The Park was now 20 million acres in size, located between the Quilak Mountains and the Glenn Highway on the north, the Canadian border on the east, Prince William Sound in the south, and, variously, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, the pipeline haul road, and the Alaska Railroad on the west. It was drained by the Kanuyaq River, which twisted and turned over 225 miles in its search for the sea, coming to it in an immense delta east of Alaganik Bay, which saw the return each year of five species of Alaskan salmon in quantities capable of supplying tables in gourmet restaurants as far away as New York City, as well as the drying racks and smokehouses as far upriver as the creek behind Kate’s cabin.

The river was navigable by boat in summer and by snow machine in winter. The coast was almost impenetrable everywhere else, defended by a lush coastal rain forest made of Sitka spruce, hemlock, alder, birch, willow, and far too much devil’s club. Behind it, the land rose into a broad valley, then a plateau, foothills, and lastly the Quilaks, mountains forming an arc of the Alaska Range. There was a grizzly bear (“Of the Kingdom Animalia” went Dina’s voice, starchy and schoolmarmy, “Ursus arctos horribilis, once known to roam much of the continent of North America, now restricted to the northern Rockies, western Canada, and, of course, Alaska”) for every ten square miles, and following a good salmon year, even more. There were moose, white-tailed deer, mountain goats, Dall sheep, wolves, coyotes, wolverines, lynx, fox both arctic and red, beaver, marmot, otters, both land and sea, mink, marten, muskrat, and snowshoe hare. There were birds from the mighty bald eagle to the tiny golden-crowned sparrow, and every winged and web-footed thing in between.

The hand of man lay lightly here. There were a few good-sized towns, Cordova on the coast, Ahtna in the interior, both with about three thousand people, and maybe thirty villages ranging in population from 4 to 403.