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An hour later, I'd made my peace with the grayling, catching and releasing more than a dozen up to 20 inches in length. And after several nights of tents, bugs and all the various weather Alaska can serve at that time of year, I'd also made my peace with the outdoors. The time had finally come to pack up and head in. And as is so often the case when I'm out and about in that part of the Interior, heading in meant a trip to McGrath for a hot shower, a homecooked meal and a night of relative luxury on a real mattress.

Opportunities Abound

In Alaska, first impressions of people and places are often flavored by circumstances and punctuated by necessity. My initial visit to the remote community of McGrath came years ago at the conclusion of a lonely flight through Rainy Pass in deteriorating weather. The sight of that broad, beautiful runway beside the Kuskokwim River looked like the answer to a prayer. Nothing I've experienced there since has compromised the relief I felt when the tires hit the gravel.

My first stay at McGrath's Takusko House came about under similarly welcome circumstances. Old friends Doug Borland, Ernie Holland and I had been in the field for weeks. In addition to the usual deprivations, I'd made a hundred-mile float trip in a pair of leaky waders, and cold and dampness had cost me contact with my toes days earlier. Covered in tundra and smelling of moose, we hit town at dark with a mountain of gear and meat. Unfazed, Sharin Griffeth-Farshchi, ebullient proprietress of the Takusko House, kept the door open and the kitchen running late. No one appreciates the acute pleasure of a hot shower like a tired Alaska hunter. I remember little of the meal that followed except that it didn't consist of the charred moose steaks we'd been living on for days. By the end of the evening, I wouldn't have traded my room for a deluxe suite at any hotel in the world.

About 220 miles northwest across the Alaska Range from Anchorage and well removed from the road system, McGrath doesn't have a lot in common with most Alaska destinations. It seems more practical than scenic. In the Interior, Alaska's rivers serve as arterial travel routes, and the broad-shouldered Kuskokwim connects McGrath to other bush communities by boat in the summer and sled or snowmachine in the winter. This drainage lies north of the rainbow trout waters that lure anglers to Alaska from around the world, and hunting out of McGrath requires additional travel by boat or aircraft.

Nonetheless, the McGrath area holds plenty to interest the adventurous visitor. Strong runs of salmon enter nearby tributaries, many of which are clear enough to fish with rod and reel. Local waters support the most accessible sheefish population in the state. Sloughs along the Kuskokwim and nearby Innoko teem with pike. Grayling abound in clear streams flowing from the Alaska Range. Despite recent concerns about declining local moose numbers, Game Management Unit 19 still produces some of the best bulls in Alaska, at least for those willing to work hard enough to reach remote habitat. (And the state's new program of transplanting bears away from the area already seems to be having a favorable impact on moose calf survival).

With a permanent population of about 400, McGrath hasn't changed much since its origins as a regional center for mining, trade and Native affairs. However, its position as a hub for huge areas of surrounding wilderness makes the town feel greater than the sum of its parts. Federal presence includes an FAA Flight Service Station, a National Weather Service facility, and the headquarters of the Innoko National Wildlife Refuge. State officials from the Department of Transportation and court system conduct business there regularly. Several air service operators are based at McGrath's excellent airport. Visiting medical personnel regularly hold clinics in McGrath and teachers from outlying communities frequently rotate through. Most of these visitors eventually find their way to the Takusko House under unconventional circumstances, just as I did.

Because the Takusko House serves such a highly varied clientele, visitors can expect to rub elbows with a wide cross-section of Alaskans in the dining room: pilots, judges, teachers, biologists, surveyors, geologists and nurses, all in addition to the usual assortment of tired outdoor adventurers looking for their first dry roof and hot meal in weeks.

Midwinter, the Takusko House comes alive as an official stop on both the Tesoro Iron Dog and Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. When Iditarod mushers pull into McGrath, the lodge's capacity swells to nearly 100 as if by magic. That involves a lot of getting to know your neighbor, but nothing enforces the principles of hospitality quite like a thermometer registering double digits below zero outside.

Formally trained as an executive chef, Griffeth-Farshchi managed fine restaurants in California and Hawaii before deciding 10 years ago to venture north for more or less the same reason most of us first came to Alaska: It seemed like a good idea at the time. She's never had any regrets and, despite the challenges of securing fresh ingredients at such remove from ordinary supply routes, her culinary expertise makes the Takusko House kitchen one of the easiest to appreciate anywhere in the Bush-especially after a week or two of camp fare served in the rain.

Rest Assured

Viewed from the air during summer and fall, the terrain surrounding McGrath forms an abstract mosaic of texture and color: timber and tundra, rivers and lakes, russets, greens and blues. But you can't learn the country from above; at some point, you have to get down on the ground and touch it.

In June, the sloughs along the Kuskokwim River offer amateur naturalists outstanding opportunities to observe Alaska's unofficial state bird: the mosquito. But the bugs aren't too unpleasant today, at least in my opinion. But different individuals show highly variable tolerances for biting insects, and Ernie and I define both ends of the spectrum. Up in the skiff's bow, he's busy swatting tiny tormentors and filling the air with rich invective, leaving me free to ignore the bugs and concentrate on fishing from the stem.

Our quarry for the day: northern pike, another of Alaska's under-appreciated fly rod quarries. A mile or so from the river, the slough's clear water contrasts starkly to the chocolate-colored runoff we left behind back on the Kuskokwim. Aquatic weeds hang suspended just beneath the surface, defining prime pike habitat, a promise bolstered by the knowledge that this same slough produced a state record northern some years back. Pike may not share the reputation some of Alaska's glamour species enjoy on the end of a line, but any northern in that class will test our tackle to its limits.

Finally, Ernie declares truce with the mosquitoes long enough to begin casting, and soon hooks the first fish of the day. This northern won't threaten any state records, but the strike proves spectacular as the fish slashes wildly at the gaudy streamer. By the time Ernie coaxes the fish from the weeds and disengages the hook, gathering clouds have started to spit rain. But we fish on, secure in the knowledge that warm food and dry shelter lie back in McGrath, an hour away by skiff.

To invoke the navigator's idiom, McGrath will always be more a way-point than a destination to most of its visitors, an enabling stop on the way to or from the place you really intend to go. But whether the excuse is fish, game, respite on the lditarod Trail or another form of outdoor challenge, spend enough time in Alaska's vast Interior and you'll eventually find your way to McGrath. When you do, rest assured that the staff of he Takusko House will leave the lights on for you.

E. DONNALL THOMAS JR. divides bis time between Montana and Southeast Alaska.