June 9: Injury next door

Our beloved neighbor, Mark, the one who gave me half of his second salmon of the season, has had an injury that will make him one-handed for most of the season (but probably not longer than that). (Years ago, Harry had a chainsaw kick back accident that put a pretty dramatic scar across his forehead. Aieee - we don't have a chainsaw in our camp.) Mark has been a talented chainsaw carver (making bears from disused pilings) for years and years and on June 9, he cut his fingers with his chainsaw. For a guy with a chainsaw-to-the-hand injury, he was lucky. The photo his son, Marcus, showed me displayed a mangled index and middle finger of his right hand, but all fingers were still firmly attached (something Marcus doubted at first from the way Mark was holding the injury) and there was no damage to any tendons or other finger-bits that are needed for their use in the future. Our local little Camai clinic stitched him up and probably gave him plenty of antibiotics and handed much of the heavy work over to his crew for the season. I think he'll be fine but I hate for anyone to have an injury like that at any time. But Mark? At the beginning of the fishing season? Argh...

Harry and Hannah made it in, intact. Harry said that after barely making their plane (the gate attendant had closed the doors, but one of the things I love about Alaska is that even though it's huge, it's small enough for people to use their own good judgment, so they opened the doors for them and let them slip on in), they went to take off, got partway down the runway and then... slowed down and stopped. Something wrong with the door mechanism. They returned to the gate (and took on a couple of lucky passengers who were a bit later than Harry and Hannah were) and successfully took off an hour later. Here is Harry, standing in my cabin, in full Naknek mode.

Big Brad from the beach gang brought down the new ranger and while they were here, used their giant forklift to help rearrange the stairs against the cliff so that our safety would not rely on the valor of the old overhanging wooden sidewalk that, protruding over the cliff that had eroded away under it, had stopped the stairs from falling down when I pulled them over the cliff without tying them off first). When Harry went to start the ranger (I love having a mechanically-inclined brother), we noticed that some of the connections have the unfortunate dual features of being poorly located (hard to get to except by the mud), and easily dislodged. I can just see us now out on the mudflats with the incoming tide and a ranger that won't start. Silicone and black tape are in my future. This ranger is also difficult in that the exhaust, which gets pretty hot, is directly in line between the operator and the throttle. The man I bought it from installed a remote throttle, but that connection jiggled loose. (I think he may not have been thinking about the hard duty of equipment in a setnet operation.) We'll have to figure out how to reattach that remote throttle so that it won't jiggle loose. Because jiggling is the least of the challenge it'll be facing.