June 15, 2016: We found an orphan

I think one of the hardest things to learn to do is to appreciate all the good stuff around even when I'm standing in the middle of something I wish were different. My crew - Oksanna, David D, Davey, Austin were up early tending the nets. Our day started at about 2:30 AM. It was about as dark as it gets this time of year. But by the time we came in from the sites, the sun was getting ready to rise. These are Oksanna's again. One of the things I can say about fishing the early morning tides is that otherwise, I might never know what a sunrise looks like. It's softer and pinker and brighter than sunset.

This first photo is the sunrise between Debby's cabin and mine, with the tripod that supports one end of my clothesline in the middle foreground and Debby's outhouse in the middle background.

This is the sunrise a little bit ahead of the sun. Such a big, bright light shining through the dormers in Debby's cabin. If you can look down, you can make out the sort of raggety boardwalk out to Debby's, made from scraps of plywood, pallets, and who knows what else.

Jeff showed Oksanna how to get a panorama view on her camera. I love this because it's almost the reverse of a sunset, coming up over Debby's cabin sort of like a rainbow of light.

And this one, I couldn't resist because of the cotton in the foreground. We call it tundra cotton; in Scotland they call it bog cotton. Grandma Nicklet said, "Lots 'a cotton; lots 'a fish."

After watching the sunrise for a little while, we all went to sleep for a few hours. Part of my morning ritual is to walk over to the cliff to see what happened during the night. Did the tide come up high? Are the stairs still there? Did anything swamp? Do we still have the right number of boats? There shouldn't be much of a surprise today because we were already out there for the most recent high tide. But it was nearly high again. I met Matt out on the bluff. We were both looking out. And then I saw something struggling in the surf. It was moving like a person does who is panicking in the water. Through binoculars, I could see that it was a baby seal, pulling itself up out of the surf onto the beach. It just flopped down on the tide line and didn't move.

We had a similar situation last year with a baby seal that was a bit older. Last year's pup was barking. I called the sea mammal people and they begged us to "let nature take its course." They said that sometimes the mom will park the baby somewhere so she can go hunt, and then come back and get it on the next high tide. This baby wasn't parked here and he wasn't barking. We left him alone for a few hours.

It was a hot day. After a few hours, we came down to see it and found him panting. We tried hard to let nature take its course, but in the end, pulled down one of our sleds, partially filled it with seawater and lifted the baby into it, bringing a piece of plywood to give some shade - and to protect him from the birds of prey that hunt on the beach. We also brought down some leftover salmon from last night's dinner.

He didn't show any interest in any of it. Jeff thought he just looked exhausted and needed some rest. So we left him alone for more hours and then went to check on him again. Now he was shivering. He had worked his way part way out of the water in the sled. The tide had come back in again and we thought he might be ready to go back and find his mother. The crew helped him out of the sled and toward the water. As soon as he realized he was near the water again, he squirmed away from it. They could see seals out on our nets (grrr) and decided to leave him near the water so that if one of them was his mother, she could come and get him. But no one came for him. They began to realize that this was a very very young baby so they got a bottle from from the neighbors and tried to give him some warmed condensed milk from a bottle. Again, no interest. So they put him back in the sled and moved him up the beach, closer to the cliff to see how he was in the morning.

David and I had spent a good part of the evening before talking about how to deal with the mud this year, if we couldn't count on the ranger. We went over methods we've tried before and in the end, decided that we needed to try the ranger again. Maybe the improved engine performance would lead to better mud performance. So David hopped on it and ran it out into the mud. He bogged down in a few places but made it out through the mud to the outside sites, and back. That was a HUGE relief. Now, if nothing else, we can use the ranger to run a line out to the tub, bring it back through a pulley affixed to a screw anchor on the beach and use the truck to pull it in. If we have both the Bathtub and the Cockroach out, we'll have two shots at bringing in the fish.

Today was also bread-baking day. We use the Cornell bread recipe. You can look it up online. We got it all mixed up and put it in the oven to rise with the warmth of the pilot light. An hour later, I pulled it out... and nothing had happened. I must have used the dead yeast. Dang it! I am not one to waste food, so I pulled out the new yeast, dissolved it in a little bit of water, mixed it onto the bread dough with a bit more flour, and tried again.

This time it rose as if it hadn't failed the first time, and then went on to turn into three loaves of bread, a big pan of cinnamon rolls, and a batch of maple bars. Puffy confection perfection.

This day of mixed feelings ended with a striking and unusual sunset. The time on the photo says 11:18 PM. The thing that made it unusual was the bars or spots of light flanking the sun. In this photo, it's most visible to the left of the sun, most of the way to the edge of the photo. These continued through the sunset and into the sunrise. I think they are sun dogs, the result of interaction between the sun's rays and ice crystals in the atmosphere, but I'm no expert in it. Does anyone know?