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Hanson Island Winter 3

Hanson Heartbeat

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The windows creak and groan. The world outside them is pitch black but I know tree branches the shape of withered arms stretch their wood clad fingers toward the cabin’s walls. The ocean pounds. It sounds so close I expect the next wave to come barreling over the porch and set us adrift in the sound. It’s the first storm of many, I’ve spent the summer dreaming about them. There’s something in the forty knot winds and blasting rain that’s soothing, secure. Hunkered down with the fire roaring and the cat asleep on the back of the couch. Just as long as the boat’s ok where it’s tied up in the back of the cove. It is isn’t it? I should go check.

By morning it’s subsided. The low pressure monster taking a deep breath, preparing for the next exhale. Harlequin ducks poke their multi-colored heads out from behind the rocks, Sea Lions return to the haulout, Herons again perch on the worn out kelp that has been buffeted by waves for the last 12 hours. And like all the critters, we poke our heads out our door. All the roofs are still in place, the lab still humming along. All that’s changed is the growing collection of fallen branches and golden fingers of the Cedar trees that populate and soften the forest floor.
harlequin
If only the rest of the world was like this. Half a day of insanity and turmoil before everything returned to it’s relaxed state. Humpbacks in the pass, seals munching fish, deer scavenging for the kelp that just couldn’t hold on anymore. But human nature doesn’t work like this. Every day some new scandal flashes across the screen. It is the quintessential train wreck. I want to look away so bad but can’t. My stomach tightens as I scroll through article after article, my heart pounding against my ribs, eyes becoming glazed and unfocused.

How has it come to this?

Assault, repealing amendments, threats of political violence, the laundry list could go on for pages. Dear God, what century is this?

I step out onto the rocky face opposite the lab. The point here sticks out into Blackney Pass just a little further, but the difference is noticeable. Sea lions cruise by, calm and serene. They’re exhalations are like small explosions, as if there’s something stuck in their throat. After watching them gulp salmon whole it wouldn’t be a surprise. But it’s just business as usual for the pinnipeds. Eat salmon, have a nap, yell at your neighbor on the rocks.

Six big boys swim past not ten yards off the rocks. Even from the relative safety of the point I stiffen. I’ve spent enough time in a kayak to know these guys make me uneasy. I’ve been followed, growled at, and watched them zoom inches below my seat, feeling the kayak rise and fall as they passed. But they seem as unsure as I am. They stop off the rocks and we stare into each others eyes.

They’re a comical looking animal when you see them straight on, bobbing like corks. They have this perpetual look like they’re always surprised. Like the monster just jumped out of the shadows in a slasher movie. I wait for them to dive away and leave me be. But they stay. The curious magnetic quality of sea lion dynamics occurs, more and more appear out of nowhere. Appearing from their hidden trap door on the ocean floor. Seven, eight, nine, ten. We speak without making a sound.

There calmness unsettles me. I want to scream at them. “Do you realize what’s going on? Do you know what could happen on November 8th? Didn’t you read what he said now?”

The group blinks in polite puzzlement before disappearing beneath the waves. Thirty seconds later they’re back. My breathing is unsettled. I went for this walk for two reasons. To harvest mushrooms and leave the rest of the world behind for a bit. You’d think that’d be easy on Hanson Island, but it isn’t. There’s a sense of helplessness being so far away from it all in times like this. There’s nothing you can do but refresh the news and pray. I stare at the sea lions and they snort in my direction, nostrils flaring.

 I wish I could be more like you.

Wish I could be content with some salmon and a smooth rock to lay my head. Though I’m glad I don’t have to watch for a black pointed dorsal coming up behind me all the time.

    “So be like us,” they answer. “Just let go.”

    “I wish I could.”

    “It’s easy.”

    “I wish it was.”

    “Stop wishing and do. Control what you can control. Chop some wood, watch us swim, count the humpbacks. Be present.”

