Iām tired of looking for answers to questionsĀ
I already know
I could build me a castle of memoriesĀ
just to have somewhere to go
Count the days and the nights that it takes
to get back in the saddle again
Feed the pigeons some clay
turn the night into dayā¦
āClay Pigeonsā by Blaze Foley
Iāve now been in Alaska for 19 days and Iāve seen the moon three times. The first two times were both when it was in its third quarter, sliced perfectly in half. The third time was last night.
The first time: our skiff sliced through the tideās prevailing force in the Pacific chop with both the aid and the obstacle of a finicky outboard, one that I had gripped by the tiller. The kind of outboard where if you let it idle for too long, 10 or 15 seconds max, it kills the engine and youāve got to tug on the pull cord maybe five or six times before itāll give you a little bit of a start again. We idled; engine dead; I flipped the choke and grabbed the pull cord by the fist, leaning back at an acute angle for the extra leverage necessary for a smaller person like me to force it swiftly parallel of my chest, the Alaska forever sun reflecting off the metal skiff, burning into my exposed arms and neck, and on my final tug the engine began slowly and jaggedly snoring and then breathing, as if it had sleep apnea, vibrating out of rhythm and cadence, spitting and spurting. The two of us let out a sigh of relief, weād been moving slowly but surely along with the ebbing tide towards the mud of the beach. Beads of sweat coalesced on my forehead underneath the fabric of my baseball cap, so I took it off and redid my mess of hair under it, and lifted my chin to the sky to readjust it. When I opened my eyes there I saw it, for the first time in maybe 2 weeks, the moon, at half mast, half full, glowing against the light blue backdrop of Alaskaās always afternoon. It looked like a ghost, maybe, or a silhouette.Ā
The second time: the next day, the whole crew and I, we were sitting around the table while our most senior member, a guy my age named Mark, read the tide book; he said, It seems like the next time weāll go out will be the late afternoon around midnight. He wasnāt joking either, that was just kind of our relationship to time at that point. Midnight is when the sun elaborately pretends to set here but it only really gets ādarkā for an hour around 2:30 am, and even that is debatable. Itās like the way we play peek-a-boo with babies, or interactive theater, suspension of disbelief, the world promises itās night time, it swears, it wouldnāt lie to us, why would it lie to us? What does it gain by lying to us? Nothing! So why would it? I donāt know why. Why? Whyyyyyyyyyy? And then there it is to our left, look up, Bering Sea, mud to our calves, aromas of sea salt and brine wading and wafting under and through our bandanas and into our noses, the white caps from dilapidating and diluting shades of gray kissing our kneecaps, or warning us to turn back. But the nine of us, we are all human, and therefore we want more (this we cannot help, how we will always want more), the only thing that will not abandon each one of us is this desire for the things beyond the obscuring fogāā the clouds hang lower here for some reason, something about the world turning on an axis, I wonāt pretend to understand itāā and then the sea licks its lips with a hundred shades of tanned yellowing seafoam and the tide switches directions, Iām too much a novice to notice these subtleties without the aid of my own two eyes but some of my crew mates have a sense for it in the soles of their feet and between their toes, beneath the eight millimeters of neoprene and polypropylene long johnās and merino wool socks. Look up, there it is, a white-shaped moon, glowing.
The third time: last night (the eighteenth night), I precariously opened the door to my bunkhouse around four in the morning, checking before proceeding for grizzly bears and other inhospitable parties on my way to the outhouse. The moon hung low, it was the size of a penny in my vision field and it was full, it shone golden-pink in the dusk-dawn. It was no longer a suggestion and a silhouette, an idea or a theory, this time it was commanding and obvious in the way the sun is, in the way a dogma is. I stood out there in my pajamas for a couple minutes. It was very nice.Ā
Fishing is closed at the moment, not enough fish have swum up the Kvichak River and into Bristol Bay for the biologists who oversee this fishery to justify our intentions. So the day has been quiet and Iāve done nothing but recover. It was hot in the morning so I took the guitar out to the edge of the tundraās cliff for a little while. Youād think the night sky would be gorgeous out here, and Iām sure it is, but not in the summer when it hides away.I think I miss the night sky, just a little bit. Obscurity can be warm if youāre approaching it from the correct angle. When the clock hits 10pm I tell myself to start getting tired and by the time I make it under my wool blanket top bunk around 11 or 12 the light has invaded tirelessly and won.Ā
The neighbors arrived the other day, our captainās son David, heās probably in his late 40ās, and his two crew members, a frat guy from Louisiana and another guy my age from Washington with a septum piercing. I cook for the 13 of us now and the cabin transforms into the loudest location north of Naknek. We light bonfires on the beach and stay out till the sun goes down around 1 or 2 in the morning, then we warm up inside until sunrise two hours later and head back out. Weāre eager, I think. Eager for purpose and for anxiety, eager for the surrealism that Iāve been told fishing nonstop induces.Ā
I asked David what itās like up here in the winter, he said heās only been up once. A neighbor notified him that erosion had caused the cabin to the edge of the tundraās cliff, so Liz and David flew over to tow it back with their truck, an endeavor that nearly split the cabin in half. He told me the sea freezes over for about a mile. That when the tide goes out, the ice cracks and breaks over itself, that the pressure of the flood pushes the crushed ice onto the beach and freezes over once more. The tundra frosts. It looks primordial, he says, and the sun, itās no where to be seen.Ā
