outfitter | The Filson Journal

Anacortes Junk Co.

Marine Supply? Hardware? Antiques? Museum and gift shop? It’s a bit of all of these. Wander over wood floors that creak like the deck of a ship to find less glamorous but just as useful galvanized cleats, cubbies of hard-to-find pipe fittings, and various sizes of chain and rope. That part for your vessel you were certain only existed in your imagination—it’s somewhere here—might be a bit dusty. Think some of the stuff lying around might be junk? Perhaps, but as Steve Demopoulos heard his grandfather “Mike,” say many times, “It’s only junk until someone needs it.”

5 Min

plane parked on a snowy runway in a pine forest

Field Notes

Rainy Pass Lodge

At age 17, Steve Perrins paid $1 to watch a home movie that rearranged his brain. It was March 1974. The 16mm reel, screened at a New Hampshire high school, was filmed by Buckey Winkley, an Alaska hunting-and-fishing guide, who was there fresh from the backcountry. Sitting in the audience, Perrins was transfixed by the images of bears, Dall sheep, trout, and salmon. Afterward, thirsty for adventure, he approached Winkley. “I’m going to Alaska,” he said, definitively, and he asked the guide for help.