The sun streams in through the clouds. Vancouver Island is hidden but the clouds in front of it sparkle with late morning sun. There are chocolate pancakes in my belly. I write fifteen feet from the ocean. An ocean in which, right now there are two seals, a sea lion, and a humpback visible (who I should probably photograph and ID). I’m in control of our power, our fresh water, and some of our food supply. My heat comes not from propane but wood. I am in the most beautiful place on earth. If I cannot let go here, where can I?

I think of the miracles of this world, of this place. That humpback will soon leave for Hawaii. A 3,000 mile journey without a Lonely Planet book or compass. He or she will hit it square on the dot. No questions asked. Amazing. I memorize the beauty in the sad eyes of the harbor seal and the bouncing optimism of the Harlequins. The prehistoric cackle of the heron, the Pterodactyl incarnate.
heron
Breathe, be still, be present.

I smile, inhaling salt air and high tide. My hands run up and down the trunk of a Cedar tree. I close my eyes, and feel myself, at long last, let go. Surrendering to the pulse of the island.

Photos By Brittney Cannamore

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Gustavus 2015

The Spirit Walker II

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That night he lay in his tent, flat on his back, watching the flimsy ceiling growing darker and darker as the sun vanished for its brief summer intermission. For the first time in decades he was scared to close his eyes. It was not fear of bears or the mystical kustaka that held his eyelids open but his own mind, a terror at what would happen to be transported again. The minutes moved leisurely by, apathetic to the knot of tension in his stomach and the anxiety in his head. As the first tendrils of morning light began to materialize Reed could fight it no longer, his eyes shut, blackness enveloped him, and his spirit left.
It was loud here. The foul smell of rotten fished filled his nostrils, his body crushed by the squirming masses on either side. The roars and barks of his neighbors seemed to travel from his ear flaps down his spine, the sound waves of the deepest calls rumbling in his chest. But he could breathe easy here. And when he opened his mouth he felt a deep bellow radiate from his chest, rushing up his wind pipe, past his massive canines and into the throng of brown fur surrounding him.
There was no peace here and he hated it. Couldn’t understand how those around him could sleep in the noise and smells that seemed to be their own living organisms. He looked across the passage to the distant beaches and rocks. It looked peaceful and quiet, perhaps there was even salmon. That was how haul outs started wasn’t it? One brave pathfinder seeking something bigger, better, more. He was that pathfinder, that rebel.
With a gigantic heave he leaped clear of the rocks, the sound of his peers echoing in his ears before being muted by the concussion of his splash. He let his body sink beneath the waves, worshipping the silence and peace. Finally he flapped his long flippers and felt his body glide forward. The water flowed smoothly past his long whiskers as he rose back to the medium of breath and life, thrusting his nose above the surface and exhaling.
The passage was not wide, surely it would take less than an hour to swim, and he lolled near the surface, rolling onto his back, letting the sun warm his outstretched flippers before turning back on his belly to swim a few feet more. Everything was quiet and still. A voice drifted across the water as he rose above the waves, orientating. There was his face, a hand outstretched pointing toward him, mouth open in exclamation. For a wild moment he considered swimming over in greeting, than the water exploded.
He felt his stomach burst, his spine snap, his body helicopter, his human face cartwheeling before his eyes. With a feeble splash he hit the water, saw the muscled black and white mass of supremacy dive into the ocean beside him. Desperately he swam for the shore, his breath coming in gasps, electric shooting pain radiating down both flippers. He had to make it. Had to reach the rocks, start the new rookery, prove it could be done. Behind him he could hear them breath, saw a flash of white slide beneath him, saw the fin cut the water beside him. And in the kayak he sat there. Helpless, unrecognizing, accepting that to live meant to die. That he was a living sacrifice so that his predator could live to swim another day. He closed his eyes, paddled furiously, and braced for the next strike from below.
