I grew up in Northern California. My fondest memories of my dad were getting to go fishing with him. Unfortunately those memories stopped when he died of a rare heart condition when I was 5 years old.
All through my childhood I fished relentlessly. I would skip school to fish for steelhead, ride my bike distances that you wouldn't believe to fish for salmon, head off fishing while on vacation with my family, etc. Looking back I can see that it wasn't really about fishing: I was trying to find some way to connect with father, trying to give myself something that I lost when he passed. And I continued to search well into my teenage years.
I never had the chance to hunt with my dad, but he left me his hunting rifle, his shotgun and a .22. Actually I somehow was able to appropriate them. My mom is your typical Norther California gun fearing hand-wringer. How she happened to allow me, at 7 or 8 years old, to keep my dad's rifle and shotgun in my bedroom I will never know. I do know that over the years she mentioned that I, "should sell those things and buy something" that I might have use for..... I never took the bait, I never even considered it. I knew that they were worth far more than any amount of money that they could have been traded for.
When I was growing up, no one in my family hunted anymore. Those who had hunted, had allowed life to get in the way and had moved on to different things. So, I was left to teach myself. Initially this consisted of heading out with friends to "hunt" on property of unknown ownership, during seasons that, if open, were only open by sheer luck.
Later I would take a hunters safety course and begin to hunt for real. By the time I was a young adult, I was even able to get my grandfather and uncle to get back into hunting a bit. I even talked them into traveling to the Rocky Mountains to hunt. What an eyeopener that was!
Eventually hunting became so engrained in my soul that it blocked out everything else. That changed when my daughter was born, but hunting has held a strong second place and I wouldn't change a thing. Shortly after she was born I became a single father and I realized that, as a teacher, we would never be better than "working poor" in California. So, when she was three I secured a job teaching in Wyoming and we loaded the truck and heading into the unknown.
During the five years that we lived in Wyoming she was by my side during lots of rabbit hunts, She learned to follow closely behind as I learned to track mule deer and elk. She was at my side for my first antelope, elk and many other firsts. She was visiting a friend when I shot my first mule deer buck. As happy as I was, I felt that something was missing in her absence. Since that time we have shared almost every hunting adventure.
Eventually a friend invited us up to Alaska to fish for king salmon. I made the mistake of accepting and we were both completely ruined by the wilderness we found in Alaska. We would return a year later to spend a month fishing and camping together, Just the two of us.
We visited remote roadless villages by boat, were awakened by bears walking past out tent, cooked and ate fish that were still flopping when we threw them on the grill. Looking back it's no wonder that we were spoiled by those first two trips. As we headed back to Wyoming after that second trip my daughter told me, "I think that I would like to live in a village in Alaska".
Not that I needed any encouragement, but within a year I was accepting a teaching position in the Brooks Range and selling our house in Wyoming.
We are entering our fourth year up here. Alaska has been full of firsts that I could have never imagined: first grayling, first dolly varden, first caribou, sitka blacktail, ice fishing, grizzly charges, king crab harvesting, a bit of frost bite, hunting dall sheep, commuting to school on a snowmobile, all species of salmon and trout, arctic foxes, and many other firsts. But the most important first: my daughter taking her first big game animal: a caribou bull.
Now I sit at 46, I've hunted 6 states, and several countries. I have traveled to a bunch more, and seen things that exceeds what the entire rest of my family has seen put together. Hell, my daughter is 12 and she has see and experienced far more than any of our relatives.
My retirement portfolio would make most responsible people either laugh or cry, but I have made memories that I wouldn't exchange for any amount of money.