Tag Archives: fishing

The New Chapter

Heart Medicine

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“Anyone here going to Gustavus?”

We cluster around the Carhartt-clad pilot, ballcap pulled low over short brown hair. He glances at a single sheet of people – the closest we get to a boarding pass around here – and calls last names like it’s the first day of school.

“Taylor, Taylor, Higgins, Parkins… Cannamore?”

We acknowledge our presence with nods. The paper disappears into a back pocket, and a key card opens the sliding doors. This is what amounts to security at Alaska Seaplanes. No TSA. No separate bag for your four ounces of liquids. No random bag checks or standing with arms above your head. Hell, you can carry your rifle onboard and barely get a second glance. It is almost moose season after all.

We ramble across the tarmac and squeeze into a plane with plywood floors and one giant propeller.

“Safety kit is in the nose hatch,” he calls over his shoulder as seatbelts click. “The back door has two latches. Open the top door by flipping the latch and turning the bottom handle like a car door. There’s a fire extinguisher under my seat.”

Flying to Gustavus costs as much as flying to Seattle. A fun piece of trivia that delights tourists until it’s time to drop their credit card on the table. After three weeks ping-ponging across southeast Alaska on the National Geographic Quest, I’d pay just about anything to be home.

The prop catches and roars to life—earbuds in my ears, volume up. The Lonely Forest belting out an anthem that speaks of home.

“Give to me miles of tall evergreens, the smell of the ocean, and cool mountain breeze.“

Juneau disappears beneath my feet. It has been several lifetimes since I called this place home. I still want to love and cherish it, for it is a beautiful place. How many other communities have more miles of hiking trails than paved roads? My stomach gives a little lurch that has nothing to do with the turbulence and confirms I still have some healing to do with that particular place.

The plane swings west, and Admiralty Island rolls past, wingtips level with the 3,000-foot peaks clad in September fog. Hank has teased the Admiralty Island alpine for years, describing an alpine so lush that the deer cluster in numbers too tantalizing to comprehend. I trace ridgelines, nose pressed to the glass.

Next year. It’s always next year.

Fatigue creeps in. I am tuckered and worn out. How many days off have I had since May? I replay the summer as Lynn Canal whitecaps replace Admiralty’s muskegs. The season’s workload looked reasonable in February. I said “yes” to everything I could, locking up weeks as a naturalist for Lindblad and multiple kayak trips. I added the paychecks in my head, stared at my bank account, shook my head, and added it again. I wanted to reach November feeling financially secure(ish) with the freedom to run somewhere warm if the opportunity allowed. Mission accomplished. I think.

Point Couverdon. Past the south end of the Chilkat Mountains. Porpoise Islands. Pleasant Island. The runway beckons. A little community hidden in the trees. Millions of tons of glacial clay beneath our feet and crisscrossed with the prints of bear, wolf, moose, and crane. Come January, a sunny beach may be preferable, but right now I want to drink coffee on my couch and watch the rain fall.

“I just wanna live here, love here, and die here… Give to me miles of tall evergreens…“

Breanna left the house spotless. I didn’t know a sink could be that clean. Minerva scurries down the ladder, and for a wild moment, I think it’s because I’m home. But it’s 5 pm, and niceties can wait until after dinner. I toss my backpack upstairs and collapse on the couch. Deep breath in. Deep breath out. This space hasn’t felt haunted in a while. I hear faded laughter echo off the walls and can feel that the space has been lived in and loved. Minerva licks her lips and permits me the honor of scooping her up and putting her on my chest. She purrs and nuzzles, wet food breath in my nostrils.

“You’ve had quite a few tenants this summer,” I tell her.

A consequence of the packed schedule has been I’ve been gone more than I’ve been home, and a rotating cast of house sitters have rolled through, spearheaded by Breanna, The Shabin’s current caretaker. Minerva has been the star of Swamp Castle Estates as Breanna and I have christened these four soggy acres.

“I didn’t know I liked cats.”

“I don’t like cats, but she’s the coolest.”

“Can we reinstall the Shabin’s cat door so she can come visit?”

I squeeze the ball of fluff. Three months together at the Hobbit Hole certainly knit us together, but it’s sweet to see her growing fan club and watch her adapt to the rotation of people who have occupied this space. We lay there for a long time, savoring the absence of anything pressing: no questions to answer, no hikes to lead, no presentations to give. My mind drifts to the potatoes in the garden, the cranes winging their way south, and the buzz of a fishing reel’s drag as spritely coho zip across the Bartlett River.

