I know I need to update my profile. I noticed that it says something about my eagerness to find how my younger son will relate to our fishing world as he steps into adulthood. Even though we won't have a chance to find out because of losing him in an accident last year on June 30, I think I know. On June 22, about a week before he died, I received an email from him saying, "i miss it up there. it really is home." So I write this post for the sake of honesty.
I won't write about this loss every time it washes over me, but it seems false to write as if this experience this year is only about this year's wind and mud, bluff and tundra, ups and downs, tides and fish. I find, as I settle into my cabin and its gentle silence, that Alex is with me. I feel him - and the loss of him - in a way that I couldn't in my busy life in Seattle. Right now, it is very heavy. It seems that this is what healing needs - this would be the slow painful wet part of the healing process. As I write, that process too is here with me, along with the glory, beauty, joy, and current pain that this world holds. Until Jeff and Luka arrive next Tuesday, it's me, two dogs, and my big gash of a wound in this beautiful world we are in.
In Alex's final email to me, two days before he died, he wrote this,
"when i first arrived, i had a sharp sense of the eternity that has been pumping through the various expressions of time in all their different forms and generating the variable but acutely consistent forms of life on this island. i think the heat, the lush, and the life formed a sort of symphony that rang out the song of cycles and generations. as an artist looking in, there is depth and beauty to it. as someone living it and not thinking very much about eternity, cycles, and particularly being stuck as just another generation on this eternal god damned island, the depth and beauty are harder to reach.
"something is burning at the base of my throat. some kind of pain has settled there for the moment. it is the same genre of pain i wrote about before. this is hard, but it was supposed to be."
This is the experience I am having here, now. I have both perspectives - when we fish, we are in it, part of the cycle that has been turning for generations and that I hope will continue to turn after I'm gone. And when we're not fishing, I can reflect on it and write about it. I can feel, and try to convey the beauty and depth of it. And at the end of the season, we pick up and leave, stepping out of the cycle. (For me, that part of the process is difficult and feels a little like stepping off a moving four wheeler.) And now, this year, something has been burning at the base of my throat; something has settled there. This is hard; I can't imagine it could be otherwise.
The first agate I found this year was a dark red one. Yesterday's photo shows you that they can also be clear, white, or various shades of yellow and orange. I don't find the red ones very often and they are my favorite. I related to that dark red agate and thought it was fitting that it would be the first one that I find. I'm not sure what makes the red ones red - probably some type of mineral inclusion. And that's what's happened to me, too, though it's not a mineral that I must include in my being. I don't really know how it works, but I hope that when I have made it through the process of inclusion, Alex will be part of me in an integrated way - in my thoughts and movements, in my feelings and expressions. Maybe I will do the human equivalent of turning from a light yellow agate into one of those deep red ones, thanks to grief and the Alexation process.
Wednesday, June 5, 2013
June 4: Fresh yogurt and last year's smoked oysters
The first week or so here can stretch anyone's culinary boundaries. All the food for this season remains in the warehouse at AGS, on the barge on the way here, or in the freezer here or in Seattle, waiting to become someone's luggage. I have a strange attitude about the food in the freezer here - I feel like I didn't bring that up for me; it's for when the crew arrives. And I'm not ready to bring down all the stuff that's sitting in the warehouse - that's something that is best done when others arrive to help.
It's always hard for me to figure out what groceries to get when I'm feeding only myself. The first day here, I went to Naknek Trading (NTC, like Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery, it has most things that I need and if it doesn't have it, I can probably do without it) and found a dozen eggs ($5.49), a half-price gallon of milk ($5 was the sale price), a quart of Greek yogurt ($9.29) and a couple of cans of wet dog food ($2.79 each). (The milk, with some of the yogurt turned into even more yogurt - and strained, into Greek yogurt.) It's important to contribute to the local economy, but I also want to keep some and things are expensive here. So we ship up what we can think of in advance and buy the rest here.
Yesterday's tip of the day was about patience. Today's is how to get scalded milk (or burnt anything) off the bottom of a pan: a couple cups of vinegar and some soda - maybe a quarter cup or a half cup. Bring it to a boil. I don't know why it works but I haven't found anything that it won't loosen (and I have burned a lot of things to the bottom of a lot of pans).
The tides have been high and strange - water all the way to the cliff (26' tides) at 10 am. It isn't that it's uncommon to have so much water; it's just that for the 3 or 4 years before last year, even though we had plenty of 26' tides, they didn't come to the cliff. Tide magic that I don't understand. But it seems that those days are over. Here is the high tide a day or two after I arrived.
