re: Their aren't many left like the man who killed a wolf with his bare hands

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No man can outrun Father Time, especially in the Alaska Bush where life remains closer to the age-old struggles of nature than the comforts of the modern age. But Joe Delia gave it one hell of a try.

For 50 years, Delia was an institution along the Skwentna River. Time Magazine profiled his life in 1970 under a headline that read: "The Vanishing World of Trapper Joe Delia.''

Delia was 40 then, and it might have seemed the world he knew was vanishing. It wasn't. It was changing in ways that no one could quite predict. The Alaska population boom that was threatening the lifestyle of those who knew the Alaska Bush turned into something of a population dud. Alaska grew, but it didn't grow in Skwentna. The back-to-the-Earth hippies went back to town. Alaska coalesced around a few major cities. It continues to do so.

And now Delia lives in one of those cities.

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He was a modern-day mountain man. He tried to take his snowshoes, rifle and pack with him on the plane when he left -- just in case.

He told friends maybe he could get a snowmachine in Anchorage and drive back out to Skwentna to trap in the winter. It's 90 long miles by trail, a long ride even for a younger man in the best of health. It's not the sort of drive Delia is up to making these days, but letting go of a place you love is a hard thing for a man like Delia. The country becomes part of you are. It's a piece of your soul.

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Not longer after, Leonard left to live out the end of his life in the kinder, gentler world of modern America. Joe was not happy to see him leave, but he watched a lot of friends move out of the country or move on to the other side. The late Joe Redington, founder of the Iditarod, was one of those who enlivened the Delia cabin for years. The two Joes could sit around at Iditarod time telling stories about the old days that held the attention of everyone in the always-crowded house. Redington was a top-10 Iditarod finisher in his 70s, but time eventually caught up to him, too.

Ill health forced Redington off the runners, and he spent his last days at the family homestead at Knik, not far from the doctors in Wasilla.

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A couple feet of snow had piled up back home in Skwentna. Everyone there was digging out -- as they have been frequently this winter. Childs noted the caretakers in the Delia house are beginning to wonder just what they've gotten themselves into. With the snow piled more than 4 feet deep, you shovel all the time to keep buildings from collapsing, to make it possible to see out windows after roofs avalanche, to build a ramp to hike up out of the cabin to where the snowmachine is parked.

It is, sad to say, no life for old men. And all men, even the toughest of them, grow old.

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