A certain phrase from a popular Christmas song has been going through my head lately. As much as I love Christmas, I have to say that here in our part of Alaska, this is “the most wonderful time of the year,” at least if you’re willing to use “wonderful” in the archaic sense: full of wonder.
This is always a wonderful place, but those wonders kick into overdrive at the end of April and beginning of May. Continue reading
The herring dribble in. Monday, we launched the canoe and our flatboat, the one we refer to, perhaps incorrectly, as the Jonboat, to set and tend a gill net.
We fished throughout the day, doing other chores but checking the net periodically. Mostly, we caught floating bladderwrack and other seaweeds, but each time we picked the net we found a few herring. Since it’s all for the garden at this point, we threw the herring and seaweed in the same bucket and took them up to there.
We had a calm day, and the forecast called for more. In the evening, after stowing the net, I decided to anchor the boats off the beach. I tied them together, dropped an anchor with a long bungee to them away from the rocks after I disembarked, and tied them to shore with a long line. They trailed north in the light breeze and current; all seemed well.
The calm after the flurry of activity: our boats pulled high on the beach rocks (Photo: Mark Zeiger).