The searing pain in his gut brought him back to consciousness. His chest heaving, his arms held out above him. still paddling furiously. But the pain was in his stomach, not his lungs. Where the orca had hit him? Where he had hit himself? Where he had watched the orca hit the sea lion? Were all three of them true? Were any of them? Light filled the tent as he unzipped the sleeping bag, pulling his wool shirt up to his neck to stare at his undulating belly. A great bruise covered his lower abdomen, shades of purple, blue, and yellow sprawled across his skin. With a shaking hand he brushed the wound and pulled his hand back as if seared. It was tender, as if he’d been head butted by a massive animal.
Reed brought both hands up to his eyes, rubbing them as if to clear his mind, to exorcise whatever sorcery had inhabited his body. He was alive, he was Reed Brown, 70 years old, male, and human. Not sea lion, not orca, human. As his life faded, the bay seemed set on absorbing what was left of it into its very being. Somehow the thought settled him, calmed him. He saw himself not as a visitor, or passerby, but a living and vibrant family member of the land he cherished. He took another steadying breath; feeling the ache flow from his lungs to his stomach, and unzipped the tent, on tenderhooks for whatever else the vision may have left for him.
But the stretch of bay was innocent and unassuming, and Reed swallowed his breakfast of oats and raisins without tasting a bite. As he paddled away from shore he glanced into the water, shining emerald today in the partly cloudy skies and let his mind drift, imagining the black and white thunderbolt rocketing toward daylight, the exhilaration of the hunt, the terror of the collision, the necessity of it all.
Reed looked ahead toward Tlingit Point where it stood at the base of the two arms and paddled on, pushing the fantasy and nightmare of swirling, unseen creatures from his mind.
He made good progress as he paddled resolutely onward, stubbornly insisting on paddling the full 65 miles from Bartlett Cove to Margerie Glacier at the northern tip of the West Arm. The paddling did what the medication had never been able to do and he once again began to feel invincible, half a century younger, pushing the ocean behind him with every stroke. The sun moved across the sky, dipping for an innumerable time beneath the Fairweather mountain range. Still he paddled on, savoring every stroke, ever riverlet of water that fell from his paddle’s blade, marveling at the perfect vortexes that materialized behind him as his paddle churned the surface. At long last fatigue reemerged from the muscles in his back and shoulders and he succumbed to the limitations of his body, bringing the kayak to rest near Tidal Inlet. The clouds had fallen away, leaving the sky the palest of blues in the late evening light. Eschewing the tent Reed curled up beneath the limbs of the alder and faded into sleep.
He awoke early, feeling surprised at his dreamless sleep. With the practiced movements of countless mornings he devoured breakfast and continued his vigil up the bay’s timeline of his life. He slipped past the “the bay the moose swam across,” the “mountain where the wolves howled,” and finally past, “the beach where she said yes.” Here he stopped in mid afternoon sun, walking the beach toward the massive glacial erratic. When he had asked it had stood at the top of the tideline. Fifty years later the rising land had pulled it into the meadow, the bay, like life, never stops changing.
But it would take more than her isostatic rebound to hide the memories Reed held here. He found the small groove in the rock where he had kneeled, holding out the small gold ring to her, could still see her face glowing even as the rain fell in torrents, their rain jackets like their lips pressed tightly together. Here he uttered his first words since setting out.
“I’ll see you soon, beautiful,” he whispered, a withering hand running down the rock, squeezing a hand he couldn’t see or feel.