***

We tramp the familiar trail in a steady rain. If Gustavus held a fantasy football-style draft for the best Bartlett River angler, I might take my hiking companion with the first overall pick. Kyle Bishop’s chest waders are stained with mud, clay, and fish blood. Every year, we promise to spend more time together and carve out room in our schedules for dinner, drinks, and Mario Kart tournaments.

Next year. It’s always next year.

But come September, we’re inevitably drawn to this trail, this river, those coho. We can go months without exchanging a word or text and then chatter like squirrels when the cottonwood leaves turn yellow. We badger each other for life details and snigger at the passing out-of-towners lugging a five-gallon bucket to hold their theoretical catch.

Fifty minutes to the first decent fishing hole, but the place we really want to hit is further up. We weave past a well-mannered brown bear and drop our lines into a long, deep channel the coho favor. My rod tip bends, line runs out, and I see the beautiful flash of silver for the first time. The salmon breaks the water and thrashes. The hook sinks deep—elation skyrockets. I guide him to the shoreline, and the fillet knife ends the fight. I run cold, wet fingers down the scales, marveling at the miracle that is home.

The one place that offers the life I want happens to be where I can afford to live. Rain runs down my face, and the river’s cold presses against my waders. Kyle hoots, and white water materializes 30 feet in front of him. The season’s just beginning. The first of many pilgrimages to this spot. The first of many benedictions and prayers to the animals that feed us and bring us together.

I place the coho in the grass, reset the line, and let the hook sing across the water.

The New Chapter

The Full Lentfer

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One cat is curled on my hip. The other has decided my head is his preferred mattress. But when the alarm goes off, they both shoot off the bed like they were blasted by a cannon. It’s dark. I don’t want to. I let my eyes slam shut again and savor the warmth, the feeling made all the cozier by the patter of rain on the metal roof.

Feet out of the bed, wool socks. Crummy Carhartts, ragged Smartwool. Bartlett River Day. Salmon day. By mid-September millions of bright, silver, coiled balls of muscle are pulsing up countless southeast Alaska rivers. The region runs on them. The lifeblood of man, animal, forest, and the ecosystems they inhabit.

How many salmon does one person need to sustain them for a year? It’s a new question, but I know the answer is more than the twelve currently sitting in mason jars or the freezer. It was Zach and Laura’s idea to start before the sun had risen. Before even civil twilight we planned to hit the trail, letting our headlamps and the muscle memory of dozens of previous walks guide us to the river we know so well.

The Bartlett River mouth

We’ve come a long way from our first foray up this river together in 2017. There had been four of us that day too. Me, Zach, Laura, our buddy Patrick. Now Patrick lives in Anchorage. And the three of us feel like the last ones standing in a manner of speaking. Zach and Laura weren’t even engaged on that first hike up the river, their non-profit programs more theories than the vehicles for change they’ve become.

Now, they’re married. And four-month-old Salix has been left with Grandma for the morning in the hopes that we can recreate our Bartlett River Miracle. The fourth spot is Tal, young and wide-eyed. 26, a filmmaker making his second trip to Gustavus this summer to shoot footage for Zach and Laura’s Tideline Institute.

I pull in front of the house where he’s staying to find him waiting by the porch, backpack and fishing pole in hand. For 5:00 in the morning, he’s a ball of energy. A ray of innocent sunlight set on fire by this wild little hamlet clinging to the edge of glaciers and the outer coast.

“Where’s your sweetie?” He casts around the Honda Pilot as if expecting her to leap out of the backseat and yell surprise.

I put the car and gear and bump along the dirt road. “She’s not my sweetie anymore.”

***

This trail gets longer every year. 30 minutes to the mouth of the river. 50 minutes to the first good fishing hole. An exercise in patience. I came up yesterday and grinded my way to two fish. They’re in there. I watched them jump and rocket from one hole to the next. But no matter what I tossed in the water, nothing grabbed their attention. I’m more anxious than usual to get back up there, bring home the legal six, and feel their weight fill my pack.