Last year we had a severe berm in front of the stairs that held the water from the high tides long after the tides were out. The effect of that is a very squishy area near the cliff. I can't think of a positive side of that situation, but the negative side comes easily to mind: the ground is very very sticky. So sticky that we can't drive a truck on it without fear of getting stuck (something we did plenty last year) and if we walk on it, we get a prodigious build up of mud on the bottom of our boots. Heavy, messy, and awkward. So at least to address the boot concern, I pulled down this little walkway to help us get from the stair to the gravel without gaining 10 pounds per foot.
The very high tides mean that I need to park the truck about a mile away, on the beach access road. One of the best things about that - besides keeping the truck from swamping - is that I get to walk a couple of miles on the beach each day that I want to use the truck. And in so doing, I often get to find agates. Here are this year's finds so far.
It's always hard for me to figure out what groceries to get when I'm feeding only myself. The first day here, I went to Naknek Trading (NTC, like Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery, it has most things that I need and if it doesn't have it, I can probably do without it) and found a dozen eggs ($5.49), a half-price gallon of milk ($5 was the sale price), a quart of Greek yogurt ($9.29) and a couple of cans of wet dog food ($2.79 each). (The milk, with some of the yogurt turned into even more yogurt - and strained, into Greek yogurt.) It's important to contribute to the local economy, but I also want to keep some and things are expensive here. So we ship up what we can think of in advance and buy the rest here.
Yesterday's tip of the day was about patience. Today's is how to get scalded milk (or burnt anything) off the bottom of a pan: a couple cups of vinegar and some soda - maybe a quarter cup or a half cup. Bring it to a boil. I don't know why it works but I haven't found anything that it won't loosen (and I have burned a lot of things to the bottom of a lot of pans).
The tides have been high and strange - water all the way to the cliff (26' tides) at 10 am. It isn't that it's uncommon to have so much water; it's just that for the 3 or 4 years before last year, even though we had plenty of 26' tides, they didn't come to the cliff. Tide magic that I don't understand. But it seems that those days are over. Here is the high tide a day or two after I arrived.
Last year we had a severe berm in front of the stairs that held the water from the high tides long after the tides were out. The effect of that is a very squishy area near the cliff. I can't think of a positive side of that situation, but the negative side comes easily to mind: the ground is very very sticky. So sticky that we can't drive a truck on it without fear of getting stuck (something we did plenty last year) and if we walk on it, we get a prodigious build up of mud on the bottom of our boots. Heavy, messy, and awkward. So at least to address the boot concern, I pulled down this little walkway to help us get from the stair to the gravel without gaining 10 pounds per foot.
The very high tides mean that I need to park the truck about a mile away, on the beach access road. One of the best things about that - besides keeping the truck from swamping - is that I get to walk a couple of miles on the beach each day that I want to use the truck. And in so doing, I often get to find agates. Here are this year's finds so far.
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
June 3: Vast deliciousness
I've been thinking a lot about this first post. I wasn't sure how to face it, considering the final post of last season. But it's like everything else in fishing: sometimes it's hard to understand how we manage to do what we do, but understanding it isn't the important part; doing it is. So, here we go.
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.
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.
Monday, July 9, 2012
July 9: Counting Mercies
It has been more than a week since I last posted. The crew is doing great, and I remain hopeful for the fishing, though the Naknek beach hasn't been catching them like we'd like (we're over 90K lbs now and I hope we'll crack 100K today, but it's not a guarantee). Sometimes this happens. Just today, I told the crew that this is the type of season that makes me nervous - I think we'll see lots more fish, but I think they'll sneak up on us. So we have to be vigilant - get out there early in the flood. If there's nothing there, we can come back in and warm up and then go back out again just before the turn of the tide. Probably, we won't be surprised by a lot of fish, but if we are, we'll be there. Similarly, the ebb - we'll go out twice on the ebb; once early and if they have slipped in and filled the nets, we'll be there to take them out and deliver them. If not, we'll go back in and warm up, coming out at the end for the mop up.
I've debated whether to explain the reason for gap in posting and decided that I must, if this blog is to be the record I intended it to be for myself. I haven't yet managed to contact all the people who know my family personally who might be reading this and I hope you will forgive me for shocking you with the terrible information you are about to read here. My younger son, Alex (20), David's brother, was accidentally killed by a surprisingly big wave while he was exploring a shallow reef flat in Micronesia on June 30. It is the worst experience a parent can have. The reason I entitled this blog "Counting Mercies" is that even though I can't imagine a worse event to report, I can imagine worse circumstances.
