Just Another Day Dodging Storms and Raising Babies on a Wild Alaska Tugboat

The winter troll line in Sitka extends from Point Woodhouse on Biorka Island to Cape Edgecumbe, just off the volcano. The season continues from Oct. 11 to April 30 -- or until the quota is filled, whichever comes first.

Southeast Alaskans are on the front line of the fight to protect the Tongass National Forest from logging.

From fall through spring, the fleet of commercial fishing boats here in the panhandle of Alaska stalk winter king salmon. In the mornings prisms of ice sparkle beneath the sodium lights of the docks, where I live on a World War II tugboat with my wife and 8-month-old daughter.

When Brighton Coggins landed in Sitka on June 28, his name was Elizabeth. Coggins was flying from Bethel to Baranof Island to attend the intensive two-week Sitka Fine Arts Camp. This was his first year, and he wasn't sure what to expect.

We'll begin with the boat. Mid-March, a few days after flying in, I woke to a call from a buddy on the docks who told me that the high-water alarm was bleating. Ran down to find water above the floorboards in the engine room. We got a couple of pumps on the boat, and got ahead of the water coming in.

A Senate candidate boasts of a “frostbit” ear and “helmet hair.”

As a resident of Sitka, in southeast Alaska, I’ve worked in the local commercial fishing industry on and off for the past 17 years. This summer I’ll go out on the boat once more, in search of salmon, which have become one of the drivers of the region’s economic recovery.

As with so many debates, the feud over whether to cut or not to cut in Southeast Alaska's Tongass National Forest - at 17 million acres, by far the largest woods in the United States - can be distilled to bumper stickers.

The first time I hunted deer alone in Southeast Alaska, my friend drew me a map leading to a stand of old-growth trees in a river valley. I set off at a trot on a sunny November morning, following a trail along Indian River, which ran heavy with fall rains.

“For a while it was scary. Then it was simply my surfing life.”

Just as daffodils and groundhogs, cherry trees and robins announce the arrival of spring elsewhere, so the sac roe herring fishery spells the end of winter here in Sitka, Alaska. Seine boats with names like Storm Chaser, Perseverance, Leading Lady, Defiant and Invincible begin to appear on our island from points north and south, often rafting to my tugboat here in Eliason Harbor.

Last year, ADF&G announced that just under 29,000 tons of herring would be available to permit holders for the 2012 fishery -- by far the largest quota in the history of Sitka's sac roe fishery.

Frédéric Louis Sauser left school at seventeen for a life of adventure in Russia. He began writing in St. Petersburg while working for a Swiss watchmaker.

How do three carpenters feed an abandoned squirrel? By making him the shop squirrel, of course.

The call came as monumental calls do – in the middle of hanging upper cabinets. “My name is D—, and I need you to build me two walk-in closets using J.P. Morgan’s Library.”

Wallace Stegner spent a lifetime writing about the West; yet he chose to have his ashes scattered on Baker Hill, above Greensboro, Vermont. The town, where Stegner spent more than fifty summers, serves as the setting for his final novel, Crossing to Safety, a story that offers clues to the significance Baker Hill held for the author.

Reflections on joining the Blues Boxing team at Oxford University.

Reflections on the ubiquitous Alaska boots.