Unable to stand in this place a moment longer he turned and sprinted for the kayak and pushed clear of the beach, apathetic to the crunch of fiberglass on the sharpened rocks as he paddled hard for Russell Island, Tarr Inlet, and Margerie.
He paddled in silence the rest of the day, watching the brush shrink away to bare rock that stood creased and scratched by the receding ice, leaving its own graffiti on the land’s geologic story. The east side of Russell Island was alive with life. Dozens of Marbled Murrelets bobbed in the sheltered water of the island, their peeps filling the landscape with the flawless communication of the mated pairs. With practiced grace they dove together only to be separated below by the allure of herring. Breaking the surface they would call to one another until their voices brought them back together. Not until they were side by side would they dive again, filling their bellies until they could barely fly, skipping over the water like flat stones, struggling to gain the lift that would take them to their homes in the old growth forest.
A small sandy spit crawled into view, an inviting bed of moss and shrubs just beyond the tide line. For the countless time Reed brought his kayak onto the beach where so much had happened. It was the beach with too many names to number. But this time there was no ambling bears, no screeching heron, no comfort in his empty tent. He sat up into the early morning hours, listening to the murrelet’s call, watching the lovers come together, suspended on the ocean’s surface tension for a second that lasted eternity, and than dive together once more.
The clouds crawled back over the mountains, the respite was over, and rain began to fall again, rainwater collecting in pools along the creases in his jacket. Finally he submitted to the call of the thermarest, and crawled into the shelter of the tent. Exhausted his eyelids fell like stones through the ocean and he felt his weightless body float through the soft tap of raindrops on the roof, tasting the sweet liquid on his tongue.
He bobbed gently on the water’s surface. The smallest ripple buffeting his body like four foot seas. But he glided with practiced grace over each crest, watching the horizon and mountains disappear from sight in the trough before coming into sight as the ocean held him above. She was near, and his head darted in precise and practiced movements back and forth, even in a crowd of their kin she was unmistakable with her lone patch of bright white feathers along her back.
Reed called out her name, his voice a singular note that peeped through the crowd of feathers, wings, and beaks, seeking out the only one who would know it was him. She answered instantly, the sound serenading his spirit and he paddled vigorously towards her, calling out her name again and again.
“Reed!” Came the reply, “Reed!”
And he saw her. Bright black eyes dilated with excitement as if they’d been apart for months in lieu of minutes. A tiny wave sent him barreling into her, their tiny torsos bumping together as he let out a final call of greeting. For a minute they sat still, staring into one anothers eyes, letting the higher powers of tide and current take them where they wished. Below their friends dived in the wake of herring that fled beneath the surface. He gazed into her face, his 8 ounce body feeling even lighter in her presence. With another call they dove, wings outstretched, brushing gently against each other they plunged into the frigid medium, lightening flashes of herring zipping past their vision. He dove away from her, turning hard to the right, following the fish down, weaving through schools of surging salmon, their eyes wide in surprise, constantly awaiting the next threat, the next predator.
A minute later, a single herring clenched tightly in his beak, he allowed buoyancy to pull him back to light. Even with his mouth full he called, the sound muffled by the dangling fish, saltwater dripping from its tail back to the ocean, the tiny ripples spreading out into the crowded cove. In a sudden rush she broke the surface next to him, her beak empty and he hurriedly forced the fish into her mouth, imploring her to eat, to nourish the egg steadily growing inside her. She let out a tiny bleat of thanks and nestled against his feathers, the current and tides resuming their control over their lives.

