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balm, I discover), and is always ready to help unhook my fly from streamside foliage. Yes, this is a bit of pampering, too. We stand in one place and count a dozen grayling, finning patiently, waiting for the next morsel to drift past. There are times when fish are rising everywhere, and a reasonably well-presented number 18 caddis will be sipped or clobbered immediately, then the action will slow and we must work pristine, bold-flowing creek, an hour and a half by air from Anchorage, its banks lined with willows and brilliant purple fireweed, and full of hungry grayling. I find myself in the company of young Sam Peller, a passionate fly fisherman, conservationist, and patient guide, for whom catch-and-release represents a sacred oath. He reminds me to mend my line, apply Gink's floatant (an effective lip commanding a stretch of shoreline on a beautiful wilderness lake. Step through the door and you enter a magnificent home complete with full-body mounts of grizzlies and Dall rams, walls decorated with huge moose heads and wolf hides, and mounted salmon and trout of all kinds in natural settings. Made more welcoming by the sweet presence of Stacie, Preston's wife, what began as a tiny cabin in 1996 is now the kitchen in a lodge that will sleep 22. The Cavners' son, Hudson, 8 years old and sporting a million-dollar smile, lives the life I dreamt of as a boy. The following morning we take jet boats up the lake to a crystal-clear feeder creek, a 25-minute ride to paradise. After easing a mile or so upstream (hence the jet boats), we slip quietly over the gunwales to find dozens of grayling posting near the bottom, waiting for the next hatch. My first cast earns a strike before the fly drifts five feet, the fish carried above the surface by its momentum. I am immediately transported back to the Kongakut River in the Brooks Range, where, between hunts for sheep and grizzly, my son Mike and I caught arctic char and grayling with rifles slung across our backs. This is not the Kongakut, though, but a Rustic elegance defines Stonewood Lodge, with its unique fieldstone fireplaces and numerous mounts of game and fish. Below: Guests can enjoy this beautiful vista of 50-mile-long Lake Clark and the Chigmit mountains. Opposite: The author plays a big grayling on a remote feeder creek. S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S • 123