![Alaska 2014: The Best of the Rest]()
by Matthew | Aug 25, 2014 | Alaska
I reach this point every year. I’ve written various posts with stories about our adventures in Alaska, but I’m left with a bunch of miscellaneous photos that didn’t really fit into any other post. And so I’ll share a handful of the leftovers here, with brief commentary.
In no particular order.
Augie mugging for his public, while Robbi does her best to keep a straight face.
Clearly, her best in not enough.
This summer, our resident electrical engineer Daryl installed a wind generator.
I managed to photograph it just as the sun slipped out from behind a cloud.
I probably don’t need to explain what’s happening below, but the detail minded among you might be gratified to know that it involves granola.
Driving the four wheeler in the wet sand gets the axle and undercarriage all covered with salt water. Which causes it to corrode. And so we drive it through the freshwater creek to give it a good rinse.
A boy discovers the pleasures of a life jacket that first just right.
A girl discovers the pleasures of sitting on an idling ATV and gunning the engine.
One day when we were driving along the bluff, a couple of foxes ran with us. They were utterly unconvinced that we presented any sort of threat. They were correct.
Eventually, the foxes ran off, and we had nothing to do but take this selfie.
I had to stop to appreciate the signage on the inside of the men’s room door at the local fish processing plant.
A girl and her ride.
Coming into Anchorage.
A couple of bears made a nightly circuit that cut right through our compound, down our road, and along the bluff below our property.
We awoke to fresh evidence every morning.
Most nights, the kids would tuck into their beds after supper and watch a movie on my computer. Apparently, on the night pictured below, the featured film was especially hilarious to August.
Or perhaps I’m reading too much into his expression, which seems not dissimilar to the one depicted in the scene below, which is exciting, but certainly not funny.
To each his own, I suppose.
After breakfast, we often walked along the beach, sometimes writing cryptic messages in the sand.
Inscrutable words like Alden…
…and Kato.
Our house has no electricity, and thus the only light we get is whatever streams through the window.
I made the stained glass in the upper middle panel back when I made stained glass.
We had an uncommon number of sunny days this summer. Most years, it rains 60 percent of the time and is overcast on 9 out of 10 days.
This summer, more than half of the days were sunny. So we took advantage of it.
One of the kids’ favorite pastimes is riding out into the tundra. Alden is already steering and working the throttle. She’s just not quite tall enough to reach the gear shift. But I suspect she’ll be driving herself in a year or two.
For now, she is content to leap across the holes in the tundra.
It is nice to be up there for a few weeks and really disconnect from all technology and the accompanying urgency.
There’re so much more time for just being and noticing.
Here is a tundra classic: a flounder-print t-shirt.
And here is the unfortunate flounder who volunteered.
We played a lot of Uno this summer. For any of you who loved Uno when you were a kid and wonder when your kids might be ready, Alden (6) and Kato (4), both love it and are able to not only play along but also beat me with frequency.
Here is the “after” picture from the day Alden and Raiden helped with the fishing.
One sunny afternoon, I climbed up on top of the shipping container that doubles as our pantry and lumber storage.
Here’s a view of the main house (upper right) and the Kumajo (with the boarded up window), the building where we store our nets.
Here’s a glimpse in the other direction. That road leads down to the beach. And that odd looking structure is a cabin that we inherited when our family bought the property 37 years ago.
Here is a view from the bluff. In the foreground is the net rack, where we stack the nets for cleaning and mending.
This is another of our handful of residential outbuildings. The ropes are there to keep it from blowing off the bluff.
One of August’s favorite Alaska activities was heading down to the shoreline and chucking rocks into the surf.
Big rocks, small rocks, it did not matter. The pursuit of the splash was the only thing that mattered.
If throwing rocks is your game, it’s awfully hard to fail.
Which means that the boy was frequently gratified.
Perhaps “frequently” is not adequate to capture the persistence of his good cheer.