Few things light Laura up like the prospect of coho. And the two of us practically sprint up the trail. When Salix was born, she and Zach had vowed that it wasn’t going to stop them from living, exploring and doing the things they loved. They hadn’t. With Salix in tow we’d explored the Mud Bay river valley, camped overnight on the Porpoise Islands, and delved into the Point Carolus watershed. But it’s hard to land a ten-pound coho and hold a baby at the same time.

The muddy trail along the river is strewn with the remnants of spawned-out pink salmon. Their sad little bodies turning mushy and rotten as they disappear into the soil. More than three-quarters of the nitrogen the Tongass Forest requires comes from the ocean. It comes from salmon struggling back up their streams only to spawn or be caught. Their bodies are dragged through the woods or consumed and deposited later deep in the trees. In this case, it’s important that a bear does indeed shit in the woods.

For a couple of weeks in July, I wondered if I could continue to live here. I feared the memories would be too sharp with every trail, beach, and bend in the shoreline containing memories of a love and life gone. But no. These streams and shores have been woven as deep into my heart and life as any love. I could no sooner walk away from the bounty of salmon, berries, deer, and garden veggies than remove my left hand. Hunt, catch, gather, and grow. A pressure canner rattling into the late night after a long day on the river.

We reach the first fishing hole at 6:15. The four of us, some bear scat, and a scattering of canine tracks. I free the hook from the pole and let it sing across the water. A sense of place. The intimate and hard-earned knowledge of this river.

Six years ago, I couldn’t tell you where to go on the Bartlett to find salmon. What was too high up. What was too close to salt water. Now? When I meditate, when I need a happy place, I float above this river, tracing its bends and shorelines like the lines in my hand. If the coho aren’t here, there many other places to check.

The line dances. The pole bends, pops, and bends again. There’s the flash of silver. Addicting. The head violently shakes back and forth and the coho bursts from the water, my pink lure hooked tightly in its mouth.

“First cast!” I yelp. Zach and Tal are still walking up the trail. The look on Tal’s face speaks of wonder and amazement. That places like this can still exist. That a bounty of food and magic are just an early alarm and hour hike away. I bring the fish to shore and guide it on the bank. I unsheathe my knife and look into its face. They are such beautiful animals. Brilliant sterling silver on the bottom and sides, an alluring emerald green on top.

I slide the knife beneath the gill plate and say in just above a whisper, “Thank you fish. For your gift. For sustaining me, my friends, and family through the winter. Please go peacefully into the next life.” There’s a spurt of blood and the fish quivers.

I don’t whisper my benediction because I’m afraid someone will hear me. But because what has happened is just between us. Only death can pay for life. I can choose to say that this fish “chose” this, that he offered himself to me. But he didn’t. He saw something pink and flashy, and instinct told him to bite it. His own DNA betrayed him. Now he’s food. Gratitude and joy mix with guilt.

It’s a bonanza. How many coho are in this little hole? Hundreds? Thousands? Lines whir, drags are adjusted, and fish go sprinting up and down the river with pink lures trailing from open mouths. We’re in them. The sort of day we dream about all winter. It’s Christmas morning and we can’t unwrap our presents fast enough.

I catch number six at 7:15. Six fish in an hour. We have a name for that, “The Lentfer,” in honor of our neighbor Hank Lentfer who routinely outfishes, hunts, and gardens us. With the other three still fishing, I start gutting and processing the catch. By the time it’s done, we have all hit our limit. 24 coho line the bank. How humbling. A reminder of the power we can yield, the food… and the destruction we can wreak in such little time.

We permit ourselves a couple of photos for posterity, for these days don’t come along very often. I keep glancing at Tal’s face. God, he’s really nine years younger than me. When did 35 feel old? When did 35 happen? I swear I’m still 23. I feel my position in life shift. I can no longer have that look of wide-eyed innocence and glee at the sight of 24 fish in 90 minutes.

But I can have a profound sense of joy and comfort, a grounding sense of place and home. There are precious few places left that afford this privilege. I have found one. It has wrapped me in its foggy and moisture-laden arms and held me tight. Told me to never let go. To trust it and I will never go hungry. Will never be cold. Will never be alone.

We load our packs and begin the slow walk home, talking of filleting and smoker loads and Lord of the Rings on in the background. It isn’t 2017. I will never again experience the Bartlett River Miracle for the first time. But I can share it. I can revel in it. And through Tal’s eyes, I can celebrate the sensation again.

