Take Me to the River

After a few days of fighting the Seattle traffic and talking to Department of Retirement employees who could give a shit, I headed for the water Wednesday night. After a couple of hours standing in the river waving a thirteen foot stick on Thursday, the jaw muscles relaxed, the brow unfrowned and life was good again. Sure it was a hot, humid day, and I didn't get a steelhead to bite, but the smile was back on.

Friday on the Methow with my dad and his buddy Al was also a smile-maker. Yes, it was hot. Yes, we didn't catch a ton of fish. Yes the sky was hazy with smoke. But, hey, this was the first time fishing a river with the old man in quite a long time. We've been hitting the lakes in the tubes the past few years, but there's just that something special about sharing a river that we'd been missing out on.

Reverting Back

The other day, I was hanging out with my buddy, Carew, who was up from Arizona visiting family and friends. He said being over at his parent's place was like being sixteen again, asking to borrow the car. We started talking about how, here we are, in our forties, still feeling like we were kids around our parental units. What is this power they have over us?

Sometimes we just act like kids. This morning, my brother Lee and I were over at our dad's house helping the old man with a little bathroom renovation work. Lee was doing his best to make me laugh, and I was trying to crack him up behind Big Daddy's back. Maturity, right?

Why is this? Lee and Carew both have kids of their own, and I was a step dad for a few years, but here we were reverting back to being the kids ourselves. Out on the river yesterday, the old man was cussing more than I've heard him in a long while. Rather than bust out laughing, like I would have with anyone else, I found myself suppressing the laugh so as not to get Dad pissed off even more. Go figure.

Invictus

Have you seen the movie "Invictus"?
If you haven't, you're missing out.
What do you know about Nelson Mandela?
Unbelievable perseverance.
Gentle strength.
Forgiveness.
You'll want to know more.

Salmon

What is it about watching salmon and steelhead? Love it. Is this just a built-in predatory interest?

I'd like to think it's more than that, some sort of deeper connection. Many native cultures have special beliefs reserved for salmon, maybe they had something figured out that we don't yet. I don't feel the same watching the fish in my friend's coy pond or someone's fish tank. Might be a matter of seeing a wild fish in a wild setting.

Recently, I spent a fair amount of time on my hands and knees just watching a steelhead alevin while fishing a river in B.C. An alevin is a baby fish with a yolk sack still attached to its belly. It will feed off this yolk sack until it's grown enough to get nutrition feeding on its own. Science lesson in the summer? Scary.

I enjoyed watching the little fella much more than any T.V. show I've seen lately. Why?

Here's a video I took in Alaska last week of pink salmon on their way upstream to spawn. See if you can spot the lone chum salmon.

Nomeward Bound

Where to begin? Sometimes you get lucky and are able to gain experiences available to few. The last week and a half was one such experience. I'm a fan of Nick Jans' writing. His stories of living with the natives of Alaska are unbelievably well-written in a personal way. Well, with the help of one old friend and several new ones, I was able to get my own brief glimpse of a truly unique culture.

I've spent plenty of time around natives in the lower 48 over the years, beginning with summers in La Push in the seventies. The Eskimo culture has some similarities to other native cultures, but theirs is a unique life, based on where they call home, and now, the influences of the modern world upon their lifestyles, like four-wheelers, four-stroke outboards, and cell-phones.

My friend, Doug, is the director for a school in Nome that flies native kids in from their villages and gives them choices of all kinds of technical and cultural courses along with experience of life outside their village. This program is almost precisely the opposite of where the test-crazy politicians are taking our schools. Which means the kids actually gain practical and relevant knowledge and skills.

Doug and his girlfriend, Dar, gave me the chance to head out to her family's fishing camp with them for a couple of days. You would have a tough time trying to find genuinely nicer, kinder people anywhere. I'm sorry, but southern hospitality pales compared to Eskimo hospitality.

Do yourself a favor and read some of Nick Jans' work, he does a much better job verbally describing the culture than I ever could. Here's some pictures. And my biggest thanks to the people of Nome and Brevig that gave me a truly life-time experience.