News Photo by William Kelley The “spit” at Homer, Alaska, where people pick razor clams when the tide is low, and a glacier across the bay is seen in this July 1971 photo taken from the window of William Kelley’s airplane.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is the 29th in a series of stories adapted from William Kelley’s book, “Wind Socks, Grass Strips, and Tail-Draggers.” Last week, Kelley flew around the Anchorage area and photographed wildlife.

The minimum altitude when flying over a wildlife refuge anywhere in the U.S. is 1,000 feet above ground level.

It was not a national wildlife refuge when I made my first trip to Alaska. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have flown so low. It was definitely not my desire to intimidate the animals of that area. There is also a severe penalty for such activity.

At one point, a long bog outlined by two rows of spruce looked like a grass runway bordered by a deeper shade of green. A strong urge to set down among the trees teased me to attempt a landing to walk that carpeted area. Any settlement was miles away. It would be a long walk to civilization, an even longer walk home — if ever I could go home again.

The urge passed.

A bull moose poked his nose into spruce branches on a bluff. A large black bear walked a trail on the other side of the row of trees that hid the moose. At first, it looked as if the bear stalked the moose, but closer inspection didn’t support that idea. Both probably waited to visit the glacier-fed lake at the bottom of the bluff.

The wind increased during the flight to Homer, and became strong as I headed back to Anchorage. Choppy winds tumbled from a valley east of Turnagain Arm. As I crossed it, Flight Service issued a wind shear alert for the area below 4,000 feet.

When I contacted Merrill Tower, they warned me about possible wind shear upon landing.

The wings wagged and wobbled as I approached the runway on final, but there was no rapid change in ground speed or air speed, which usually is an indicator of wind shear.

It was another sample of conditions in the Anchorage area.

The following day, we went shopping again. At a camera store, I bought a two-times converter for my camera lens. My intention was still to photograph wildlife, including wolves, on Mount McKinley.

I bought food to take on that jaunt to McKinley. To avoid excess weight in the backpack, only essentials were bought.

Weather did not cooperate for several activities on the trip, and the photo session to McKinley was no exception. It rained each time I even thought of it. The idea was finally scrapped.

As we headed to town on our last day together in Anchorage, a small female dog, in heat, paraded past the house. Two male dogs trailed her, vying for her favors. We stopped and lectured her on ladylike behavior on a public street.

At the next stop sign, a dachshund trotted toward us. He looked like a hot dog with everything on it, heading for a ball game. We gave him directions to the action and chugged toward town.

From time to time, the man from the woods fed me bits of information about his wife in Talkeetna. How they met at school, their majors, and how it was religion that brought them together. I formed a picture of her.

She came from a strict German family in Wisconsin, he from a Lutheran minister’s family in Alaska. They had met at Valparaiso University in Indiana. They corresponded while he was in the Peace Corps and married when he returned from Central America. A short time after their marriage in 1967, they moved to Alaska.

His description of what she did to hold things together while he was in Anchorage led me to believe she must be an Amazon. I pictured her at least 6-feet, 6-inches tall, 300 pounds of glistening muscle, wearing an animal skin with a 200-pound pack over her right shoulder and her left breast bared to the breeze. She had to be so mean wild animals feared her.

I didn’t tell him that, but it is what I thought.

What other kind of woman would stay alone in the wilderness, 20 miles from the base of Mount McKinley, in wolf and bear country?

He headed back to Talkeetna with the trip’s spoils. He invited me to come up and see them. I wasn’t doing anything, anyway, and, since it was Saturday, I invited Alan to come along. His wife wasn’t crazy about being cooped up for two days alone with three kids.

The woodsman loaded his ’55 Chevy down so much it resembled a freight wagon the pioneers used to cross the country. When he rolled away, I was sure the Conestoga would break a wheel if it struck a rock.

It would take him more than four hours to travel the roads and bridges to Talkeetna. We could fly it in a little over an hour. We gave him a two-hour head start.

We unloaded the extra gear from the plane. The right seat was full of boxes that had to be removed. Otherwise, the passenger had no place to sit. Some of the gear was taken to the house, the rest we left in his truck.

Weather was good.

We crossed Cook Inlet west of Anchorage and proceeded north. To our right, we could see Palmer. In the distance, it looked packed against the mountain, but there is flat land around it. To the left, part of the Alaska Range curved toward the Pacific.

Beyond those were the Kuskokwim Mountains.

Check The News next week for the next installment. William Kelley was a teacher for 32 years and has been a pilot since 1966. He lives in Herron on the family farm where he was born and raised.