The gratification was constant and unending.
Still, he felt obliged to approach his task with some degree of guile, as if the only way he would succeed in hitting the surface of the water with his rocks would be to sneak up upon it and strike it unannounced.
Eventually (though usually not before relocating a significant pile of rocks), he would tire of his industry and begin the long march up the bluff.
Did I mention that the march was also steep? What’s a small boy to do when he has so exhausted himself in the act of rock-chucking that he has nothing left to spark the journey home?
This, my friends, is where sisters come into the equation.
That’s all, I think, for this year’s Alaska chronicles. If you find yourself wanting more, take heart in the fact that we are scheduled to return in approximately 10 months.
Happy Monday.
![Fishing with Mama]()
by Matthew | Jul 17, 2014 | Alaska, Alden, August, Kato, Kids, Life
With apologies if I am shattering your image of me as a hardened scourge of the north Pacific waterways, but the truth is, my fishing career ended (or at least hit a long hiatus) a few years ago when the children started demanding tundra daycare.
My Alaska days now are spent changing diapers and making macaroni while Robbi hauls in fish.
Naturally, the kids are curious about what their mother is doing down on the beach, so on one particularly warm and sunny day, we went down to check it out.
I suppose I should clarify: we went down to the beach to participate. To fish. Alden didn’t want to just watch, she wanted to get in on the action.
She’s old enough to know that every fisherman needs a permit.
Fortunately, she’s not old enough to realize that hers expired in 2003.
The permit looks kind of like a credit card and is basically a license to fish, issued on an annual basis by the Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game.
We got bundled up and drove down to the beach with the other fishermen. While they got the nets set up, my band of small brigands explored the tall grasses at the base of the bluff in search of treasures that might have been swept in by the tide.
“Treasures” are in the eye of the beholder, apparently. Alden and company found a bit of green foam, a empty plastic bottle, and a rusted-out tobacco can.
Once the treasure hunt was complete, we ran down to the water’s edge. There was still so much work to be done before the fishing could begin.
Tracy and Robbi were “stacking” the net (so that it could be easily pulled into the water at the appointed hour).
Alden helped.
Specifically, she removed a caribiner from one end of the net.
And attached it to another.
Finally, she used another caribiner to attach one end of the net to the ring that would pull the net into the water when the fishing began.
There was a tremendous sense of accomplishment. Followed by a moment of celebration.
Kato (whose license expired in 1999) felt more comfortable in a supervisory role.
August, on the other hand, was doing pushups in the surf. Literally. Against my better judgment, I decided to let him continue his fun. It’s not every day that they get to play on the shores of Bristol Bay.
Meanwhile, Robbi did her best impression of a pack mule and moved a heavy cart with her own brute strength.
While Daryl and Maiko prowled the shoreline for any sign of menace.
Once the nets were all set up, the kids and I retreated to the safety of the “snack raft,” strategically positioned so as to be out of harm’s reach when the fishing began. At that moment (a time determined by Fish and Game and announced via radio broadcast), trucks and ropes move very quickly.
All the while, Iggy stood guard, ready to growl at anything that might threaten or bewilder us.
For example, the light breeze that was rolling in off the water .
The clock struck 10:00, and the fishing began. Tracy drove a truck that pulled a rope that pulled the net into the water. Robbi’s brother set his net while pulling toward the shore along a rope from a buoy 150 yards or so off shore, letting his net fall into the water behind him as he went. When he got to the shore, he dragged the other end of the net up on the beach and tied it to the rope. Cousin Raiden helped (courtesy a license that expired in 1997).
After the initial excitement died down, the kids and I walked over to check out Robbi’s net.
The fish were hitting.
Robbi presented Alden with the fruits of her labor.
They shared a moment. It was a big deal. The first of tens of thousands of sockeye that Alden is likely to catch in her lifetime.
While Kato kept careful watch, Robbi, Alden, and August went along the net and “picked” out the fish we had caught..