Gustavus 2018

The Changing World of Elfin Cove

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Greg Howe seems to think the outboard is fine. I’m certainly not inclined to argue. He’s been here four decades, I’ve been here four days. If he thinks the engine is reliable enough to get us across South Inian Pass I’m going to believe him. But I’ve had an outboard die on me. Twice it’s put me on the rocks, once in British Columbia, another time north of Juneau. They make for great stories, but with an east wind of 25-knots and the open ocean an arm’s length away, I’m not ready to revisit the stomach dropping sensation of a coughing Yamaha.

Greg and Jane Button’s boat the Via has a covered helm with a bench seat for two people and another one directly behind that faces backward.

“Wear your rain pants. You’ll get wet.”

Brittney and I huddle on the seat and watch the Hobbit Hole disappear behind us. With no hesitation Greg takes us into Inian Pass, and for who knows what time, makes the 20-minute trip to Elfin Cove. In its heyday Elfin Cove was a commercial fishing hub. From there the treasures of the northern panhandle was at your feet. Salmon all summer, Kings in the winter, halibut right off the dock. Greg waxes about days with forty fishing boats in the Hobbit Hole’s inner cove. For not the first time I wonder if I was born too late. Trolling Inian Pass and Soapstone Point circa 1955 sounds like Nirvana. It’s a tale of tragedy told and retold up and down the coast. Even in Alaska, the last frontier, the land of opportunity, the land of inexhaustible natural wealth, locals can feel the spoon hitting the bottom of the bowl.

Elfin Cove is a shadow of its former self. The tale of west Icy Strait is not all that different from Northern British Columbia where we spent the last three winters. A place defined by fishing that has been strangled by dismal returns and a changing climate. Homesteads and outposts used to dot these places. Now they are only relics of an age come and gone. Another victim of the good old days. The Hobbit Hole and Elfin Cove stand as guardians of another time. And Elfin remains mostly as a seasonal town populated by sport fishing lodges.

The run across Inian Pass is eye opening. Steep cliffs are barren of vegetation thirty feet above sea level, marking the height merciless winter waves can hit. We hug the shoreline of Chichagof Island. I point across the pass to the mainland and the boundary of Glacier Bay National Park. The Brady Glacier glows in the gray light of winter. The open ocean, the swell visible as a steppe ten feet high awaits any foolish enough to run the outer coast. Hands down it is the wildest scene I’ve ever laid eyes on. How have I lived ignorantly at the step of this country for years and never ventured this far? This place is in my blood already.

We slip into Elfin Cove, a long narrow cut in the Chichagof Island shoreline where the wind funnels down the steep hillsides and adds frothy whitecaps to one-foot waves. Most of the buildings are up on pilings and hover over the water on high tide. A few are built into the mountainside, but it is a place of boardwalks. There are no cars here, there never will be. But beyond the charm of the place is the eerie vacancy. Clues of a previous grandeur are everywhere. A school, a post office, houses pockmarked up and down the inner cove. But there are no people.

That’s not entirely true. There are five people here in winter. The shop is open three hours a week. 1-2, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. As we walk along the boardwalks I hop between feelings of awe and the eerie silence of another small community gone to seed. We pass fishing lodge after fishing lodge boarded up with No Trespassing signs hammered to the fence. Like their clients, the owners are South for the winter. They’ll arrive in the spring, fish the dickens out of Cross Sound, and then take their fish and money back South with them. It doesn’t feel right, the consumption of so much taken by so few. Greg’s an old commercial fisherman, a champion of Alaska’s fisheries, a commodity he calls, “the people’s resource.”

“Very few can afford to come up here and fish for a week.” he explains. “And those that do take more than they can eat. It gets thrown out in the spring, they come back, and do it all over again. More people can go to Costco and buy a fillet of Alaskan Halibut once a week. Which one is the better use?”

There’s a look of nostalgia on his face. Memories of people in Port Althorp and Gull Cove and Mud Bay. Of fishing boats working The Laundry and Soapstone and stopping at the Hobbit Hole for dinner. Like much of the old west, the big east has chewed it up and swallowed it. Three times he tells stories of the fishing life, the culture of “Icy Straits.” It’s a tradition I would love to see honored. Commercial fishing shaped southeast Alaska, for better or worse. It’s an occupation that brought many to Gustavus, Hoonah, Elfin Cove, and Pelican. It was our lifeblood, a means that opened the door to many of the current residents of this place.

