June 3: Cold Cold Cold

Inside and outside, just above 40 degrees. Finishing up putting away the food that wintered over and putting away the clothes I washed in town yesterday. Put the gutter back up and mended the rain barrel – I couldn’t find a bucket that I wanted to give to the Splash Zone mending material, so I hit on the idea of using a Zip Lock bag – worked great. I tie a string from the end of the gutter with a weight at the bottom to guide the water into the rain barrel. But I couldn’t find any string – in a setnet cabin? How could that be? So I figured it was time to open the other cabins anyway, so I went to the crew cabin and found… someone had beaten me to it. They took the plywood off the door and tore the metal strap that the padlock held down. They also removed one of the window coverings, but it took me a day or two to notice that. Even though it felt creepy, everything looked OK inside. I don't really mind if people use the cabin when we're not using it - as long as they don't wreck stuff.

Then I went over to Debby’s cabin to look there. Something is wrong with the doorknob – the lock wouldn’t turn. Sigh. My good friend Eddie and his friend George will be coming up from Egegik in a couple of days – Eddie told me that George can pick any lock – and if he can’t Eddie can. Yay! I'll need to get in there to be able to put a net out - that's where our signs, lines, buoys and other assorted fishing paraphernalia reside.

I was intimidated by trying to get the generators started, but the old one started on the first pull. The newer one didn’t, so I tried to follow Roy’s instructions (that I wrote down last year) and… it worked! I felt like a genius but I think I was lucky and gave the gas some time to find its way to the spark plug. I can’t get the smell of gas off my hands, though.

Also, the tides have been really high – way higher than the tide book says. In Egegik too. No harm done so far, but I took the truck to the turn-around spot on the beach access road just to be sure.

On the way back, I bumped into Pat Patterson, probably my oldest friend – I’ve known him since we lived here, and we moved here from Kokhanok when I was 4 and he was 5. He had just found an agate the size (and shape) of a big, fat steak. Agate envy!! I took a photo of it… only to realize minutes later that my camera didn’t have an SD card in it. Boo.

There’s always a question of what I’ll find at the top of the cliff when I come up the stairs. Usually, it’s just the cabins, the grass, and the tundra. We worry about surprise visits from bears in particular. This time, the moon greeted me. Here it is…