The Cabin in Gustavus is as solid as ever. I keep expecting something bad to greet me when I show up in summer and I am always pleased when it doesn't. Narda spent a week and we got in a couple of short Kayak trips and lots of bicycling. Sitting around the wood cook stove in the evening is about as cozy as can be. I stayed another week and a half to do some cabin maintenance, read some interesting books and get some writing done.

The outhouse without walls has not been pushed over by bears and, in the unlikely event that vandals invade Gustavus, they won't be able to find it anyway. I painted it red so visitors who drank too much could find it when they wander back in the woods for a visit. It may be the most photographed potty in the western hemisphere. If you are wondering about the lack of walls, we wanted to be on the lookout for bears. I even thought of having a couple of rear-view mirrors from some wrecked cars installed but never did. Believe it or not, an outhouse in the middle of ten acres of woods is the best of many options for dealing with waste. People who have installed Clivus-Multrim or other ecologically recommended systems here have often had to heat them and keep little fans running to keep them operating. I keep a porta-potty in the cabin for bear-seige events.

My friend Jim Mackovjiak invited me to fish with him so I didn't even launch the skiff this year. Due to his largess I came home with 25 pounds of halibut all frozen and shrink wrapped by Pep's Packing. At around twenty bucks a pound at the local markets it's gold. 

There is a small Saturday market outside the Sunnyside Store where people sell local crafts, art, a few veggies and locally made cosmetics. I parked the Cabella's folding chair Narda bought for me out in the market and sold and signed more than a dozen copies of Kolea. The chair is equipped with what I'd call a fold out beer table and the store sells lattes and hot soup and sandwiches, so I was having a pretty good afternoon shooting the bull with all the aging hippies and buddies I have known for going on five decades.

It happens that there is a writer's group in Gustavus. I think my novel is at least the twentieth book published by Gustavus authors. People get together once a week for coffee and read and criticize each others work, The attendees vary from a seventeen year old young woman who writes very good poetry to some of us over seventy who have written novels, memoirs and other works.

There are also music groups. The library bought a bunch of ukuleles and people gather for strumming on a weekly basis. There is also a music night at the library. You have probably not experienced music played by guitars, both acoustic and electric, mandolins, saxophones, flutes, violins and whatever anyone else plays, executed by folks with varied amounts of skill, all at the same time. When solo time comes around, a mandolin accompanied old English folk song, performed by a matronly lady, may be followed by some hard licks on an electric guitar pumped out by an under twenty guy. Somebody usually has some kind of drum. 

The music stuff reminds me of the odd phenomenon one finds in remote places. In the bush, people of really varied backgrounds share recreation and other social happenings. The national profile of divisiveness has modified that for the worse, but when we had a forest fire a few years ago, people who get their politics from Rush Limbaugh and Fox News were shoulder to shoulder with Vegans and those who get their politics from Mother Jones. There is a friend of mine who is very conservative. If I have a heart attack, I expect it will be her, a volunteer EMT on the fire department that does the most to keep me alive. Looking at the current national political silliness, I think about the bumper sticker I saw: Less Barking, More Wagging. Maybe Less Shouting and More Strumming.

Gustavus, Alaska August 1, 2015

 

It’s seven A.M. and the Alaska Ferry, M.V. Le Conte is leaving the Auke Bay terminal in Juneau and headed for my second home. Forty seven years ago, with a young family, I made this same trip in a Grumman Goose sea-plane. Since my assignment as a Park Ranger at Glacier Bay National Monument in 1968, the magic of the place has drawn me back every year but one. Back in the day, there was no ferry and no visiting cruise ships. The eight passenger Grumman amphibians either landed on the old military field at Gustavus or plunked down in Bartlett Cove, ran up on the beach at the newly constructed Glacier Bay Lodge and unloaded the luggage from the cargo hold in the nose of the plane. Today, with the fog down on the water, this is probably a lousy day to fly in a small plane, so Narda and I are taking the ferry.

In 1974, I left the Park Service and took a self-funded “sabbatical” year and, with my family built a cabin with a chain saw and hand tools. The cabin has lasted well. Unless bears have ripped into it, everything should be fine and awaiting a couple of weeks of deceleration. Even if they have, as long as they are not in residence, it just means clean-up and repairs; not uncommon in the north. Bears have never bothered my cabin. Rigorous care with food waste can keep them from bad behavior. The little community of Gustavus runs the best waste recovery and recycling programs of any community I know of: big or small.