Back at the Hole I poke through the detritus of the homestead. Countless fishing buoys, crab pots, line, and hooks fill a storage shed. There’s such a contrast between what this place was and what it will become. A place that feeds the bellies of humanity to one that feeds the mind. But indirectly, I believe the goal remains the same. To make people fall in love with this place. To keep them alive, and to convince the world that we cannot survive without them.

Gustavus 2017

The Bartlett River Miracle

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September. In years past it’s meant digging out the crawlspace, filling the car, and early mornings in ferry terminals. But not this year. Or the year after this one. Or the next one. Now I’m digging out the fishing rod, filling the freezer, and spending mornings on the Bartlett River Trail.

Glacier Bay is a paddler’s park. There’s only a handful of maintained trails. The most popular of which is the Bartlett River Trail in Bartlett Cove. Just a few hundred yards from the lodge, it endures hundreds of footsteps as nervous visitors armed with bear spray make the mile and a half track to the mouth of the river.

But at seven in the morning in mid-September, we have the whole trail to ourselves. The speedometer on Dr. Zachary Brown’s pickup is busted, insisting that we’ve been going 115 m.p.h since he picked up me and Patrick Hanson. But car maintenance is never at the forefront of a Gustavian’s mind. Today we’re after something much more valuable. The three of us and Zach’s partner Laura Marcus park at the trailhead, grab our gear, and push into the woods. Our boots slosh through the mud, the only sound the creaks of backpack straps, the rattle of squirrels, and the quarrels of gulls.

We climb down a low sloping hill, an artifact of a different age, a glacial roadmap. Grand Pacific was here. Sitakaday, the ice bay is no more. But with loss comes life. We’re surrounded by Hemlock, Spruce, Devil’s Club, Blueberry, Hedgehog Mushrooms, dozens of species of moss and lichen. So much life, in large part thanks to the Sockeye, Pink, and Coho that run up the river every year with metronome-like precision. And I’ve come to take some of that life. We all have.

I spend my life in communion with this masterpiece, but as an observer. A silent watchman in the back of the room. But with the fishing pole clutched in the hand, I’m going to supplant myself in the middle of the performance. I’m no longer an audience member, I’m a player, and my role has the potential for catastrophe.

2017, a year that has infused those with a love of quiet places and open spaces with such terror, has a handful of marvelous anomalies. Bristol Bay in southwest Alaska had a banner year in the most abundant Sockeye fishery on earth. And the Coho of southeast are following suit. There are literally too many returning Coho for all of them to spawn. The commercial fisherman, sea lions, seals, bears, and eagles cannot eat them fast enough. Two vestiges of hope in a world where every environmental paper seems to be a harbinger of doom.

I lead our little quartet out onto the river. We’re a bunch of novices. Patrick carries a brand new rod he’s never casted and Laura landed her first Pink on the Salmon River the other day. Despite growing up in Alaska, neither Zach or myself are bursting with angling expertise. In fact I’d spent the better part of the month casting and retrieving with little to show for it. Thankfully Kyle Bishop took pity on me in a way few in the competitive world of fishing would have. He showed me his favorite fishing holes and advised me on everything from his preferred lures to proper vacuum packing techniques. From his generous shared knowledge and my tally of two Coho, I’m somehow the most “experienced.”

The first few times I’d fished the Bartlett I’d succumbed to an all too common mistake. As soon as I hit the river I’d begun to cast with the logic that all the fish must pass this spot. But Kyle had taught me differently. Don’t give in to temptation. Keep hiking, and when you think you’re there, hike a little more. And so we keep going, another forty minutes along the river bank. The trail shows signs of other commuters. River otter, black bear, coyote, and wolf. But the only occupants this morning are dozens if not hundred of Mergansers that lift off from the river as one, white wings shining in the early light.

We hop a tiny stream and past a wide river bed where hundreds of Pink salmon are spawning, carving long divots in the gravel stream to deposit eggs and sperm so there children can one day do the same. There work finished, they have nothing left to give. The flesh flaking from their bones, they succumb to the unrelenting current and drift back down the river until coming to rest on the bank.