Later, Alden demonstrated that “fisherman” and “sass” do not have to be incompatible concepts.
And August refined his shoreline pushup technique to include a no-hands variety. Seriously, I have no idea what he was thinking (or wasn’t), but he did this about 20 times. I promise I did not put him up to it.
The kid is tough. Or nuts. Or just plain weird. I am not sure. In any case, he got rather wet and sandy.
He fell asleep on the four-wheeler on the way back up the beach.
And he remained asleep as I stripped off his wet clothes and hung them on the line.
The fishing had been a success. By which I mean, some fish were caught and no one got injured. Not even I!
It’s exciting to think of the day as even the faintest hint of things to come. So much of who Robbi is has been shaped by her 37 summers on the tundra. At six years old, Alden has already been there seven times. It’s already a part of who she is.
I look forward to seeing her grow into a fisherman: tough, resourceful, intuitive, relentless.
She has no idea how lucky she is to get to spend time up there. I’m just glad we’re able to give her the opportuniyt.
Having one fisherman in my life for the past 15 years has been a revelation. Suddenly, I have a growing handful.
![Cloudy Day in Alaska]()
by Matthew | Jul 14, 2014 | Alaska, Alden, August, Kato, Kids, Life
Our second day in Alaska began where the first day ended: on the back of a truck. After eating his breakfast and getting bundled to meet the brisk tundra air, August crawled up onto the bed of the yellow truck and stood there with his impression of a badass. The likeness was uncanny, and for a moment I felt something like actual alarm.
But then Alden and Kato showed up and things returned to their usual state of weirdness.
The threat passed quickly, replaced by something much more ridiculous.
Once everyone was properly bundled, we headed down the road to the beach.
The beach is like the mall of the tundra. It’s awesome at the beach. It’s where things happen. It’s where you go to hang out.
There are, for example, a lot of dead flounders.
And some almost dead ones that cause Robbi’s heartstrings to clench and drive her to do crazily counterintuitive things such as save the flounder’s lives even though they are the bane of every fisherman’s existence.
She enlisted Aunt Tracy’s help in collecting a few not-dead flounders and carrying them down to the water’s edge where they could live to be washed up on the beach another day.
We hadn’t been on the beach long when something awesome happened. Our friend George drove up and gave us all sorts of news.
We see our friends from Alaska for about three weeks each year and generally don’t talk to them over the summer, so there is always a lot of catching up to do.
George was on his way to set out his nets, so we let him go and continued our walk on the beach. Mere moments later, a second awesome thing happened. We ran into Aunt Maiko, who was filling up water buckets at the spring.
After thoroughly filling Maiko in on all the excitement (not-dead flounders, seeing George, etc.), we headed up a road that lead to the top of the bluff.
Just as we reached the top, another incredibly awesome thing happened. George had gone back to his fishing camp and had acquired a bunch of Hershey’s bars for us. The kids are like candy magnets on the tundra. We are regularly able to leverage their novelty for candy, which we then take from them and eat ourselves.
In case you’re wondering why we have so many kids.
We went to our neighbor’s house to pay a visit. August climbed a ramp and then ran back down again.
Meanwhile, the rest of the kids played on swings made of old tires and buoys.
Since nothing particularly awesome had happened for a few minutes, Alden decided to just BE awesome for a while.
Alaska is weird. Everything is made by hand. Nothing can be thrown away. All the buildings look ad hoc and haphazard and all the empty spaces are strewn with old junk. Or stacks of lumber, just waiting to be made into something.
Also, there are enormous earth-moving machines just sitting around.
So, naturally, Kato decided to drive one.
Of course, there are no gas stations on the beach (there is no electric grid and no public plumbing; there are no roads), so people have to set up their own fuel depots.
Here’s our neighbor’s house. Four people live here, but he decided to build it to the code standards of a cannery in case anyone ever wants to use it as such. Also, he has a lot of free time in the winter when it’s dark 20 hours a day.
