. Head to the nearby rivers3 and you&amp;#039;re likely to see bears, birds, and us working the same stretch of water, snatching at prey with black claws, gray talons, and silver hooks.  On the first morning of a recent trip to Haines, I sat at the breakfast table of a small inn4 and ate pancakes sweetened with local birch-sap syrup5 and stuffed with pears plucked not much earlier from local trees.6 Due to the same complicated geographical factors,7 Haines stays warm and green after much of Alaska has grown cold and hard. It is a glacier-rimmed Eden: Snow was falling not 50 miles to the west, but the pears were soft and moist.  While I ate, I was half reading the local paper and half listening to Dave, the innkeeper, who harbors the strange belief that he has more than once caused glaciers to calve by looking at them too hard. Suddenly a wavy-haired man in overalls burst through the back door of the inn uninvited, shot a look at me, my girlfriend, and Dave, and announced that we were all needed at his home, pronto, in order to help him raise the frame for a new porch he was adding to the side of his house. &amp;quot;Ten minutes!&amp;quot; he said, then pivoted and marched back out. &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s the mayor,&amp;quot; Dave explained, and poured us some more coffee. 1. At last count, Haines&amp;#039;s human population was 2,207, about 800 fewer than its bald-eagle population in winter. This is partly because it&amp;#039;s a lot easier to get to Haines if you have wings. There&amp;#039;s one road in, and it&amp;#039;s a snowy mess at times. Other than that, you arrive by ferry from Juneau or Skagway, by small plane, or not at all. 2. I don&amp;#039;t think you&amp;#039;d really be interested. 3. Buy yourself a license and whatever gear you need at Alaska Sports Shop on Main Street (907-766-2441). You can fish year-round in Haines, but the best time is right before the September-to-December spawning season. 4. The Chilkat Eagle B&amp;amp;amp;B Inn, a homey 101-year-old clapboard house (907-766-2763; $70 per night). 5. Get some without going at birchboy.com ($8 for 8 ounces). 6. Haines has plenty to eat besides fruit. A local favorite is the deeply fried halibut-and-chips platter at the Bamboo Room (907-766-2800), a 53-year-old family restaurant that 73 years ago was a whorehouse. 7.Okay, okay. Glaciers atop nearby mountains grate countless tons of sand and gravel into the valley, creating a huge spray of loose rock known as an alluvial fan. In springtime, melting water collects beneath this, forming a relatively warm underground reservoir that helps hold off winter. Told you you wouldn&amp;#039;t be interested. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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