At last I stop at the spot Kyle insists has been on fire all year. We begin the repetitive task of casting again and again. The high pitched whirl of line off the swivel, the gentle plop of the lure on the river, the click-clack-click-clack of the reel. For an hour we experience nothing but near misses. I nearly get one to the steep river bank but just as I reach for the salmon, the line snaps, taking the fish, my lure, and gear with it. We spread out up and down the shore, Zach disappears behind a big stand of Spruce. I’m situated between Patrick and Laura who stand about 200 yards away.

A huge splash comes from the river a dozen yards and front of Laura. I look over to see her reeling furiously, but nothing else comes of it. Assuming she either lost it or it was just one of the many leaping Pinks, I prepare another cast.

“David? Can you come help me?”

I drop my rod and, caution to the wind, grab my fillet knife and begin to run down the river towards her. There is a tension in our voices, a gritty determination with a tablespoon of excitement and, yes, fear. It’s a big fish. A big beautiful fish. And it runs on her, again and again making a break for the far side of the river. It’s undulating body sends up flashes of beautiful silver. But he’s no match for the rod of humanity. And at last he has nothing left to give. I hop down the bank ankle deep in water as she drags her catch over.

“Keep the tension on the line.”

I grab the line just above the Coho’s head and reach into my thigh pocket for my needle nose pliers. They’re small but heavy, and the thin handle gives me confidence I can land the blow that will end the fight once and for all. But before I do, I stare into his eyes.

Fish always look surprised. Those wide, unblinking eyes, mouth slightly open like someone has just jumped at them from a dark corner. I wonder how the hook feels in his mouth. How tired he must be to stop fighting. How I’m about to finish a miraculous story that started four years ago in this very stream. How this fish has been bucking the odds since before it was born when gulls were scooping up the eggs around him. How many nets, mouths, and lures it had dodged until, a dozen miles from home, he bit down on Laura’s. So close. There’s still time.

I swing.

The pliers make a dull hollow sound on his skull like a finished loaf of bread. I swing again. And again, and again. He stops squirming. I slip my fingers into his gills and out his mouth and with a final heave drop him on the river bank at Laura’s feet.

“What a beautiful fish.”

They truly are. Brighter than silver dollars on the sides and bellies, emerald green with black speckles on top. They seem to be fluorescent, the skin changing color as you turn them in the light. I explain how to cut the gills to ensure he bleeds out and doesn’t suffer.

“I want to do it.”

I expect nothing less of her. But before she does, Laura lays her hands on his head, whispers a few words of gratitudes, and with steady hands cuts the gills. I pull her lure out of his mouth and we set him on the grass.

“He may thrash a bit more,” I tell her, “but don’t worry, it’s just his nerves firing. He’s not suffering.”

Down the river the other way, a splash erupts in front of Patrick. Another one. I take off down the trail and the saga plays out again. Fight, let it run until it’s too tired to do anything but float in the current, bring to shore, lift, hit, gills, grass.

Patrick kneels before the fish and runs a hand down the lateral line. He strokes the fish, his head bowed as if in prayer. He cuts the gills, and sets it in the grass. We want every fish to die with dignity and grace, as little pain as possible. Each gift, each miracle treated with the upmost respect. Does it matter how an animal dies? I think so.

The bite is on. Again and again beautiful streaks of silver break the water. This is just the beginning. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions are behind these, some still queuing up in Cross Sound.

“How amazing that in 2017 there can still be this kind of abundance,” Zach marvels. In a few hours we have eighteen Coho on the river. We also have a three mile hike back. We line the fish up and take a picture to remember them buy. But no one wants to pose rod in hand over our kills. No one has designs of turning them into Facebook cover photos. Before we fill our backpacks, we sit down on the bank and eat lunch.

“I feel like we should say grace.” Says Laura. We agree. “Whether it be God, nature, or just plain luck, we thank you for this marvelous gift, that will sustain us through the winter and has brought us closer together as friends.”

The work is just beginning. Over the next two days we’ll dress, clean, fillet, package, smoke, and can every one of them. We’ll use the back bones for soup stock, take the scraps and sculpt them into burgers. But for now we sit and watch the river flow by and watch the Coho continue to swim by, pushing up against the tide so that, four years from now by God, nature, or just plain luck, we can do this again.

