We
arrive and leave in the rain. Sideways rain. The beach where we camp,
where the Kenai River enters Cook Inlet, where the mighty salmon swim,
offers no protection from the wind.
And lord was it windy.
I
lay in the tent, with Elias and two wet dogs, listening to the pounding
rain and fierce wind, a sound like radio static and grease crackling in
a fry pan, relentless, endless, and not the postcard of sunshine and
bare toes that I remembered from past years of dipnetting for reds, and
thought: “What the hell are we doing?”
Camping in fowl weather
is no fun as it is, for me alone or with friends, but camping with my
child whose absence of body fat makes him prone to sudden chills and
for whom a cold can turn to pneumonia overnight, and a ritual harvest
can feel like reckless parenting. I can’t count the number of times
Nick and I caught eyes and gave each other that look that says, “What
were we thinking?” Especially when you add two dogs to the mix, one of
whom barks and whines whenever we leave his sight, or if the rope he’s
tied to won’t let him reach us-- pile us all into a four person tent,
filled with wet sand, and its enough to make a grown man cry.
“Our
tent is beautiful,” Elias says when he crawls in it for the first time,
saving Nick and I from packing up and heading home. Elias, our eternal
optimist, finds a smile in the havoc of a storm. Dressed in long
underwear, fleece pants, and rain pants on the bottom and long
underwear, a fleece pullover, fleece vest, wind coat, and rain coat on
top, not to mention his favorite striped fleece hat, we let him venture
out of the tent where his infectious laughter lightened our loads. He
loved visiting the outhouses even if he never really used one, he tried
to catch the seagulls, giggled like mad over the word ‘nuts”, and dug
pits in the sand for us to pretend to fall into on our way to the cook
tent.
All this in the wind and rain with a slow run of salmon along the banks.
We
did see the sun one afternoon, and despite the slow run, we still came
home with 22 fish, and some good-sized ones, but Nick spent hours in
the water, and Thursday, the crappiest day of all, he only caught one.
I
only caught one fish the whole five days. Granted, I spent more time
with Elias and the pups than I did fishing but I spent some quiet hours
in the water, waiting, surrounded by other patient fisher folks,
Alaskans as diverse as they come, an eclectic group of people, all
different ethnicities, ages, and backgrounds, all wearing the same
uniform, waders or hip boots, rain jackets, and hats, all of us hoping
the next fish lands in our net. And maybe we’d be one of the lucky ones
to pull in a king. One woman caught a seventy-pounder and I couldn’t
help but wonder out of the hundreds of nets waiting why hers? I mean is
it luck or fate or timing or equipment or skill? Or is it just standing
in the right place at the right time?
I caught my first and only
fish within my first fifteen minutes of standing in the freezing water,
during low tide, when Nick, Elias, and the dogs couldn’t be out on the
muddy flats with me. This meant I had to kill it by myself. And it was
a big fish, no king, but at least ten pounds. And beautiful.
I’ve
killed fish before-- one or two--but never alone. Never without the
moral support of Nick, or our friend Gavin, to talk me through it.
The
fish flopped out of the net when I dragged it to shore so I dove on
him, coating my fleece jacket with mud. Nick had given me a big rock to
knock him on the head and a knife to cut his gills but they lay in the
wagon twenty yards away. So I crouched there, in the mud, on my fish,
feeling its warmth, unsure how to get the slippery fellow to the wagon.
I decided to tangle him more in the net and drag him to it so by the
time I reached the rock he was covered in silty mud but still flopping
around, fighting to return to the Kenai, to his traditional migration
back to the waters of his birth.
I stood over this
prehistoric-looking creature and apologized for the rock and for my own
inadequacies when it comes to performing a quick kill. I wanted to
harvest this fish to make salmon patties and filets, to fill my freezer
with meat, but I didn’t feel comfortable killing it alone. I worried I
was doing it wrong. Making it suffer more than needed. Did I hit it
hard enough or too hard? Did I cut the gills enough to let him bleed
out or just enough to torment the poor fella? What the hell am I doing
anyway?