Hanson Island Winter

Collect Experiences. Not Things

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For the first time in years I want something that I cannot have. The number in my bank account is woefully too small to buy the house that Brittney and I have been salivating over for the past two days. It’s not a mansion with enough square footage to fit a basketball court. Nor does it look out over some ridiculous ocean side vista. It’s just a humble, quaint, hobbit approved house on a tiny road in Gustavus, Alaska. And I can’t have it.

Since graduating from college, I’ve been rebelling against the status quo. Bouncing from seasonal jobs, spending months in New Zealand and Canada and loving every minute of a life that we seem to create one step at a time. But as we’ve wandered, we’ve begun to feel the need to have a home base. A place where kayak gear, camera equipment, and pets can pile up without fear of how on earth they will fit in the Nissan Tetris in a few months. So we looked up houses in Gustavus and began to covet really bad. Houses are never an impulse buy. Thank God. Because I was looking all over the screen for the, “buy now” button like it was ebay.

We took a little crash course in down payments, mortgages, and interest rates. What else are you going to do a 9 pm on an island where you represent 66% of the population? Slowly we began to accept the hard truth that the dream was a long ways away. Though it didn’t stop us from scrolling through the photos one more time (so much natural light!).

In Victoria, British Columbia is the Phillips Brewery, the only microbrew beer I can find in Alert Bay’s tiny liquor store. Besides having a Peanut Butter Stout, which is freaking amazing, the inside of their bottle caps have the phrase, “collect experiences, not things.” For the first time in a long time I want, “things,” or more accurately, “thing” in leu of, “experiences.” Weird.

Of course, if we hadn’t been jet setting, going to baseball games, and had, you know, worked the past seven months, we might be able to make it happen. But I sit in a house perched on the rocks over Blackney Pass. A storm beginning to build after a calm red sky morning. Yesterday was monopolized by calling orcas, sea lions bark and roar at all hours of the day, and the stars pop with no interference from streetlights. Sure, I could be sitting in that house today and I’m sure we’d love it. We’d also have a thirty year financial commitment that would really make it tough to live up to the website’s namesake.

I’m sure someday we’ll truly be ready for that sort of endeavor. But when we do, I want there to be no regrets, that it’s done on our terms, on our time. That we don’t sit in our house with fantastic natural lightening and wonder what could have been. Someday we’ll have a doormat that says, “Cannamore” and a sign that says, “all guests must be approved by the cat.” But until than, I’ll savor the adventure, the sweat, the and cursing as I try to cram one more duffel bag in the back of the car.

Collect experiences, not things. Experiences after all, don’t need a house to be stored in.

Hanson Island Winter

When the Outflow Arrives

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Wool socks, down jackets, long underwear. All them and more have been deployed to combat the latest northeasterly outflow that has descended upon Hanson Island; freezing the intertidal pools, our waterline, and our toes. We had the bright idea last night of dragging our mattress downstairs from the loft and putting it at the base of the fireplace stacked with bark and fir, Penny’s house placed snugly in the corner. And while the cold seemed to paralyze us in the early morning light, numbing any motivation to rise from the comforters, the Orca’s seemed impervious to it all.

Shortly after nine we begin to hear the faintest Transient calls in Johnstone Strait, leading us to the lab where the temperature hovered just a couple degrees above freezing. After just half an hour of sporadic calling the sounds vanished as the whales disappeared into acoustic parts of the strait unknown. Silently I gave thanks that all I had to do to catch my breakfast was crack a couple eggs over a skillet. I don’t think I could catch a harbor seal in this weather.

But despite the cold, the view atones for it and than some. The palest of blue skies and the whispiest of clouds frame the mountains on Vancouver Island, their peaks clinging grimly to their traces of snow, illuminated in the weak December light. The solar panels greedily suck in the beams’ power, giving our generator a belated reprieve. Blackney Pass sits immobile, or at least as still as it can as the tides pull the waters north and south cutting trails in the surface like tiny intersecting roads. It’s still odd to have Orca Lab so quiet. Besides the occasional Transient celebrating its catch the speakers tell the story of cycling hydrophones, insistent tugs, and at low tide, the cries of eagles as they soar past.

The beauty and peace is priceless and there is little more soothing or funny than ten Harlequin ducks bobbing into the cove every morning chirping at one another as they cut tiny wakes through the water. They dive one at a time, vanishing in the blink of an eye, their bodies barely visible in the dark green water, wings flapping incessantly. When they come up for air they shoot clear of the water like little rubber duckies bouncing on the surface, tiny bits of food clasped in their beaks.

But the deep waters of Blackney feel empty with no Guardian or KC or any of the other humpbacks that felt like friends in September, leaving us with the thirty odd sea lions down the beach for company. Today they huddle like a single sentient being on their rocks, stinky but warm I’m sure. It leaves us with nothing left to do but read, drink tea, and chop wood at a frantic pace before running back inside to the warmth of the fire that has been dancing for three days straight. The thermal pane windows have been worth every penny, thank you: Paul and Helena.