Alex traveled a very difficult road. He went dramatically off the rails in his early teen-age years and his father and I, with the help of David, Sarah, and Josh (a close family friend and previous - and I hope future - crew member), got him to the John Dewey Academy, a therapeutic boarding school in Massachusetts where through their unparalleled academic and therapeutic program, he came to know himself, learned to live with himself, and made himself into an academic force and more importantly, into a moral leader. He graduated from JDA in June and was accepted at Reed College for the fall. He had turned the great potential of his life from the confusion and torment of his early teen years into a flourishing garden and was preparing to study the intersection of ethics and neurobiology. In Micronesia, where he was nourishing his body and artist's soul at my sister's eco-lodge for the summer, he spoke with young people about living a life free of drugs and alcohol. He was reconnecting with friends, I think serving as a beacon for old friends who might hope for a better life for themselves than the one he was rather spectacularly headed towards when he left them for Massachusetts.
The first mercy I counted was that he died honest and honorable. (And the second is that I worked hard to help him do that.) He had overcome his challenges and found a way to live his life as an open and whole person, with the tools to manage life's challenges as they came along. He used these first three weeks out of school to get to know himself in a less structured environment, recover his open hearted laugh, and make the amends I was aware of that needed to be made. That is the third mercy. Although he didn't have the opportunity to start the next chapter of his life, he did a great job of closing this first one. He died doing what he loved - exploring nature. That's the fourth mercy. And his death was quick - probably too quick to be afraid or to feel pain. That's the fifth one. Sixth is that he has been gone from home for the past three years so unlike the experience of other parents who suddenly lose a child, I wasn't in a rhythm of life with him just yesterday. Similarly, his 25 classmates had just been through a process of saying goodbye to the graduating seniors - as the seniors said goodbye to them, though they expected to see one another again. Seventh is that fishing is a demanding activity and one of the things it demands is complete presence. Although David and I were completely swamped in grief and anguish the first couple of days, the fish and the crew continue to need us and when we're there, we must focus on the actual task at hand. This has allowed the reality to enter in smaller doses. And eighth, if he was to die in an ocean this summer, I am grateful that it wasn't with me during the fishing season. I feel cowardly admitting that and I am very very sorry that my sister had to shoulder the burden instead, but at the same time, I am grateful.
It turns out that doing the right thing is what matters in the end.
I'm not sure how much I'll be able to post through the rest of the season. Perhaps the crew will fill in for me...
I've debated whether to explain the reason for gap in posting and decided that I must, if this blog is to be the record I intended it to be for myself. I haven't yet managed to contact all the people who know my family personally who might be reading this and I hope you will forgive me for shocking you with the terrible information you are about to read here. My younger son, Alex (20), David's brother, was accidentally killed by a surprisingly big wave while he was exploring a shallow reef flat in Micronesia on June 30. It is the worst experience a parent can have. The reason I entitled this blog "Counting Mercies" is that even though I can't imagine a worse event to report, I can imagine worse circumstances.
Alex traveled a very difficult road. He went dramatically off the rails in his early teen-age years and his father and I, with the help of David, Sarah, and Josh (a close family friend and previous - and I hope future - crew member), got him to the John Dewey Academy, a therapeutic boarding school in Massachusetts where through their unparalleled academic and therapeutic program, he came to know himself, learned to live with himself, and made himself into an academic force and more importantly, into a moral leader. He graduated from JDA in June and was accepted at Reed College for the fall. He had turned the great potential of his life from the confusion and torment of his early teen years into a flourishing garden and was preparing to study the intersection of ethics and neurobiology. In Micronesia, where he was nourishing his body and artist's soul at my sister's eco-lodge for the summer, he spoke with young people about living a life free of drugs and alcohol. He was reconnecting with friends, I think serving as a beacon for old friends who might hope for a better life for themselves than the one he was rather spectacularly headed towards when he left them for Massachusetts.
