Building up to coming this year, I kept noticing little bubbles of joy running through me. And for every 90 of those bubbles, there were about 10 that went “what do I think I’m doing?!?” Those 10 went into overdrive on arrival. Packed till 1:30 am, napped till 2:30 am and got up to get to the airport by 4 for a 6 am flight – with a dog.
Flights went smoothly. Time will tell how well the potted begonias and daisies in my hand luggage traveled. I felt like a little old lady – hey, wait! I am a little old lady. Dang.
It’s still winter here. The tundra is brown (though it’s been dry too, so maybe that contributes), but the bugs are out in King Salmon. Waiting for my ride, I had some time to find out about cell phone coverage. Turns out that the new cell phone provider (GCI) has an agreement so that they can use ATT’s service outside Alaska, but it’s not reciprocal – so they can say they have better coverage than ATT. But contrary to what I was told over the phone, the original cell phone provider does have a month-to-month option that should work fine – just like last year. But not today – it’s Memorial Day.
Heading away from the airport - first stop was the cannery. The frozen food I sent by air freight as part of last night’s packing activities has not arrived yet – just as well because the new freezer wasn’t in place yet and the old one had stopped freezing. So Big Brad helped me get the old freezer out and the new freezer in (OK, more like I helped him). That wasn’t trivial – the net locker is still jammed with things stored over the winter, including whole nets and including stuff we inherited from the last fisherman in the locker. But the freezer is now in place, plugged in and waiting for 400 lbs of frozen food, which will arrive in coolers that we’ll use to send salmon south. This new freezer has an ultra low setting for super fast freezing – better for fish quality!
Then I collected the truck (expired tabs – where did I put the new ones?), a charged battery for the De Walt cordless drill, and last year’s left over canned goods we stored in the warm room. Didn’t we put cans of paint in there too? Where are they? A little air in the tires, transmission fluid in the transmission (I guess that’s where it goes), get a few groceries at Naknek Trading (they didn’t have a Captain Jacks nor did they have a little tide book – the ones they received earlier were off by 2 hours and the new ones aren’t in yet) and head down the beach. Drove past an eagle hanging out in the brown tundra, which contrasted nicely with its white head. The beach is soft – dry sand exercises the 4 wheel drive. Worried that without the aluminum ladder to mark the cabins, I’d drive right past. Unnecessary worry.
We have a good wind today down here on the beach (not so much in town or at the airport). It’s blowing from the north and the northeast. That’s my least favorite wind – off shore. Typical for this time of the year, and then usually it turns by the time the season starts. I took a field trip to see if I could find the inside anchor for one of our sites – and I found an agate! Good start. And then I found the anchor.
Camp looks so desolate when I first arrive – all the cabins are boarded up and the place sort of echoes. I'll upload a photo from a few days later, after we got some rain. You can see I’m leaving some opening up for the crew.
There’s so much to do to get going. A lot of what we do to close up is to protect against lemmings. For example, no open containers – especially no open containers with water in them. Lemmings go in and of course, can’t get back out again – you know about lemmings. Some years, we find the remains of lemming cannibals and their lemming leavings in the bottom of a bucket. Sometimes we’ll just find a singleton stuck to the floor under a bunk. My fear is finding one in my boot with my foot. Eeuw. Some years we also have cups of fly corpses – it’s a veritable fly cemetery. So I just leave dirty sheets in place – I’ll have to wash them by spring anyway.
When the first person arrives, it’s still buttoned up (if all is well, anyway). So it’s a matter of scrambling up the 30’ cliff to see how it wintered. This year I was greeted by the charred earth where two cabins stood until the evening of June 14 last year when a fire consumed them both. Still a lot of black. And hauling luggage from the truck, up the cliff and back to my cabin entails dragging it along the charred walkway. Denial is not an option regarding that fire.
Pulling the stairs down is easier than you’d think, but it is risky and sort of uncontrolled. It involves the truck and a rope at the right angle. It’s important not to be too close because that pulls down, through the cliff, instead of over the cliff. So with as much slack as the tide and the length of the rope will allow, I slowly tow on the ladder with the truck until it is far enough over the cliff to tip and down it goes. I used the truck to try to fine tune it a bit, but really, that’s easier with several people applying their shoulders. However, those people aren’t here yet, so I made judicious use of a pry bar at the top to lift them up and straighten them, propping them up this year with a used tire. Here is the finished product. It looks steeper than it is, but this angle shows the whole thing and the tire. It’s pretty heavy. Getting my cabin ready is harder than you’d think. This year it means rolling the outhouse out of the way (it blew over and rolled in front of the mudroom door – deal with that later), pulling the boards off the windows (saving and caring for the lag bolts and their nuts and washers – it’s crucial to put them back together so we don’t discover an hour before it’s time to leave that we’ve mashed the threads), get the stuff I stored in cabin for the winter out – like the propane (not much left and can’t get the stuff from the barge yet – hope it lasts till then), and grill from the main room, the generator (did I change the oil at the end of last season?), gas, and power tools (from under my bunk), crates, garbage can, empty water barrels, hand truck, and more (from the mud room). Then it’s putting away the towels that cover all the eating and cooking tools (to protect them from hibernating lemmings), and putting that stuff away, installing the solar panels, soaking out the water filter and filling up the Brita, hooking up the stove and heater (test for leaks using bubbles – once the propane is connected, it takes a long time to start the heater – propane runs slowly. And then a clothespin is required to turn the heater on, holding the two little horseshoes together to tell the heater to flame on), changing the sheets and pillow cases and airing out the blankets on the line (which fell over because the wind was strong and pulled up one of the stakes), setting the clocks and change their batteries, and this year, reconnecting the plumbing drains (I learned – the hard way – to look for disconnected drains). And that’s all before hauling up and putting away the luggage and warm room stuff. (We pack things down the cliff that would be harmed by freezing - like canned vegetables, food in glass jars, latex paint. These items are stored in an insulated room that is kept from freezing over the winter by means of a light bulb that is kept burning all winter long. In the spring, we pick it all up and bring it back to the cabin).
I’ll have to repair or replace the water barrel (our washing and cooking water comes from our roofs). It split at about the middle, so it’s only half full. And it’s been dry here so far, so water may become precious – I hope we don’t have to haul it from the lake. And the gutters are down, so I’ll have to wire them back up to collect rain if/when it does rain.
No sign of lemmings this year (and that includes the smell) and no dead flies. Solar panels that stay on the roof charged the battery all winter, so I was able to use the RV lights when I first stepped into the dark cabin, and there’s enough charge to refill the computer battery. Usually, it takes about a week of hard use to drain the battery down so I need to charge it with the generator.
Left the warm room food in the truck. Collapsed into bed as soon as there was a bed to collapse into. Sage made herself comfortable in her spot under the bunk, where the generator and gas had been.
Liz
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