Patches

Patches: Part 1

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The rocks were crowded and wet with the waves of the ebbing tide still lapping at their base. It smelled too, with dozens of sea lions jostling and roaring for position, climbing and stomping on each other, all trying to reach the drier and exposed portions above. But it was an uphill battle in more ways than one. It was hard to climb on their flippers, and the sea lions above outweighed the ones below by at least 500 pounds. Obesity can have its’ luxuries.

At the edge of the rock, clinging to the edge inches from the icy waves was a young male sea lion named Patches. He lay curled up in a small nook that kept him from being launched off by his neighbors who seemed determined to uproot the three big bulls five feet above. One made a vain leap for the ledge, only to be met by a deafening roar and six inch teeth. The younger sea lion retreated unceremoniously down the rock, tripped, and fell the last few feet back into the ocean, plunging ten feet before floating for the surface.

Sea lions don’t roll their eyes, but if they did, Patches would have. What was the point? In an hour the tide would shift and begin to flood, and an hour after that they’d all be back in the ocean. It was better to settle for a nook with a little tide pool and a barnacle sticking in your back as long as you got some sleep. Not that Patches ever got much sleep. There was always someone clambering over you, convinced that the next rock over was the one for them. Here you got by on quick cat naps, got back in the water, and fed as much as you could. Gaining weight was the only real way to move permanently up the rock.

Patches rolled over to see his remaining rock mate, still eye balling the ledge above and the three massive bulls occupying it. What luxury! No barnacles scratching you, or boat wakes washing you off, just four hours of glorious sleep. Despite the ferocity of the previous assault, his rock mate seemed dead set on trying to succeed where his partner failed. He moved tactfully and casually, waddling awkwardly toward Patches, as if he had nothing more in mind than a stroll down the angled rock into the water. Carefully he put his flippers on a carved step leading up and slowly pushed himself up until he was eye level with the ledge.

The nearest bull would have none of it, but this time he struck. Patches felt his eyes widen and his body recoil as the teeth struck the young male, causing specks of blood to fall onto the rocks, only to be washed away by the sea. The young sea lion leaped for safety only to land directly on Patches’ wound.

The gash was small but nasty, about six inches in diameter with a single puncture wound in the center along the left side of his back. After days of nursing it and keeping it away from the sharp rocks and the aggressive teeth of his rivals, he felt the wound split again, a shooting pain reverberating along his back. Patches roared and snapped at his rock mate who, despite being larger, had clearly had enough for one day and leapt into the water, his belly flop sending a wave of water over the rock and Patches.

Shaking his coat dry, he tried to go back to sleep, but the attempted thievery from the first two sea lions had made the mature bulls above uneasy, they were unwilling to share their rock with anymore upstart young males. With a bellow and a crash that shook the whole rookery, one of them leaped down beside Patches, charging at the small nook he had folded himself back into. With a yelp of surprise and fear Patches dove for the ocean, feeling the sting of salt water on his cut. Diving deep he paddled hard away from the rock and his aggressor, finally rising to the surface 100-feet away.

He was sick of the whole game. Why they all had to haul out in the same stupid place was ridiculous. Wouldn’t it be better if they just distributed themselves evenly? It’s not like the British Columbia coast line lacked for rocky intertidal zones. And yet here they gathered, piled in massive brown heaps, crushing each other to death while the big ones above roared and slapped the ground with their flippers, letting all who could hear know who was in charge.

Tired and hungry, Patches swam slowly north along the shoreline. Not far from the haul out was a peaceful cove. Many of the sea lions avoided it because of the humans that lived there. But Patches didn’t care. It was obnoxious the way they ran down to the rocks and made weird gargling noises at him, but they were harmless really. And the harbor seals would chase fish into the cove, and there was nothing easier than a fish trapped on a rock face. The thought cheered Patches considerably, and he swam faster, past the last rookery, toward the tiny cove with chum salmon on his mind.

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.”