There are no more hunters like Clarence Wood. Not just no one to take his place, but no place left to take.
I heard about Clarence Wood passing the other day. I was sharpening my machete on my parents’ porch in Honaunau, Hawaii, of all places. Leaves were green overhead, birds singing and bugs buzzing, and chickens scratching under the steps, and it was tough to get my bearings in the sudden storm of memories swirling in my head. A lifetime of memories of my friend, a world away in the Arctic — but also a place that feels even further away: the past.
The traveler who showed up most often at our place there at the lower end of Paugnautaugruk was an Inupiaq hunter from Ambler, a man in his mid-30s, lanky and friendly, with cropped black hair and a handsome face already scarred by frostbite. The young man’s name was Clarence Wood. Over the years, Clarence spent countless nights on our floor, countless days on our bearskin couch, drinking coffee and telling stories, teasing us boys, watching my dad bend sled runners, waiting to see what my mom would pull out of the wood oven. He’d peer over his shoulder out our Visqueen window that flapped in the wind, checking the weather. He never appeared to be in a hurry but usually didn’t stay long. “Well,” he’d announce, put down his cup, and rise.
Now, so many years later, it almost doesn’t matter which of a thousand stories I tell, or what season, what year, Clarence was usually there, or passing by, or had just left. In January 1970, when three men were murdered below our place, Clarence was the last one to see them OK before the crime. When Keith Jones’ sod igloo next to ours caught fire and burned — there was Clarence on the ice, the first to spot the flames.
I lost track of how many times I almost shot Clarence. The first time was when I was 11. I never told anyone. It was May; the first geese had arrived, and I ran my dog team down to Willow Island across from the mouth of the Hunt, tied them in the willows and laced on my snowshoes, and sneaked toward where I heard Canada geese hollering. Through brush I saw two dark things moving, disappearing, moving again. The honking was loud, and coming from them. I aimed with my .22.
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