It All Started With A Fish...

It was spring, and I was so eager to get out of town, to be at Trap Six, to be surrounded by my mountains and ocean and sweet wind and waves and to have some alone time, that I headed out to fish camp before my fishing crew arrived. Tollef made it all possible by offering to help me with some of the lifting and hauling that I couldn’t have done by myself, since he was also going to be in Uganik at that time. We agreed that he would come over a day after I arrived, when I had had a chance to evaluate how the winter had treated things and to decide just exactly what I needed four hands for.

….

Before the great summer salmon migration really kicks in, trying to catch a salmon from the ocean can be challenging, to say the least. But that day, the waters were calm and clear and it felt “fishy.” Now, I don’t claim to have the greatest sixth sense, but after years of intensely focused fishing summer after summer, my internal alarm will sound when conditions feel right. Adelia’s dad called it the “felt sense.” Before skiffing over to her side of the bay, I had faithfully set my short raggedy subsistence net, performing an act most folks don’t get to do anymore: acquiring food straight from the ocean or land. Dinner was either going to be magical or store-bought.

….

The first task at Trap Six was unloading the delicate solar panels from the skiff lolling in the gentle surf to the rocky beach. Moving on to tasks requiring fewer fine motor skills, we hauled up the heavy, kelp covered, slippery mooring anchor, pried the beloved old hot tub out of the low tide ash flats where it had spent part of the winter after the wind had ripped it from land and thrown it into the ocean, tipped up the outhouse that had also been blown over by the winter storms, put up the VHF antenna, and removed the two biggest window boards from the front of the cabin. Our muscles sang with exuberance at this pre-season activity.  

….

The ritual of opening up a fishing site is gratifying work; it’s when we can shed our town skin to begin our dance with nature and our beloved salmon. To get Trap Six set up with renewable energy and mooring to keep the boat safe, to get amenities squared away and bring light into Adelia’s childhood remote home, all before dinner, was intensely satisfying.

…. 

With our work over, Tollef performed a little sleight of hand, removing from his tote a shining, fresh sockeye salmon, a whole wedge of Jarlsberg cheese, and a bottle of red wine. I hadn’t unpacked my food stocks yet, but I had hooked up the propane to the stove, so with a little rustling around, I was able to find some odds and ends that had remained on the cabin shelves over the winter - dried rosemary, pink Hawaiian sea salt, sherry, and a little butter I had brought from town – and bake the ocean’s gift. 

After a winter without fresh salmon, it felt like the world had just given us its most priceless treasure. It was perhaps the best meal I’ve ever had, shared with another deeply appreciative soul. Our conversation was full of joy as we looked ahead to our summer plans and anticipated fishing and living in Uganik. We ate looking out the newly un-shuttered windows at the expanse of ocean stretching 25 miles across to the snow-covered peaks of mainland, Alaska, our whole beings feasting in the openness and spring night light.  We toasted to the fish, to the upcoming summer, and to friendship.

….

Little did either of us know what Uganik Bay and salmon fishing would later bring us: each other.