Fifteen fathoms and counting
Across from me sits a pot of heart and lungs brining in a salt-water mixture. One must continually change the water, adding a dose of salt, until the brine remains clear. The salt sucks out all the blood – until it doesn’t. Then you can eat.
The boat and I have gone to battle against winter. Dog has been an unwillinging companion. We tarped off the wheelhouse, insulated, and moved the boat to the transient dock – with the help of what seemed like the entire dock. Dennis on the EH, Mel from Ked and Cassidy from El Greco pulling on a skiff, Xander hailing from Sound Judgement, perennially there, and of course Marat off the Sunset, in a tizzy because he needed to leave for Philadelphia the following day – and Bella, keeping things tied down. Dealing with issues like having to rewire for a 50-amp breaker instead of two 30-amp, re-plumb, get tied down for the long winter ahead.
Now they are gone – it has been almost a month – and we’ve been doing work on the interior, ripping out the rotten bench, making a pad for the woodstove, and expanding the two quarterberths and closet in the bow into one fo’c’sle studio. A work in progress – with Dog helping out as usual. Better photos on the Facebook page. Today, as I write now, would be perfect for finally popping up through the roof with the chimney pipe, as we finally have a window of weather.
Fifteen fathoms and counting I am into this boat. At times hard to see the surface – especially in the windstorms, 70 mph winds that blow away your sanity. Those Frenchmen who use the Mistral as an excuse for their spree of murders I understand all-too-well. Is blog copy permissible as evidence in a court of law?
My new neighbors are swell. I’ve moved from St. Petersburg to Siberia, let’s say. From the retirement home in Pheonix to Portland in the Eighties. More dogs for Cal to romp with, and the leash law on the dock – really?
Indeed the Monarch has been working double-time to heat the boat. It’s why I should really be getting this woodstove in as we speak. But alas there’s a deer hanging out the window, shrouded in a canvas like a witch out of Macbeth, its two legs extending forward like a sleepwalker. My IPhone has died – dead when I flipped over in a kayak yesterday, when a wave hit broadside as we were paddling in beneath the volcano, another unfortunate story – so alas no more pictures for a bit. And no more texts or calls. An idea which, five years earlier, I think I would have cherished. Now it annoys and frustrates. I don’t like being out of touch with the people I love.
The world turns. Christopher Hitchens is dying. Negley Farson took his final trip aboard The Flame with his wife Eve three thousand miles across Europe from the Lower Rhine of Holland to the Black Sea coast or Romania. I mean things are moving. Things have moved. I feel like I’m doing my best to stay still, inert almost, and, at times, it instills panic.
But enough of that – how about some glorious shots that make it all worth it. Kyle bless and love his heart was kind with his fuel and use of his floatplane and God knows he wanted to whack a deer. So up we went to Cold Storage, above Katlian Bay – an alpine lake named by the father of a friend in town, who called it so because the deer would be kept cold in the back of a valley there. Off we went with Xander, happy as a clam in that floatplane (Hi AOC 🙂 as we took off from the Adak, Kyle working in shifts to get us out there.
Flying in, Kyle pointed out floatplane wreckage in the muskeg. A crushed fuselage. Comforting, as we touched down easily on the water.
We got skunked. Turns out guys had been there a few days earlier and took out five bucks. But we hiked well, enjoyed beautiful country.
And then a few days later we flew north across Peril Strait to South Chicagof Island, and landed on Lake Suloia. The day before we had scouted the area, Lake Rosenberg and Mt. Annahootz, the tallest mountain on the island, and saw mountain goats left right and center. But some idiot had destroyed a bunch of nannies so there was an emergency closure to that season. Too bad. I hear goat tastes good.
On the way back from scouting we found Xander motoring home from Hoonah Sound. Kyle came up behind him, from the starboard side, idled the engines, or engine I should say, at the last moment kicked it in and divebombed the wheelhouse. I got video which is priceless. I think you can see clear back to Xander’s tonsils. We landed and stopped for a visit.
The following day we landed on Suloia, Rick with us now, and hunted all along its borders. At one point, walking along a game trail with alternating bear scat and deer turds, I heard an exhalation heavy enough only for a mammal. I took one step to the right – and out hurtled a deer fifteen feet to my left, a flash of two black hooves disappearing into the cedar fronds and devil’s club.
Kyle saw him, I guess, when he popped out the other side, by the lake. But couldn’t get a shot.
We split up that day. Funniest thing, in comparing stories as we prepared to fly back to Sitka, we all fell asleep at one point or another as we posted up. I fell asleep on a tall moss-covered knoll dotted with what I think are lingonberries. There in the light rain, two moss-covered stumps making a cradle – and there against the ground, waiting for deer, I experienced the most magnificent dreams I could have ever imagined. Involving herons and welding steel, long brown curled hair and a bowl of noodles in an earthenware bowl that slipped between my fingers.
Rick flew out first that night. For about an hour I had that land up there to myself. At first I unloaded the rifle – then reloaded it. The wind came out smooth from the northeast. I considered trying to meditate or stretch, but instead played Scrabble and Flight Commander on my still-working IPhone. The sounds coming from the phone were so strange, in that lessening sun, tufts of whitecaps on the lake, and the wind picking up speed through the muskeg.
The way back this world removed her top. Sitting in the back of the Super Cub – a plane I once heard described as a two-seater kayak with wings – as the sun set, and no photos seemed to make it work, finally making it into town, landing on the glassy, protected water of the sound – it felt good.
More to tell – but I cannot pass up this day of sun, especially after having listened to leaks a few nights previous so long they felt like Chinese torture, one drop after another, plunging into the forehead. And the deer to cut up, vacuum pack and freeze, and holes on the boat that need bondo, tarps that need hanging, the shower drain plugged, and Rick’s new corn and potatoes that need cooking.
As the fishermen down here will tell you – as I am trying to learn, along with so many other things – one must always have a sense of humor.