The first mercy I counted was that he died honest and honorable. (And the second is that I worked hard to help him do that.) He had overcome his challenges and found a way to live his life as an open and whole person, with the tools to manage life's challenges as they came along. He used these first three weeks out of school to get to know himself in a less structured environment, recover his open hearted laugh, and make the amends I was aware of that needed to be made. That is the third mercy. Although he didn't have the opportunity to start the next chapter of his life, he did a great job of closing this first one. He died doing what he loved - exploring nature. That's the fourth mercy. And his death was quick - probably too quick to be afraid or to feel pain. That's the fifth one. Sixth is that he has been gone from home for the past three years so unlike the experience of other parents who suddenly lose a child, I wasn't in a rhythm of life with him just yesterday. Similarly, his 25 classmates had just been through a process of saying goodbye to the graduating seniors - as the seniors said goodbye to them, though they expected to see one another again. Seventh is that fishing is a demanding activity and one of the things it demands is complete presence. Although David and I were completely swamped in grief and anguish the first couple of days, the fish and the crew continue to need us and when we're there, we must focus on the actual task at hand. This has allowed the reality to enter in smaller doses. And eighth, if he was to die in an ocean this summer, I am grateful that it wasn't with me during the fishing season. I feel cowardly admitting that and I am very very sorry that my sister had to shoulder the burden instead, but at the same time, I am grateful.
It turns out that doing the right thing is what matters in the end.
I'm not sure how much I'll be able to post through the rest of the season. Perhaps the crew will fill in for me...
Friday, June 29, 2012
June 29: So that's why the stern is low
Another fishing day - we set at 7 AM, picked up by 2:30. Today put us over 6000 lbs. The idea popped into my head today that the season will be 4 days late. Nothing scientific about that - just the knowledge that it's darned cold and the water is darned cold and it feels late. We discovered the almost miraculous polypropylene glove liners 10 years ago or so (even when our hands are wet, the glove liners keep them warm - and I have Reynaud's Syndrome) and until this season, it has been 10 years since my fingers have stung from the cold. It's cold.
Fishing picked up a little bit today, but still, it wasn't enough to stay out for throughout the tide. When we came in between the set and the flood pick, I found the power converter that Maeve brought back from King Salmon and yippee!! Internet again!!
We planned to go out 1 1/2 hours before the tide turned, but actually only had about 30 minutes - partly because we were slow in getting out, but largely because the tide book was wrong again. This is a problem - we depend on the tide book and it's usually pretty accurate - to about 15 minutes. Except this year, it's been off by more than an hour. Today, the tide turned almost
an hour before we expected. We can feel it when it starts to turn - the net stops swinging north - the direction of the incoming tide - and begins to swing south, the direction that the water goes when it runs out. During that transition, it's called "slack water." There's a "high slack" and a "low slack," when the tide is changing direction. We are most acquainted with high slack, when the nets really does become slack.
Since it wasn't a particularly busy tide, Roger had a chance to work on the power pack in the New Boat - and I had a chance to learn a little about it. It runs, but then it stops. The initial diagnosis was water in the carburetor. I learned how to check the fuel filter, drain the fuel bowl, and then remove the bowl and blow carburetor cleaner up there to unblock the jet (?). That helped a little, but it died again anyway. Roger and Jeff began to suspect a sparkplug problem. They swapped the sparkplug off the powerpack in the Bathtub (I wouldn't let them take it from the Ambi) and... that seemed to fix it. When the crew went into town later, they found a whole box of powerpack sparkplugs in the net locker. Yay! Maybe by tomorrow, all the equipment will be working. And I'm happy to say that it doesn't seem so much like a magic box to me anymore. Maybe I can learn about equipment.
David has been concerned for some time that the stern of the New Boat is riding too low and he suspected water in one of the air pockets. I've thought it was just all the equipment back in that corner - the powerpack and the roller are on the same side, and there is a Pacer pump over there as well. But it felt lumbering to him. So today while we were in there trying to learn from Roger, I saw a black disc in the front of the air pocket - it would be there to cover the hole through which the outboard controls are installed and run to the console. I asked if the disc could be removed. David saw that it unscrews and... water came pouring out. Many many pounds and gallons of water poured out and he pumped out the rest. That New Boat is almost frisky the way it bounces around in the water now.
Even though we delivered the high water pick and again as we picked the ebb, there were still 25 fish or so at the end that we all carried in. David brought us in as far as he could in the Ambi and we jumped out with salmon in hand (like in the old days - though then we usually carried three fish per hand, and all the way from the outside site) Sarah got this shot. In Naknek parlance, we are "packing fish."
The crew, led by David, decided to tackle the home pack now. Often, we leave it to the end of the season and that's a pretty stressful experience. Today isn't the day I would have picked for that, but they had the energy, so they went in with probably 25 or 30 reds (sockeye) and 4 or 5 kings (it was a good day for kings) and they processed for our homepack. Sarah was a faithful photographer. The Montana crew created a fillet line
while the coastal part of the crew (David, Sarah, and Jeff from the west coast, Evan and Roger from the east coast) bagged and sealed the salmon. 
