The curved arc of the letter’s right side is the fifty-mile stretch of the Copper River that I’m going to float in search of buffalo. The vertical line at the letter’s left side is the forty-mile stretch of highway south of Copper Center, a small village that lies just south of Glennallen. Where the two lines meet, at the top and bottom of the D, are two places where my partners and I can get a truck close enough to the river to load and unload gear into a raft. The lower part is near the town of Tonsina, where there’s a little road off the highway that salmon fishermen use to access their fish traps. I’ve got a buddy’s truck parked down there with the keys hidden under the front-left tire. We’ll use that truck at the end of the trip, rather than hitchhiking back to where we are now, at the top of the D. Specifically, the top of the D is where the Klutina River passes below the Richardson Highway just before flowing into the Copper River, which is less than a mile downstream from me.