I caught eyes with a robust woman named Kim who I met earlier while walking the dogs and she said, “You got a fish.”
“But I don’t know if he’s dead yet,” I said, anxious to pull someone else into this circle.
“Oh
here,” she said and picked up a rock twice the size of mine, walked to
the edge of the wagon, leaned over him, and whacked him good and hard.
“There, he’s dead now,” she said with a smile.
I thanked her, picked up my net, and returned to the water.
“Was that your first fish?’ the man next to me asked.
“No, but it might as well have been,” I said.
The
next three fish that hit my net all got away. And I can’t say I let
them but I cant say I tried real hard to pull them in either--I wasn’t
sure I could kill another, not without someone to be my witness.
And
that was the first day. And I never did catch another fish, even later
when I stood next to our friends, one of whom’s sons volunteered to
kill any fish I caught, and tried to will one into my net. None came.
Audrey caught three as I stood beside her waiting. I grew cold and
tired so I switched with Nick and the moment he grabbed the net he
landed a salmon. Just like that. TJ says Audrey catches so many fish
because she was born in Alaska. I think Nick catches fish because he
was born with an abundance of patience. Gavin caught one, after a long
null period, when he closed his eyes and thought, “I could take a
nap…or maybe I should say a prayer to the fish god.” Bang, one hit,
before he could even articulate his prayer.
I don’t know what
makes a fish swim into one net over another but as I stood in the
frigid water, hoping one may find his way to mine, I couldn’t stop
looking around me at all the different faces, and thinking, we’re all
doing this together. We’re all standing here with the same intentions,
the same hopes. It’s the same feeling I get when I’m at a concert and
thousands of people applaud for the same song. It’s a feeling of unity
that’s hard to find in this disjointed time when it seems we spend more
energy running from here to there than we do on just being here.
In this moment.
When we divide ourselves by our differences instead of remembering we all need to eat supper at the end of the day.
It
was this feeling of being part of something bigger than myself that
even the rain and wind couldn’t spoil. It reminded me why we’re here.
For when we lose our connections to the sources that bring us life and
instead spin in a frenzy of activities, consumption, and information,
there is something irredeemably magical about a slice of time with such
a pure pursuit as harvesting food for the table.
Even when it’s
hard. Even when you’re wet and cold and dreaming of dry sheets and
clean toilet seats. Even then. Especially then.
“It’s a pretty
day outside,” Elias said as I carried him on my back, head bent to the
ground to avoid the driving rain, “Look, Mommy, a boat.”
And
later, when we sat on the shore eating the very same salmon we caught
hours earlier in the waters before us, a rare meal this close to the
source, Elias said, “Mmmmmm, we’re having a good dinner.”
Mmmmmm is right.
Pictures from the trip, almost all taken during the one break in the weather:
(One of three bowls we processed last night, enough for salmon dinners once a week for a year. Thank you fish god for directing some of your school into our net-- and into everyone's net who tries.)
--Excerpted from Following Elias, originally published on Parents.com. Copyright 2009 by Meredith Corporation. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.
SaraSkates wrote:
I came back to your blog to read this a second time today - thank you for such a great story, and message.
7/29/2008 8:44 PM CDT
Following Elias wrote:
Thank YOU Sara for letting me know that you read it not once but twice.
7/30/2008 1:26 AM CDT
gretacamp wrote:
You are so lucky to participate in such an adventure. We all can camp in the outdoors if we choose and remember with a collective, ancestral memory the closeness to the land and water and creatures that keeps us alive. So easy to forget with supermarkets, online shopping, and fruit shipped from New Zealand just b/c it's in season there. But in Alaska, and with the resident right to fish for salmon in the wind and rain, you are lucky to be able to sharpen your tie with the earth and her bounty. This is another gift for Elias, as he continues to give you and Nick the gift of his unspoiled optimism.
Posted by: Christy | 09/27/2009 at 01:02 PM