June 8: Did I miss yesterday?

Oh well, it doesn't take long before I completely lose track of the time. It's been alternating cold/wet/windy and cold/dry/beautiful/windy. Today was one of the beautiful days. I've been working mostly on Seattle-related work, with the occasional anxious jab when I remember that we have to get the pump sent up (and I don't know how to do it - Bob didn't come back this year so I'll have to count on him to guide me by email).

So I went for a walk - it is cold out there. I was wishing for gloves. And it was glorious. This first photo is someone's setnet cabins perched up on the cliff - dangerously close to the edge. If you look down the beach, you can see Pedersen Point, the fish buyer about 3/4 of a mile from our cabin and maybe a mile from this one. Most of the people who setnet have a place to stay in town; few live the whole summer in the setnet cabins on the beach. I'm glad to live on the beach - whenever I go into town, it takes much longer than I want to accomplish whatever I've gone in for and it's exhausting. I don't really understand why.



I found a couple of small agates on my walk. They're smaller than a marble, but clear. Evening is the best time to look for agates because the low light skims across the water into the agates and they shine up from the sand.





Then finally, returning to the cabin, even though it needs a paint job, I liked how the raingear I washed a few days ago was hanging cheerily - and patiently - on the line in front of it, with the blue sky spread boldly behind.

I think the main difference between fishing and the rest of life - aside from taking place in a boat, and being stinkier, wetter, and more physical - is that we come into the season with a fairly sharp awareness that we don't have a clue what's about to happen. It depends on what the fish decide to do, what the other fishermen decide to do, what the wind does, what the tide does, what talents and challenges the crew has, what they left hanging at home, and whether Murphy is busy somewhere else. In the rest of life, I usually step into each day with maybe an 85% idea of how it will go (which may be unrealistically high, but that life permits that illusion) and here, it's maybe a 45% idea. Especially from the beginning of the season to the end. Johnny Meggitt used to say that he would let me know what kind of season it was in August.

My wonderful neighbor, Mark, gave me half of his second fish of the season. Intrepid fisherman that he is, he's been marching through the mud two tides a day since June 1 (except for Fri, Sat, and Sunday when we're closed) and finally got two fish. It was beautiful (and delicious). If I weren't so eager to eat it, I'd have remembered to take a picture of it before I cooked it and ate a good third of it.

Harry and Hannah come in tomorrow.