I'm usually on the fillet line so I've never really paid much attention to the effort involved in the sealing process. But when I've done it all myself, I've noticed that it takes about twice as long as I expect because of my limited perspective. Sealing it takes time - probably about as much time as filleting it.
Then, after sealing all the fish up, we have to spread them about the freezer so they will freeze quickly (we learned the hard way that they don't freeze fast enough if we just pile them up). But during the heat of the home pack part of the season, when we spread them around the freezer, we inconvenience others who use the freezer. Plus, there is the little problem of people taking our homepack home with them. So here is Chris, laying out fish in a place he hopes is both out of the way and out of sight.
We go again in the morning - 8 AM, in 9 feet of water (at the low water mark). That probably means too much water for us to push set. However, the current shouldn't be too swift - it'll be coming in from a 6' hold up to an 18' high. With 12 hours to cover that ground, it won't be moving as fast as usual. So if it is a deep water set, unless the wind is blowing hard, it shouldn't be too stressful. We'll know in the morning. Meanwhile, this is what we have tonight, with the late-breaking news that an aerial survey by Fish and Game has detected 600,000 salmon in the Kvichak river. That is great news for many reasons. And one thing it means is that the Kvichak river will be open to drift fishermen, spreading the fleet out a little bit. A little less pressure on us...
Fishing picked up a little bit today, but still, it wasn't enough to stay out for throughout the tide. When we came in between the set and the flood pick, I found the power converter that Maeve brought back from King Salmon and yippee!! Internet again!!
We planned to go out 1 1/2 hours before the tide turned, but actually only had about 30 minutes - partly because we were slow in getting out, but largely because the tide book was wrong again. This is a problem - we depend on the tide book and it's usually pretty accurate - to about 15 minutes. Except this year, it's been off by more than an hour. Today, the tide turned almost
an hour before we expected. We can feel it when it starts to turn - the net stops swinging north - the direction of the incoming tide - and begins to swing south, the direction that the water goes when it runs out. During that transition, it's called "slack water." There's a "high slack" and a "low slack," when the tide is changing direction. We are most acquainted with high slack, when the nets really does become slack.
Since it wasn't a particularly busy tide, Roger had a chance to work on the power pack in the New Boat - and I had a chance to learn a little about it. It runs, but then it stops. The initial diagnosis was water in the carburetor. I learned how to check the fuel filter, drain the fuel bowl, and then remove the bowl and blow carburetor cleaner up there to unblock the jet (?). That helped a little, but it died again anyway. Roger and Jeff began to suspect a sparkplug problem. They swapped the sparkplug off the powerpack in the Bathtub (I wouldn't let them take it from the Ambi) and... that seemed to fix it. When the crew went into town later, they found a whole box of powerpack sparkplugs in the net locker. Yay! Maybe by tomorrow, all the equipment will be working. And I'm happy to say that it doesn't seem so much like a magic box to me anymore. Maybe I can learn about equipment.
David has been concerned for some time that the stern of the New Boat is riding too low and he suspected water in one of the air pockets. I've thought it was just all the equipment back in that corner - the powerpack and the roller are on the same side, and there is a Pacer pump over there as well. But it felt lumbering to him. So today while we were in there trying to learn from Roger, I saw a black disc in the front of the air pocket - it would be there to cover the hole through which the outboard controls are installed and run to the console. I asked if the disc could be removed. David saw that it unscrews and... water came pouring out. Many many pounds and gallons of water poured out and he pumped out the rest. That New Boat is almost frisky the way it bounces around in the water now.
Even though we delivered the high water pick and again as we picked the ebb, there were still 25 fish or so at the end that we all carried in. David brought us in as far as he could in the Ambi and we jumped out with salmon in hand (like in the old days - though then we usually carried three fish per hand, and all the way from the outside site) Sarah got this shot. In Naknek parlance, we are "packing fish."
The crew, led by David, decided to tackle the home pack now. Often, we leave it to the end of the season and that's a pretty stressful experience. Today isn't the day I would have picked for that, but they had the energy, so they went in with probably 25 or 30 reds (sockeye) and 4 or 5 kings (it was a good day for kings) and they processed for our homepack. Sarah was a faithful photographer. The Montana crew created a fillet line
while the coastal part of the crew (David, Sarah, and Jeff from the west coast, Evan and Roger from the east coast) bagged and sealed the salmon. 
I'm usually on the fillet line so I've never really paid much attention to the effort involved in the sealing process. But when I've done it all myself, I've noticed that it takes about twice as long as I expect because of my limited perspective. Sealing it takes time - probably about as much time as filleting it. 
