Most days are good days on the homestead, but Friday may have been The Perfect Day!
As The Dog Days finally lived up to their reputation (they end today, by the way) we enjoyed the warm sunshine as we did laundry and chopped wood to dry. The sockeye salmon are running, and gill-netters made their sets off our beach. One boat came into the beach and the captain shouted to Michelle, asking her if she wanted a fish. He tossed a freshly-caught sockeye out on the beach for us!
We’d just been asking each other about a lunch plan. Suddenly, it was sockeye fillets! When a pink salmon is something to get excited about, sockeye is a gourmet meal! It’s especially rare for us, because filter-feeding sockeye don’t strike lures until they’re near their home stream, so we can’t really catch them off our rocks. Rounded out with minutes-fresh salad from the garden, including tomatoes and basil and an unusual glass of lunch wine, we feasted.
In the evening we wrapped a couple of freshly baked calzones and climbed into the kayak to round the point, headed to the home of a local couple to celebrate the wife’s birthday. They’re both artists, and he builds beautiful guitars. There were more people there than we’d seen since Independence Day! We hadn’t seen their home before, so we finally got to see their lovely house and impressive gardens and orchard. We stayed late and got caught by darkness in the forest, forcing a leisurely stroll across the uneven but recently-improved trail.
The only way the day might have been more perfect would be if Aly had been with us, but she was somewhere on Flower Mountain with Alaska Mountain Guides, a local guiding group. They’d taken a bunch of 10-17 year olds up to climb the glaciers and camp overnight. She was having a perfect day of her own! Not to worry: we canned the sockeye leftovers to keep long enough in this heat for Aly to get a couple meals from it when she returns.