Floating the Kenai

Honestly, what’s left to say about the Kenai River?

A commenter at a recent Kenai Planning and Zoning meeting called it “this body of water we virtually worship.” She was speaking about an unpopular proposal for excavation in a riverside marsh, and referred sardonically to the legal force field projected around the river by setbacks, permitting and multiple management agencies. But the words she chose evoke the entire web of cultural, economic and, yes, spiritual interest that stretches from the Kenai into surprising corners of local life. The river’s name has power. A proposal for similar excavation beside a similar but different river might not have packed a Kenai Planning and Zoning commission meeting with irate opponents, nor inspired salmon-emblazoned signs of protest beside the highway. Sure, the property values at stake also played a role, and perhaps in some cases the river was being rhetorically “used” — as another speaker at that meeting said — for a desired outcome, but so it is with things people worship.

All this has been written about before. So has the gleaming opaque blue that the Kenai takes on in summer. So has the land-shaping force of its erosion, its cold swiftness, its salmon — a fish that encapsulates nature’s absurd generosity as perfectly as it encapsulates nutrients and calories — and its almost invisible fragility. What else is there to say about the Kenai, except that it gave me a great kayak trip last Sunday?

I’m sure you remember how perfect the weather was: the clouds were mere white feathers in the big benevolent blue overhead, and I came off the river with a sunburnt nose and a pronounced T-shirt tan. One day I may write a column about floating the Kenai under drizzling overcast, but last weekend’s weather was from a postcard.

Paddling downriver from Morgan’s Landing in Sterling to Cunningham Park in Kenai gave us a chance to experience the Kenai’s variety. In the first stage of the trip we learned to look ahead for the angry ridges of foam that marked submerged boulders, and to distinguish them from the normal frothing and occasional whitecaps on the river’s surface. The kayaks rode the mild chop just fine, though waves sometimes splashed over their bows and we certainly got wet. Nobody hit a boulder. Soon we’d navigated past Moose Meadows and Soldotna Creek Park, the current moving us faster than I’d expected.

After Eagle Rock, the river gradually broadened and began to twist. The tide canceled out the current so the paddling became more like crossing a still lake than navigating a river. A fish leapt in front of my kayak. One of our group, moving slowly along the muddy bank, spotted bear tracks leading from the water into the tall grass, dense and impenetrably green, that now surrounded the river. Eventually we came to Cunningham.

Rivers are almost a universal metaphor for time, so it’s tempting to contemplate the Kenai’s change from a fast current laced with boulders and shallow rapids to a broad, lazy estuary lined with meadows, and spin some lyrical analogy about the vigor of youth giving way to restful age as we paddle along the course of life. But this bores me even as I sketch it out, and as I said at the top, enough has already been written. So here’s wishing you a chance to get out soon on the entirely nonmetaphorical, very real and very wet Kenai River.

More in News

Mount Redoubt can be seen across Cook Inlet from North Kenai Beach on Thursday, July 2, 2022. (Photo by Erin Thompson/Peninsula Clarion)
Alaska not included in feds’ proposed 5-year oil and gas program

The plan includes a historically low number of proposed sales

A copy of "People, Paths, and Places: The Frontier History of Moose Pass, Alaska" stands in sunlight in Soldotna, Alaska, on Friday, Sept. 29, 2023. (Jake Dye/Peninsula Clarion)
Moose Pass to receive award for community historical effort

“People, Paths, and Places: The Frontier History of Moose Pass, Alaska” was a collaboration among community members

Kenai Peninsula Borough School District Board Member Debbie Cary speaks during a meeting of the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly on Tuesday, April 5, 2022, in Soldotna, Alaska. Cary also served on the borough’s reapportionment board. (Ashlyn O’Hara/Peninsula Clarion)
School board president receives award for meritorious service

Debbie Cary, of Ninilchik, is the Alaska Superintendent Association’s 2024 recipient of the Don MacKinnon Excellence in Education Award

Dr. Tara Riemer is seen in this provided photo. (Photo courtesy Alaska SeaLife Center)
SeaLife Center president resigns

Riemer worked with the center for 20 years

Voters fill out their ballots at the Challenger Learning Center in Kenai, Alaska, on Election Day, Nov. 8, 2022. (Jake Dye/Peninsula Clarion)
Election 2023: When, where to vote Tuesday

City council, Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly, the local school board races are all on the ballot

Dianne MacRae, Debbie Cary, Beverley Romanin and Kelley Cizek participate in a Kenai Peninsula Borough School District Board of Education candidate forum at Soldotna Public Library in Soldotna, Alaska, on Thursday, Sept. 28, 2023. (Jake Dye/Peninsula Clarion)
School board candidates wrap up forum series

The forum was the eighth in a series hosted by the Clarion and KDLL ahead of the 2023 elections

Signs direct visitors at the City of Seward’s city hall annex on Sunday, Nov. 28, 2021, in Seward, Alaska. (Ashlyn O’Hara/Peninsula Clarion)
Electric sale referendums to be reconsidered next month

The two referendums aim to remove from the city’s Oct. 3 ballot two propositions related to the sale of the city’s electric utility

Sockeye salmon caught in a set gillnet are dragged up onto the beach at a test site for selective harvest setnet gear in Kenai, Alaska, on Tuesday, July 25, 2023. (Jake Dye/Peninsula Clarion)
Board of Fish proposals center on king salmon, east side setnet fishery

Many proposals describe changes to the Kenai River Late-Run King Salmon Management Plan

Jake Dye/Peninsula Clarion
Senior Prom King and Queen Dennis Borbon and Lorraine Ashcraft are crowned at the 2023 High Roller Senior Prom at Aspen Creek Senior Living in Kenai, Alaska, on Friday, Sept. 22, 2023.
Senior prom crowns king and queen

In brainstorming options, the concept of putting on a prom turned some heads

Most Read