To aid our fishing efforts in Alaska, we have six pickup trucks and three four-wheelers. We also have several old, dead trucks that sit in the bushes rusting away to nothing because there’s nothing else to do with them.

We use the trucks to pull the lines and set the nets and we use the four wheelers to get around and for other miscellaneous fishing tasks that don’t require the power of a truck. Picking up nets for example, or hauling totes of fish around. Our sites are three miles up the beach and the vehicles are old and inefficient (or constantly leaking fuel, in the case of some). Which means that we have to gas them up frequently.

Here’s how we do it. Our “gas station” consists of 50-gallon oil drums, one of which will be tapped with a hand pump at any given time. One person works the pump and the other person holds the funnel while listening to see when the tank sounds full. All the fuel gauges are broken.

Kato was intensely curious. After a few minutes, either Bob or I realized that it probably wasn’t a great idea to have his developing brain sucking up the vapors. Regardless, he was not happy to be plucked from the truck bed.

So there you have it. Yet one more small example of how things just work differently up there.

In case you’re wondering, Kato consoled himself by preparing the next vehicle in the gas station queue.

Today Robbi went to Egigik (the small fishing village across the river, which will be the topic of another post) to do some laundry and called me from a pay phone while the clothes were tumbling.

I got to talk to Alden, who apparently asks where I am about six times a day. She knows the answer: “in the Maryland house,” but the question seems to please her.

This is what I imagine she’s doing right now.

Later, Robbi sent me an email from the cannery. In it, she included a message generated by Alden when prompted with the question, “What do you want to say to Papa?”

Here is my message from Alden: “I got a whistle for the cars. You know where it goes? There was an elephant. My man George saw an elephant! Bye bye, Papa!”

This is how I imagine she looked as she said it.

I can picture it perfectly.