Itās the 21st day and when I close my eyes I see species of tall grass, the grass that grows outside my cabin window.Ā
I walk on the beach and think about how just three months ago I was only really out with the moon, I was in the business of nightlife. The world I navigated was dark but glowing, it was very often neon and latex, satin, clean and dirty in a different kind of way. How Friday mornings were the best sleep of my life, how Iād wake up around 5pm and do it all over again. And then something funny happens and life reveals itself to be nothing more (and also everything but) a series of shifting circumstances which one can either adapt towards or abandon altogether. Three months ago I was not the person I am now. This is not an issue, or even an analysis of identity. Identity manifests as a trap, an attempt to draw a picture of control out of symptoms. Itās only an observation from someone who can only observe, who can only notice, and who can only see the things that light shines itself onto, in what was once a never ending night.Ā
My crewmate Ian and I sit on the edge of the tundra cliff leaned back in red lawn chairs and discuss this at length. He tells me about how as a result of swimming in high school there are features of his body that will never change, how he once wanted to play the saxophone, but he couldnāt do both, now heāll never do both. I tell him about the tattoos I regret, the ones I got when I was 17 because I was mad at the world or something like that, I tell him about how my left ankle pops out of place because of a track accident when I was 12 years old. I tell him itās okay, We can laugh about it. We can love these flaws in our wood. Things will never be the same ever again. We say this over and over and over. Time moves forward, usually, and sometimes, itāll pull us forward with it. Whether our bodies are oriented forwards or backwards is none of its business. Whether we are caught in its riptide, this is also none of its business.Ā
We work as a single organism pushing our skiff through the mud and when we arrive even though my legs burn like hell even though my face is hot like hell even though my ears ache like hell when my captain turns to me and says Ocean, go get dinner ready I give a lazy grin and i donāt walk, no, I sprint from the coastline to the stairs, it hurts so good and I wonāt stop because right now I am nothing more than an extremity and this is what is being asked of me. I am not the brain. I do not give the orders. I do not decide things. When my captain says jump I trust her completely. I do not ask why, I do not check to make sure the ground below me will not fall through under my weight, all I know at that moment is jump.Ā
Itās the 24th day, weāre out at midnight and the sea looks like the Bering Sea aggressive windy ancient eyes sagging, patriarchal, powerful, like a pope of the old world.Ā
Iāve been in Alaska for 31 days and perhaps of these 31 days Iāve witnessed maybe 7 or 8 nights. Itās 4:12 a.m., about five miles north from Naknek, Alaska on the Bristol Bay. Iām sitting alone in front of the propane heater with my bluetooth keyboard on my lap and my phone balancing between my knees. The bunkhouse is dark, we donāt really have a need for an overhead light with Alaskaās 22 hours of sunlight so we never bothered to install one. Outside in the 2 hour night thereās a storm ensuing and I can hear the creaks of the ceiling metalās loose screws shaking in the 25 mph wind, singing the tenor while the crackling of the heater sings the bass. Let us begin.
We got out on the water 2 hours before high tide, 1:00am,Ā and shuttled each other to our respective skiffs. The dark Bering Sea waves crashed against our crooked skiff. We navigated through the wine dark sea by way of headlight, finding the buoy belonging to our site and strong arming, failing, to lift our net lines over the tip of our bow. I tied a rope to one end and ran it through the railing picking up the extra slack with the help of the crashing waves to give my two crewmates leverage but it was no hope, the net was plugged with fish and the wind was too strong, with the current and tide working in opposite directions. Try again. This time I tied a line to the other side of the boat as well and pulled on both while my crewmates gave it their best shot, I tell the two of them to yell and curse if they have to, I shout to them words of encouragement, while the rope cuts through my gloves and my glove liners giving me the nastiest rope burn of my life. My captain drives the boat forward before letting go to give us a little bit of slack and one of my crewmates almost falls overboard from the bow, but I let go of the right rope and grab onto his leg just before. Finally we get the line over and my other crewmate digs in his pockets for his inhaler. This is the fifth consecutive tide weāve fished, sleeping three or four hours in between and eating when we can, and weāll do another thirty or fourty just like this before the season will begin to slow down and weāll get to start taking breaks skiff by skiff, sleeping eight hours instead, showering maybe, running laundry maybe.
When I sleep I dream of fishing, I dream that my bed is my skiff and that Iām rolling our nets over and picking fish, sometimes I jerk and wake myself up, it happens to the others too. Before our crew separates into our three skiffs we say to one another, good luck and good fishing! and after discussing these dreams we share we started saying goodnight and good fishing, too. My bunkmate tells me last sleep she didnāt catch much, and I tell her I hope this time she has a lucrative but also manageable tide.Ā
Itās day 35. My fingers are twice their normal size. My body aches. Weāve caught around 70,000lbs in the past couple days. I donāt know how many fish Iāve picked out of the net and ripped the gills out of. One crewmate cradles each fish before she bleeds it, we asked her why and she said, because the fish is going to die. My captain tells us one tide, these fish are giving all their energy and we are giving most of ours in order to feed the people that we love. It is imperative that we treat these fish with respect.
Iām very tired. Iāll edit this later. For now, goodnight and good fishing.Ā