The Gustavus portion of the foreland was carved out of the National Monument because of homesteads occupied by some hardy souls trying to scratch a living from the land and hoping to strike it rich on mining prospects up in Glacier Bay. The glaciers have retreated sixty or seventy miles in the past two centuries, and early miners could follow mineralized zones with no soil or vegetation covering them. Plenty of minerals were found but no big mining operation ensued before the congress made it a National Park, and mining was closed down. Today people prospect for fantastic views of the glacier ice calving small icebergs into the water, and frequent views of whales, bears and many extraordinary birds.

Gustavus has become a gateway town for visitors to the National Park and a home to artists, writers and people who want to live (semi) off the grid. During summer, a daily Alaska Airlines Jet brings people out and there are many options for small plane connections all over Southeast Alaska. A small hydroelectric plant supplies almost everyone with electricity. My cabin is one of the last hold outs. I suspect if I wintered over here, I’d plug into the grid, but it is peaceful out in the woods and in summer. I can read by the light of the long days just by sitting at the window. There’s a hand pump and rain gutter for water, and an outhouse back in the woods. Narda got tired of bucket-bathing on the pallet behind the cabin and made me put in a shower tent for privacy. We hand-cut firewood each summer, and ride our bikes to get groceries or to visit, and I always come back home more fit than when I arrive.

Sometimes I can climb a ladder and stick my head out the upper window to make a cell phone call, but it usually requires a bike ride to areas a mile or so away that can get cell signals. A bike ride four miles to the volunteer run library gives internet access and entre to a wonderful supply of reading material. There are stores for groceries and supplies and a gas station for the cars, trucks and boats. I keep a fourteen foot outboard skiff available to catch fresh fish and for trips to islands in Icy Straits. There is also a folding double kayak in the cabin for wilderness paddles in the park.

I consider myself a lucky person. Three of my grandkids, my parents and one sister and lots of Narda’s Family have visited and shared the beauty and solitude. 

Yesterday, July 23, 2015, Curt Smitch invited me to fish with him in the ocean. At O-dark thirty we headed out for the one and a half hour drive to Westport, Washington. When we launched, the weather was as good as it gets with a light breeze and gentle swell from the west. The bar at the entrance to Gray’s Harbor can be a stinker, but yesterday we motored across with a mild flood tide and no heart-thumping events. Curt hit the throttle and we bounced our way out away from the chop and headed north to where we had heard the King Salmon were biting.

About eighteen miles from the bar, near the big yellow research buoy we found the fishing fleet of charter boats and private skiffs and others. The fish were near the bottom at 250 feet and deeper and we worked all day trying to bring a legal fish into the boat. I brought up an undersized King and a thirty pound Blue Shark and both were successfully released. Curt managed to land a small hatchery origin Coho Salmon, but for a full day of fishing, that was our total catch.

The day turned out well. We were surrounded at times by a hundred or more Short Nosed Common Dolphins. Although they are known to be off the Washington Coast, they are not common here. Curt has fished these grounds for many years and had never seen these animals in such numbers. They frolicked around us, diving under the boat in small groups that traveled in diagonal lines and frequently splashed out of the water. Some would race alongside as we motored along and shoot across our bow in an obvious show of their phenomenal swimming ability. There was splashing in all directions for as far as we could see.

There appeared, on Curt’s “fish finder,” to be large amounts of small fish which may have been the attraction for the dolphins. While the feed couldn’t entice the salmon off the bottom, it was probably the attraction for the dolphins and their bigger cousins who were also in the vicinity.

We spotted a tail fluke first. A Humpback Whale was slapping his tale on the water. I’ve often seen them doing that in Alaska and wondered whether they were slapping off barnacles or just having a good time like kids in a swimming pool. Then we saw a big white sided pectoral flipper come out and slap the water as well. These big animals can be as long as fifty four feet and the flippers are a fourth to a third the length of the whale. A slap from one of these would be your last slap. After the slapping was over, one of the two whales we were watching leaped out of the water and created a big splash.

Ocean conditions are changing rapidly. Some changes are for the worse. Some seem to go in the opposite direction. The amount of krill and small fish that feed these critters must have been big. We observed thousands of sea birds gathered for feeding in and off shore of the bay entrance. Murres and Sooty Shearwaters were most common, but Storm Petrels were in abundance, and we spotted a Tufted Puffin as well as many other sea birds I am having to look up in my books.

I am so thankful that I live here and that I get a chance to experience a day like yesterday. The fishing may have been disappointing but the day certainly wasn’t.

