Welcome to the 2013 setnetting season on the north Naknek beach in Bristol Bay, Alaska!
When I am here, in my little cabin, under the sun or clouds or whatever the sky is doing, on the bluff, overlooking the water (or the mud, depending on where the tide is) with vastness all around me, I feel like I am cradled in a giant pair of hands. It’s not that I feel safe – or unsafe. But I do feel like I belong, like I’m part of this whole big thing here – not separate from it, not over it, and definitely not in charge of it. Just part of it.
It was a beautiful flight. This is the view approaching Anchorage. I’m including it just in case anyone reading this hasn’t seen enough majesty today. This should help.
This next photo is the view approaching King Salmon.
I’m including this photo because it shows how porous the tundra is. This porosity is what allows the remains of the salmon that make it up river to spawn to spread throughout the tundra, feeding the entire ecosystem. I reserve the word “awesome” for a system of that magnitude. The same porosity allows contaminants to spread throughout the tundra, damaging and potentially killing the entire ecosystem. I don’t know a word big enough for a horror of that magnitude. I guess it's "awesome" too, but in a different way. This is the fear of the opponents of Pebble Mine, proposed for the shores of Lake Iliamna. Would the mining process produce contaminants? That’s an undebated yes. Would they be contained forever? That is debated, but to my knowledge, no other mine similar to this one has remained contained. So the question becomes: is it reasonable to think this would be the first one? Are we willing to gamble the ecosystem that produces half the world’s wild salmon? If you are interested in this topic, renewableresourcescoalition.org is a much more reliable source of information than I am.
All 100# of my frozen food luggage arrived with me (still frozen), along with 50# of other stuff plus two big dogs. I'm so glad Roy was able to pick me up. He is my good friend of more than 30 years, who is also our fish buyer's port engineer and the guy that keeps us in the water all summer despite the abuses we visit on our equipment. First stop is the processing plant where I drop off the frozen stuff into the net locker (it has actual around-the-clock electricity for the freezer) and the dog kennels.
This photo is shows the particularly well organized netlocker where we keep our freezer and assorted fishing stuff. Much of this stuff will become part of the gear we need to keep in the skiffs. I've been puzzling about how it is so orderly - I have a great crew, but I wouldn't say that neatness is one of their most defining qualities. This looks a lot like Jean's work. She is my friend of... well, about 40 years, I guess. She came up as crew in the middle 70s and now she sometimes comes up at the end of the season - mainly so we can spend some time together. It is lovely for me because she is such wonderful company - and a great bonus that she is almost compelled to be neat, so opening the cabin after she has helped me close it up (like last year) is amazingly easy... and clean!
I always feel lucky if it's not raining when I arrive – and it hasn’t rained for a couple of days. This is important because I need to get to my cabin which is on top of a 30’ cliff that I have to climb a few times before I can get the stairs down. Our mud probably has important uses as glue for industrial and military applications, but all I want to do is get up the cliff. When it’s wet, it’s 30’ steep feet of mud that is somehow both slippery and sticky. When it's dry, it's still 30', but not so treacherous. (I should add here that from another perspective - one I had long ago - the slippery mud can be fun, especially if the intention is to end up at the bottom of it.)
There's a bit of suspense the first time I pop my head over the cliff. This time I took the camera with me so that whatever I found, we would find it together. It is still winter here. There was even still some snow on the way into King Salmon and some of those tundra lakes were still frozen. It really will turn green in a few weeks. But now, it's trying to get over winter.
And just to complete the tour (almost), here is the crew cabin, having survived another winter. This was built in 1961, mostly by my parents and whatever help the six kids could provide. I think Trina and Lynnie, my two older sisters, probably were a lot of help.
Since it wasn't raining (and besides, there's a canopy on the truck), I didn't need to rush to open up the cabin, so I decided to pull down the stairs first. They are about 35' of aluminum. We haul them up the cliff at the end of the season and let them lie there over the winter. Then pull them down again when we come back in the spring. This is just a matter of tying one end of a strong line to the stairs (in such a way that undue pressure is not put on one step) and the other end to the truck (which is pointing away from the cliff), and driving toward the water. This first picture is the line, just taut.
Here, the stairs are starting to come off the cliff. I'm always afraid that they will tip over sideways... that would be a problem.
It doesn't take much before it reaches its tipping point and down it comes. After this, I was able to make some fine adjustments by towing it with the truck out a little and to the north. Precision adjustments with a 3/4 ton truck.
Next task is to open the cabin, a process that requires a drill and three different keys. The windows are all boarded up with carriage bolts. Then move the propane containers out side, hook up the stove and the heater. Looking at the cabin, you can see Jean's work again. I didn't have to wash anything - just take things out of their bags and use 'em.
Getting the Internet up and running was a challenge. Here is what it looks like when it is installed.
Last year was the first year with this system. Tom, the man who installed it who is also the expert at aiming it, said we really should bring it inside over the winter. The problem is that it's aiming at a satellite many miles up in the sky, so that aim has to be pretty precise. How would I be able to get it aimed right after taking it down? Tom's idea: before taking it off, drill a hole all the way through the sleeve and the post it goes over. Then next year, reinstall it and stick a nail through the hole - and it should be lined up. When we closed up, it was blowing 30 MPH (I got a little wind meter that told me that), so I was afraid that once I took it off the post, it would act like a sail and blow me off the ladder. But it wasn't that heavy and we got it tucked away without mishap. The weather was much more mild when I installed it this year. It didn't work right away, but I phoned the dealer and with the router set up and the laptop perched on top of the ladder I needed to stand on to reach it, I was able to make tiny adjustments (with the play in the nail hole), test it, make another adjustment, test it, and lock it down. That felt like a great combination of good luck, kind help, and a little bit of learning.
I have quite a bit of Seattle-work to do before I can settle into my fishing summer, so I need electricity. The little solar panels aren't quite enough, and again, I surprised myself by getting the generator started. Actually, all of these mechanical successes have surprised me. There is an important key that I only recently learned: patience. I mean, before Tom M explained it to me, I thought that as soon as I pushed the pilot button on the heater, it should light and if it didn't something was wrong and I had no idea what to do to fix it. Tom told me that propane moves slowly. So the only thing wrong is probably that the propane hasn't made it to the igniter yet. So just keep pressing. And it is the same way with the generator. My brother Harry told me that to start it, just give it a couple of cranks, and then walk away for a little while. I guess during that waiting period, gas begins to make its way to wherever it needs to go because when I came back, it took only a couple of pulls and it started. Wow.
Finally, I was able to scrounge some (really good) scrap plywood from AGS to fix the walkways, and took advantage of the mild weather to get them up the cliff and start some repairs. You can probably imagine the problems involved in carrying sheets of plywood up a 30' cliff using a banister-less set of stairs with a strong wind either at my back, pushing into the stairs, or waiting at the top of the cliff to catch the plywood and push away from the stairs. So if there's plywood in the truck waiting to come up, and a calm day arrives, the time to bring it up is now.
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