Then, after sealing all the fish up, we have to spread them about the freezer so they will freeze quickly (we learned the hard way that they don't freeze fast enough if we just pile them up). But during the heat of the home pack part of the season, when we spread them around the freezer, we inconvenience others who use the freezer. Plus, there is the little problem of people taking our homepack home with them. So here is Chris, laying out fish in a place he hopes is both out of the way and out of sight.
We go again in the morning - 8 AM, in 9 feet of water (at the low water mark). That probably means too much water for us to push set. However, the current shouldn't be too swift - it'll be coming in from a 6' hold up to an 18' high. With 12 hours to cover that ground, it won't be moving as fast as usual. So if it is a deep water set, unless the wind is blowing hard, it shouldn't be too stressful. We'll know in the morning. Meanwhile, this is what we have tonight, with the late-breaking news that an aerial survey by Fish and Game has detected 600,000 salmon in the Kvichak river. That is great news for many reasons. And one thing it means is that the Kvichak river will be open to drift fishermen, spreading the fleet out a little bit. A little less pressure on us...
June 28: Things I take for granted
I think and hope that this will be the last day with such limited Internet access. Even though I haven't really gotten used to having Internet access on the tundra - it was only ... 5 years ago, maybe, that this became possible - I have become frighteningly dependent on it, and it's actually quite fragile with many potentially weak links.
The cabin needs to have electricity. We've managed that with a generator, solar panels, and three big batteries in my loft with a spider's web of wires leading to them from the solar panels and leaving them to the inverter and the DC lights.
Then the inverter has to work, and the socket it plugs into that attaches to the battery. The photo shows the inverter and the brown plug that has the Internet antenna and router on it. It is sitting on the battery charger which is attached to the battery in case the panels can't keep up with the demand on the batteries. When we run out of battery juice, we run the generator to power the devices and to charge the battery. When we do that, we move the brown plug to the strip powered by the generator, so as not to draw from the battery as we charge it.
Then the antenna needs power to receive a signal - that was the most recent replacement (which I hope is the last fix for keeping us connected this season). Then the signal needs to make it back into the cabin, either to the computer or to the router to be picked up wirelessly by everyone's devices. Of course, the router and the devices also present opportunities for disruptions. There are many links in this chain that can be broken and I find it surprising that even knowing that, it is easy to come to assume that we'll have access. Now that we seem to again, it feels like luxury; by tomorrow, it might start to feel standard again.
In addition to Maeve's trip to King Salmon yesterday to get the replacement power converter, we fished and I'm very happy that Sarah is now in service as a photographer. When we come in after initially setting and running through the nets, we return to the nets before the tide turns. The Bathtub is the easiest boat to move if it goes dry on the beach, so that's the one we run in with. Here we are, ready to go back out again.
When we are out there, sometimes if we're not too cold and we don't have much time before we need to go through again or it's almost time to pick up the nets, we just clip on to each other and hang out. This is when we learned the depth of Evan's sea shanty and Billy Joel songs and other secrets about one another. Except for the sea shanty and Billy Joel secret, what is revealed on the water, stays on the water (usually).
It was almost time to pick up the nets. When it's slow (and the fishing has been slowly increasing), we'll look for ways to entertain ourselves, like racing through the net with one skiff starting at the outside end and the other starting at the inside end, racing to get past the middle.
The cabin needs to have electricity. We've managed that with a generator, solar panels, and three big batteries in my loft with a spider's web of wires leading to them from the solar panels and leaving them to the inverter and the DC lights. Then the inverter has to work, and the socket it plugs into that attaches to the battery. The photo shows the inverter and the brown plug that has the Internet antenna and router on it. It is sitting on the battery charger which is attached to the battery in case the panels can't keep up with the demand on the batteries. When we run out of battery juice, we run the generator to power the devices and to charge the battery. When we do that, we move the brown plug to the strip powered by the generator, so as not to draw from the battery as we charge it.
Then the antenna needs power to receive a signal - that was the most recent replacement (which I hope is the last fix for keeping us connected this season). Then the signal needs to make it back into the cabin, either to the computer or to the router to be picked up wirelessly by everyone's devices. Of course, the router and the devices also present opportunities for disruptions. There are many links in this chain that can be broken and I find it surprising that even knowing that, it is easy to come to assume that we'll have access. Now that we seem to again, it feels like luxury; by tomorrow, it might start to feel standard again.