To my loyal blog readers. Kolea is available today at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and others. I've ignored the blog as Tim and I got this web site up and running. Here's a short piece I wrote this A.M. for inclusion in my second book; a memoir about being a Park Ranger. I regret that my memory can't pull up the boys name. If you know it, e-mail me.Otherwise I'll research it later this year and find it.Thanks for the visit.

The Bravest Boy

He was a teenager, maybe 15 at the time and had been afflicted with, I believe, Polio and wore a big brace on one leg. The kid was smart, likable and had a pronounced limp and an easy manner. His dad, Nick Arms, was on the staff of the park. I was working a night shift and was at home during a beautiful day when the phone rang and I was called to a rescue. The site was just a couple of hundred yards from my house and so I pulled on boots, grabbed a rope and first aid kit and ran down to the edge of the Merced River. 

At El Portal, the Merced River rushes by with the full load of water coming down from the high country. It pours out of the cascades and runs down through the National Park and miles below to a series of impoundments where it is stored and metered out for various uses. Formerly a stream with one of the southern-most runs of salmon and other anadromous fish, the river is so over committed there is no longer any water getting into the San Joaquin River and on to the ocean.  

All of those beautiful waterfalls we marvel at were feeding the river on that day, and it was running high and cold. Out in the middle, in a swift current, clawed onto a five or six foot granite boulder I spotted the Arms boy hanging on in the rough current. On the rock in front of him was his five or six year old brother. I scrambled down the twenty foot embankment and uncoiled my rope.

Bob Dunnigan, the El Portal Supervisory Ranger and Nick Arms, the boy’s father, accompanied by a couple of other men showed up with rescue gear and we rigged Nick up with a floatation jacket, strapped him into a harness and put him into the river, upstream from the boulder. It took a while, but he was finally able to reach his boys, get them attached to his harness and pendulum through the current to the shore of the river. Nick was chilled but still functioning and carried his youngest boy up the scramble route to the top. The older boy was unable to stand. His skin had a blue look to it and he could not speak. We wrapped him in a blanket, strapped him onto my back, and I climbed up the embankment and got him to a place to warm him.

After he could talk, he recounted their story. The two had been on the shore doing what boys do. I can’t recall if they were fishing or just skipping rocks, but at one point the younger boy slipped and fell in. Without hesitation, his brother went in after him, got a grip on him and was washed out in the current where he caught onto the boulder and yelled for help. Some way he pushed his brother up onto the smooth boulder and hung on in the swift current until his Father got to them.

After the boys were warmed up and examined by the doctor, I talked to the older boy and learned some lessons about bravery. Had he hesitated at all his brother would have been washed away, the brace on his leg must have hindered him in the rushing water and, given the glacier and snow-field origins of the water, hypothermia could have caused him to lose his grip and his life. In my years as a ranger I never encountered a braver person.

Mediocre is the byword for Seattle Mariners Baseball. It's almost as if a curse had been placed by a northwest voodoo doctor causing the team to play down to some lower grade no matter what the management does. We set the record for wins. Ichiro Suzuki set the record for hits. We've had Edgar Martinez. Ken Griffey Jr, Randy Johnson, and Alex Rodriguez.  I was present  in the Kingdome for the magical comeback win over the Yankees in 1995, at Safeco Field the day Ichiro broke the hits record, and for the Felix Hernandez perfect game. I have sat in the nosebleed sections above third base, and marveled at Jamie Moyer's eighty mile per hour fastball and his change-up that people swung at before it even got halfway to the plate. And yesterday, on my annual birthday ball game, I watched them strand fourteen runners in scoring position and lose the game to Detroit 5 to 4. They lead the league in that category.

What I have not seen is a pennant. Not one American League Championship since they came into the league in 1977. I believe Seattle is the only major league team that has never won a title. Even the Marlins have won the series for Pete's sake. I grew up a Giants Fan. My sisters still are and they laugh at the Mariners. My friend Mary Helen Gallagher was so frustrated by the team she called the Front Office from her assisted care facility in Port Angeles, told them she had been patient and asked them to get to the World Series before she died. They failed at that. She's with the Angels now and I don't mean the Anaheim Angels. 

This year, management brought us not one but two big bats to match our good pitching rotation. Last year's acquisition, Robinson Cano is batting fifty points below his average. Nelson Cruz is the one offensive bright spot, but the rest are batting below their averages, and no matter how many of them walk or reach on errors or hit their way aboard they are left at the bags most of the time. I don't expect to join Mary Helen, wherever she is. If there is a Hell, I'll be there watching the Mariners strand runners.

P.S. I stole the line about the Angels from Steve Goodman's The Dying Cub Fan's Last Request..  It's one of the best baseball songs ever.