Hanson Island Winter

Waders are for Wimps

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Even off the grid, where hot running water is nothing more than a mystical fantasy, there is luxury. And like everything else around here, it is earned. Balancing precariously on the rocks on the inside of the cove sits an old bathtub. Small towers of rocks on all four corners keep it level, just try not to notice the rusting bottom and slowly chipping paint. But fill her to the brim with seawater and meticulously feed a fire beneath the rusting base for a few hours and viola! Your very own saltwater hot tub.

The orcas vanished on September 17th and we’ve heard nothing from them since. We haven’t been without entertainment though. Just a mile down the beach, on a series of flat white rocks lives our new neighbors. They are loud, kind of smelly, and supposedly, will call the Hanson Island shoreline home for the better part of the winter. The Stellar Sea Lions have been patrolling the shore, sometimes just feet from us for almost a month now, their growls and barks becoming a consistent white noise that we’ve all had to learn to block out. But a strong fall run of salmon have led to several spectacular chases and catches from the neighboring sea lions and harbor seals. The sea lions especially love to attack from below, rocketing out of the water, a salmon clamped tightly in their jaws. Bouncing vertically in the water column they seem to bob like corks as they try to orient their catch so it slides down the gullet headfirst, all in one nauseating gulp.

The salmon scatter any direction they can, seeking shelter in the kelp bed or running into the shallows where the sea lions are hesitant to go. Two days ago we watched a fish, trapped against the shoreline in just a foot of water, while a sea lion circled just off the shallows. Seeing dinner floating meekly in the water I ran off the deck and over the rocks and hovered above the 18 inch salmon. In one move I lunged for it and felt my right hand grasp the base of his tail. With a single flick and a torrent of water, the salmon broke free of my grip and rushed into the kelp bed, willing to take its chances with the pinnipeds. Crestfallen, my pride in pieces I found two more salmon that day, and both times, spectacularly failed to corral them. Frustrated but determined, I found an old blue net in the shed and strategically placed it near the lab. Next time I wouldn’t go unarmed.

Which is how I came to be yesterday, watching the tide slowly fill the cove lounging in the saltwater bath. A sea lion with a large gash on his right flank routinely enters the bay, sometimes surfacing just twenty feet from my tub, eying me with perhaps just a bit of jealousy. A harbor seal, dwarfed by the sea lion we’d named “Patches” follows in his wake like a dog after its owner. I lean back and close my eyes, and hear a splash from the other side of the rocks. Glancing over the small mound I see a sea lion, pacing back and forth his attention directed at the shoreline. Praying for a shot at redemption, I climb gingerly and bare ass naked out of the tub. Paul and Helena were gone, it was just Brittney and I on the island, but nevertheless, my social conscious kicks in and I reach for the only thing I have to cover myself with, a bright pink towel.

Cinching it around my waist I move gingerly down the rocks, feeling their points and spikes stab into my feet. I try and fail to avoid slipping and breaking every bone in my body while still looking for the shadow of the salmon. I reach the water and see it, swimming slowly back and forth, fixed firmly in three feet of water. My heart races, all pain forgotten I run back up the rocks and grab the net and make my way back to the water, pink towel still firmly attached. My return startles the wayward fish and with a flick of its tail, disappears into deeper water. My heart plummets, a fall breeze washes over me and I shiver. Had I gotten out of my warm tub to fail again?

The water laps at my ankles, the net held limply in my hand. I’m about to turn back when the fish returns, moving into the same shallow pool that he just abandoned. Three rocks stand clear of the water on one side and I move as quickly and quietly as I can onto the furthest one, eyes locked on my prey. I reach the third rock and stumble, catching my balance before I fall, but my bumbling, and maybe a flash of pink startles the fish and he again flicks out of the pool. Patiently I wait, wishing I had stopped to put on some actual clothes, goose bumps erupting all over my body. For the second time the fish comes back and begins once again his slow circle around the pool. As slowly as the adrenaline in my body will let me, I dip the net into the pool and wait. The fish circles again, passes the net, and turns his tail to it.

This is it. I drop the net to the ocean floor and watch the salmon turn into the blue netting. I pull the net from the pool and in my rushed movements, the towel falls. For a moment I stand naked and frozen, the fish thrashing in the net now high above the water. How I wish there was a picture. Grabbing and refastening my pink garment I pick my way back up the rocks and reach for the walkie talkie, “honey, I know what we’re having for dinner tonight.”