The Alaskan Wilderness is a nice guy but he’s dangerous too.
They tell stories about times he’s gotten mad the same way they talk about bad winters.
“Remember ’63? ’63 was a bad ‘un, no foolin’, worse than anything since. These young fellers, they think they know but they don’t, not really, what with not bein’ around for the one in ’63.”
In ’63 he broke loose in a bar out Kenai way and didn’t come down for three days.
It took everyone in town to bring him down, and half of ’em were laid up sore and broken-hearted for months.
He was real apologetic afterwards, but no one could say it was his fault.

When the Alaskan Wilderness gets mad there’s always a reason.
You never have to wonder if he’s going to come after you, for example.
You might maybe think that he won’t, he’s such a nice guy normally, you might think you can push and push and be okay, but you’d be wrong.
He’s not much to look at, five foot nothing and kind of homely with a sweetheart of a grin plastered from one cauliflower ear to the other, but when he’s loose you might as well try to fight off the spring thaw.

They like to talk about the time he got into a fist fight with a mountain lion.
Mountain lion was coming down the trail while the Alaskan Wilderness wanted to go up, and there wasn’t room for both of them to get around.
Mountain lion sizes him up and thinks maybe he’ll take a chunk out of the Alaskan Wilderness’s leg but the Alaskan Wilderness wasn’t having any of it.
It went on for hours, fists against powerful back legs, neither one willing to back down, but when the dust settled the Alaskan Wilderness had himself a hundred new scars and a handsome new rug.
The Alaskan Wilderness denies the whole thing, naturally, but on the other hand he won’t talk about where exactly that cougar rug came from, either.