In addition to Maeve's trip to King Salmon yesterday to get the replacement power converter, we fished and I'm very happy that Sarah is now in service as a photographer. When we come in after initially setting and running through the nets, we return to the nets before the tide turns. The Bathtub is the easiest boat to move if it goes dry on the beach, so that's the one we run in with. Here we are, ready to go back out again.
When we are out there, sometimes if we're not too cold and we don't have much time before we need to go through again or it's almost time to pick up the nets, we just clip on to each other and hang out. This is when we learned the depth of Evan's sea shanty and Billy Joel songs and other secrets about one another. Except for the sea shanty and Billy Joel secret, what is revealed on the water, stays on the water (usually). 
It was almost time to pick up the nets. When it's slow (and the fishing has been slowly increasing), we'll look for ways to entertain ourselves, like racing through the net with one skiff starting at the outside end and the other starting at the inside end, racing to get past the middle.
Thursday, June 28, 2012
June 27: Sarah arrives! And a day in the fishing life.
I’m writing this at 4 AM before we get started. I have to confess that sometimes, when it’s dark and cold inside and outside and I can hear the wind blow, it can be difficult to face whatever wet, cold challenge is coming.
6:45 AM. Back in from the set and the first run though. Not many fish. We were there in time for Roger to clean the battery terminals before the boat started rocking vigorously. To do that, he had to detach the powerpack for the roller because the battery is pinned under it and some of the bolts holding the powerpack in place are inconveniently located to say the least. But the Ambi’s outboard started all morning without any difficult, the New Boat ran well, and the Bathtub seems to be well in service.
There was a moment after Roger fixed the New Boat and had the audacity to think that everything might be running well as the Bathtub was ferrying him back to the Ambi… and the Bathtub's outboard died! It was only a disconnected fuel line. However, that led to Roger to hypothesize a law of nature that goes: at all times something of ours must be broken. He deduced, then, that the trick is to make sure that that thing is not crucial to our operation, which led to the idea of a sacrificial piece of equipment – like a powerpack in the Grayling. Desperate times and desperate measures…
We tried a new approach to the running set: attaching the net’s anchor line to the stern of the boat and stretching the boat toward the inside buoy, then stretching the boat’s anchor line farther toward the inside buoy. The idea is that the crew will stand in the bow, reeling in the anchor line as the net comes out the stern. The advantage of that approach is that it gets the prop out of the way of the anchor lines, which have a tendency to catch the prop and then it’s a regular mess. It semi worked for us, but we didn’t control the exit of the net carefully enough so as Roger was trying to get the anchor up, the stern of the boat was swinging around, pulling more net out of the boat. I didn’t think about all that net swirling temptingly around the prop so I was surprised when I put the outboard into gear and wrapped it up with the net. Argh. We all had to jump out – the water was only up to our waists, which made this tide a good one for an experiment. Roger was holding the bow while Patrick and I spent a minute or two trying to untangle the net from the prop. Aware of the quickly rising tide, I decided to use the knife that is stored on the handle of the powerpack to hack away at the mesh to free the prop. Groan. A significant future mending project. But we freed it and push set the rest of the way without enough time to experiment further.
I think that approach could work, I just need to control the speed of the exit of the net from the boat to give the bow crew time to pick up the anchor. Now that David has perfected it, he declares, "I'll never do another push set."
We’ll go back out at 8:20 AM to pick through before the tide turns.
We decided that the Ambi crew would devote itself to mending the gigantic hole created by hacking at the web that was caught in the prop. The actual mending task, though somewhat tedious, is nevertheless soothing and rewarding when the hole disappears. And when a fish gets caught in the mend? It feels like success! I’m not so sure how rewarding it is for the crew whose job it is to hold the net (normally people use net racks for the purpose) or fill the net needle. So when the tide was almost out and we had four more fish in the boat, even though I would have loved to have kept Roger’s and Patrick’s company, it seemed wrong, so they walked in to deliver the fish and I continued to mend. It took a total of 8 hours of mending. It was a big big hole. This is what the mending twine looks like. Someone rolls it onto the spool and then it's a process of finding the right place to start and tying knots.
While we were out there, mending, David went into town to pick up Sarah. I was so glad to have her here. She came up when she and David had just started dating and it was here that I decided that she fit right in. She was a little afraid of the skiffs, but she didn't let that stop her. At the end of the season, we were taking the skiffs in to be pulled up, winterized, and stored till next season. It was very very windy. She was walking out through the water toward the skiff and took a big wave, right in the face. Her eyes blazed a little, she shook the water out of her face, and kept coming. I knew that she has what it takes. In addition to herself, she brought us some vegetables! Here is the dinner Maeve made us on the night of Sarah's arrival. 
