My friend John Katzeek can be a little demanding. He called on his cell phone from Seven Mile the other morning and said, "Where's my coffee?" He was fishing for eulachon with his cousin Pete, he said. "We're freezing." (The highway to Canada is full of mile-post names. "Seven Mile" also identifies a bend in the Chilkat River adjacent to the road and a trailhead for Mt. Ripinsky.)

The eulachon (pronounced hooligan), a greasy smelt-like fish sometimes called candlefish because apparently you can light them and they'll burn, are prized by local Tlingits for their oil. Usually the weather is warmer and sunnier when they first arrive, but this year they were early. You can tell when they get here by the birds. Thousands, maybe millions of gulls and terns appear overnight, so many that they look like confetti or even a spring blizzard out over the Chilkat and Chilkoot River flats. The roaring and splashing sea lions are right behind them, and often there are killer whales. Spring arrives not with a green haze on the hills, but rather with the sounds of a nature's band playing its own version of something more like a Purple Haze. It is noisy. I saw the first brown bear of the season rooting around in the tideline the other day, too.

When I arrived at Seven Mile I joined John and Pete. Instead of a dip net, they were using a throw net that works sort of like a little purse seine. You toss the weighted circle out, and pull on the line and it closes like a purse and you drag it in, hopefully full of fish. John tossed and pulled and hauled up a laundry basket full of fish. Then he said we had to wait until the fish forgot the net was there before we threw it again. These eulachon are very sensitive. The old-timers say you shouldn't even let a dog splash on the beach because it will scare them away.

We dumped the full tub into the back of Pete's tarp-lined pick-up. It was already about three-quarters full. He and John would run it up to Klukwan and bury the fish in a pit to season, rot really, and then when they were ripe, simmer them in a pot to render the oil, which is jarred and served on fish, berries, seal meat, and sometimes eaten with a spoon. It is very strong. I find it best taken frozen and swallowed quickly.

John said I needed to head up to Klukwan for the opening of the hospitality house. The new kitchen and bathroom facility is part of the ambitious Jilkaat Kwaan Cultural Heritage Center on the edge of the tiny  village (pop. 140) about 20 miles from Haines on the Chilkat River.