As we contemplated a return home and anticipated lunch, we paused briefly to settle an argument.
The dispute in question regarded the matter of whether Robbi or Raiden was larger. Though it was hard to tell with the untrained eye, by placing then both next to the same tire, we seemed to have the answer.
Robbi by a hair.
But we’re guessing that, this time next year, the result could be very different.
![Alaska 2014: Feels Like We Just Left]()
by Matthew | Jul 14, 2014 | Alaska, Alden, August, Kato, Kids, Life
The kids and I have returned from Alaska. We got home Friday night, after 28 hours of travel. Robbi stayed behind to finish up the fishing and pack up the compound, so I got the chance to polish my advanced parenting skills, such as they are.
But today, I’ll rewind the clock two weeks to the day we departed. And over the next week or so, I’ll share some stories of our adventures this year.
I believe I already told you about the first few hours of our trip, but to recap, we departed from Philadelphia on June 27, knowing full well that we would not arrive on the tundra until June 28.
Eventually, we landed in Seattle, where exhaustion ensued.
Even more eventually, we landed in Anchorage, a thing which pleased almost no one.
It was the middle of the night, but the sky didn’t seem to notice.
We set up camp in the baggage claim, and settled in for a 14-hour layover.
The next day, we boarded a jet for King Salmon, a small town at the top of the Alaskan Peninsula, a major jumping-off point for fishermen heading to various places on the bush.
On the way, we passed over snowy mountains.
The one-room King Salmon airport is evenly divided between two types of fishermen: those who are working for commercial fishing outfits and those who are embarking on exotic sport fishing expeditions. The two groups are dressed differently, carry different types of luggage, and tend to smell differently, though this latter difference is far less pronounced at the start of the season than it is on the way home.
In King Salmon, we picked up another cooler and an extra member of the family. Cousin Raiden and Aunt Tracy joined us for the final leg of the journey.
Kato opted not to join us for the final leg of the journey.
Because there were six of us, we opted to charter a plane to get to our final destination, a strip of flat beach about six miles from our compound.
If you think this sounds rather fancy and that we are rather important people, then you need to spend more time in Alaskan bush planes, which err on the side of not being luxurious.
But they sure do afford some spectacular views.
I’m not sure how it happens, but the tundra invents meandering streams that seem that seem bent on carving the path of greatest resistance.
Conditions were foggy, so we had to fly low.
The pilot followed the river until we got to the bay, and then turned a sharp angle across the point up to the place where we would land. Below is a shot of Ward’s Cove, a place three miles upriver from our compound, the turnaround point for my daily run.
About 20 minutes after departing King Salmon, we arrived at ISA (the name of a company that used to be located there, International Seafoods of Alaska; even though the processing plant is now owned by Coffee Point Seafoods, I guess no one feels like changing the name of the place).
Robbi’s brother was waiting with a truck to carry us up the beach. We loaded our stuff into the back…
…and the people into the cab.
Well, most of the people. One of us was asked to sit on the coolers and take photos of the people enjoying the warm, dry confines of the interior.
The view was worth the sacrifice.
About 30 minutes later, we reached our compound, unloaded our coolers, and settled in. But that is a story for another day.
![Archived Alaska]()
by Matthew | Jun 30, 2014 | Alaska
This is what’s happening right about now.
Child labor laws bedamned, we say.
If you’re new to this blog in the past year and have never read about what we’re up to at present—commercial salmon fishing on the tundra in Alaska, here are a few past posts that will bring you up to speed.
How the fishing works.
What our compound looks like.
How we smoke fish.
How awesome guys dress on the tundra.
How I really spend my days in Alaska now that we have kids and I have assumed full-time tundra domestic status.
Our compound is beyond the reach of the internet, phones, and other public utilities, so there will be no new posts until July 13, when I return with the kids. I’ll share a new batch of adventures thereafter.
Sound good?