We had another moment of Internet access today, but it looks like the transformer that powers the whole device might be dead. It smells bad, and that’s coming from a fisherman.
Just before bed, the new strategy for a running set is to string lightweight line between the buoys. It will serve three purposes: 1) keep the buoy in place; 2) give us a line to follow, away from the anchor line; and 3) give us something to tie the net to temporarily if the current takes the net and we can’t reach the buoy. We’ll try it out in the morning. 6:30 AM opener. Up at 5. Good night.
6:45 AM. Back in from the set and the first run though. Not many fish. We were there in time for Roger to clean the battery terminals before the boat started rocking vigorously. To do that, he had to detach the powerpack for the roller because the battery is pinned under it and some of the bolts holding the powerpack in place are inconveniently located to say the least. But the Ambi’s outboard started all morning without any difficult, the New Boat ran well, and the Bathtub seems to be well in service.
There was a moment after Roger fixed the New Boat and had the audacity to think that everything might be running well as the Bathtub was ferrying him back to the Ambi… and the Bathtub's outboard died! It was only a disconnected fuel line. However, that led to Roger to hypothesize a law of nature that goes: at all times something of ours must be broken. He deduced, then, that the trick is to make sure that that thing is not crucial to our operation, which led to the idea of a sacrificial piece of equipment – like a powerpack in the Grayling. Desperate times and desperate measures…
We tried a new approach to the running set: attaching the net’s anchor line to the stern of the boat and stretching the boat toward the inside buoy, then stretching the boat’s anchor line farther toward the inside buoy. The idea is that the crew will stand in the bow, reeling in the anchor line as the net comes out the stern. The advantage of that approach is that it gets the prop out of the way of the anchor lines, which have a tendency to catch the prop and then it’s a regular mess. It semi worked for us, but we didn’t control the exit of the net carefully enough so as Roger was trying to get the anchor up, the stern of the boat was swinging around, pulling more net out of the boat. I didn’t think about all that net swirling temptingly around the prop so I was surprised when I put the outboard into gear and wrapped it up with the net. Argh. We all had to jump out – the water was only up to our waists, which made this tide a good one for an experiment. Roger was holding the bow while Patrick and I spent a minute or two trying to untangle the net from the prop. Aware of the quickly rising tide, I decided to use the knife that is stored on the handle of the powerpack to hack away at the mesh to free the prop. Groan. A significant future mending project. But we freed it and push set the rest of the way without enough time to experiment further.
I think that approach could work, I just need to control the speed of the exit of the net from the boat to give the bow crew time to pick up the anchor. Now that David has perfected it, he declares, "I'll never do another push set."
We’ll go back out at 8:20 AM to pick through before the tide turns.
We decided that the Ambi crew would devote itself to mending the gigantic hole created by hacking at the web that was caught in the prop. The actual mending task, though somewhat tedious, is nevertheless soothing and rewarding when the hole disappears. And when a fish gets caught in the mend? It feels like success! I’m not so sure how rewarding it is for the crew whose job it is to hold the net (normally people use net racks for the purpose) or fill the net needle. So when the tide was almost out and we had four more fish in the boat, even though I would have loved to have kept Roger’s and Patrick’s company, it seemed wrong, so they walked in to deliver the fish and I continued to mend. It took a total of 8 hours of mending. It was a big big hole. This is what the mending twine looks like. Someone rolls it onto the spool and then it's a process of finding the right place to start and tying knots.
While we were out there, mending, David went into town to pick up Sarah. I was so glad to have her here. She came up when she and David had just started dating and it was here that I decided that she fit right in. She was a little afraid of the skiffs, but she didn't let that stop her. At the end of the season, we were taking the skiffs in to be pulled up, winterized, and stored till next season. It was very very windy. She was walking out through the water toward the skiff and took a big wave, right in the face. Her eyes blazed a little, she shook the water out of her face, and kept coming. I knew that she has what it takes. In addition to herself, she brought us some vegetables! Here is the dinner Maeve made us on the night of Sarah's arrival. 
We had another moment of Internet access today, but it looks like the transformer that powers the whole device might be dead. It smells bad, and that’s coming from a fisherman.
Just before bed, the new strategy for a running set is to string lightweight line between the buoys. It will serve three purposes: 1) keep the buoy in place; 2) give us a line to follow, away from the anchor line; and 3) give us something to tie the net to temporarily if the current takes the net and we can’t reach the buoy. We’ll try it out in the morning. 6:30 AM opener. Up at 5. Good night.
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