Maritime Cowboys

This cake celebrates many things: Tyson receiving his boating license, the glory of government food orders, another couple days of amazing weather, and my last trip into the field for the summer of 2010. Five of us went out to Helm Bay for a night to fill the woodshed there and the one at the adjacent cabin on Helm Creek, bringing the season full circle as I revisited the sites of my first cabin trip.

At these saltwater cabins the favored method of collecting firewood is beach logging. Dean, Brian Doyle, and Carl were dropped off on shore armed with peevees and log staples, while Tyson and I waited aboard the ship. Their job: find some good looking pieces of wood, roll them to the water's edge, pound in a staple, and push it out to sea. Our job: keep the boat off the rocks while chasing down the free-floating logs and wrangling them into submission. I'm proud to say I've finally learned how to tie a bowline knot, and I can do it in 3 seconds flat on the underside of a slippery log. Once the logs were secured to the forward cleats we towed them over to the dock in front of the cabin, added them to the growing raft, and returned for more.

A rough and tumble crew of pirates on the prowl.

Our raft of logs was sufficient to fill both woodsheds, thanks to Tyson's expert guestimations.

The trick of beach logging is to let the water do the work, letting the ocean carry the raft in on the tide. High tide was at midnight, so the inevitable pee excursions were coupled with a trip down the beach to reel the logs in. It was like Christmas coming down to the beach the next morning and having them all laying there, ready to be sliced and diced. Carl and Dean did the honors.

We had the Helm Bay woodshed filled by 9:00 that morning, and the second shed was full by the afternoon. It was a job well done, topped boots and all.

I walked out of the office yesterday for the final time, and into the ranks of the unemployed once again. Things from here are a little bit fuzzy. I leave Sunday morning to join my family for a trip to Washington, D.C., then return to Ketchikan (if I survive the culture shock) and ride the ferry down to Bellingham with Carl and Bubba. There are some planned stops with friends and family, but the final destination is up in the air. You can rest assured that there are many more adventures to come. Three cheers for the unknown!

Great Happenings in the Great Land

It's been one hell of a week here in Ketchikan. September is generally the time when Mother Nature presses the button to release the hounds of inclement weather, and an iron curtain of rain and gloom descends upon the land until the following May. This year, however, she's either extremely distracted or completely insane, because the past seven days have been warm, blue skied, and sunny. There's a chill in the morning that feels like fall, real fall, not soggy, grey, Alaskan fall. The days are markedly shorter, the sun setting ever farther to the south, giving way to an incredible expanse of stars in the clear night sky. Birds and seasonal workers alike are getting restless to move on to southern climes and the alpine areas are taking on a rosy autumnal hue. Beaches and streams are clogged with dead and dying salmon, stinking to high heaven. Ah, yes, fall in Alaska.

Our mission this week was stocking up woodsheds for the winter on several cabins. We stayed at the southeast end of Heckman Lake in the cabin there, boated over to Heckman's other cabin, and hiked down to the cabin at Jordan Lake. On the flight out we caught sight of two Humpback whales, their huge forms suspended in the water down below us. One of them was apparently wounded, because each spout was a red-tinted mist, leaving a bright trail through the green water.

The woodsheds went quickly with five pairs of hands and some conveniently located trees, leaving us time and energy to explore the lake by boat and foot. Amazingly enough a handful of salmon had made it all the way up the Naha River, past bears, eagles, and a significant waterfall, to the outlet of Heckman Lake. Watching those couple fish, white-tinged with decay and swimming slowly in place, you had to wonder if they knew what they were in for when they first started upstream. Do they contemplate their own fishy mortalities as they batter their way up a river they'd left years before? As little orphaned fry there were no parents or aunts or uncles to tell them what to expect: a couple years of open ocean wanderings, a taxing return home, one frenetic orgy of reproduction, and then slow, inevitable death. It's probably better that they don't know, as a large percentage would probably say "screw that", run away and join the circus. That doesn't bode well for the propagation of a species. I'm just glad my life cycle has significantly more flexibility than that of the salmon.

The Mountain Man and His Bridge: An Alaskan Love Story

This week I had the good fortune to accompany a man by the name of Jason Dean out to his project site at Nooya Lake to close it down for the season. He's one of those strong, silent, hairy guys with a love of hard work and an irrational fear of bears. We spent the night in the shelter that had been his home for the past four months, a three-sided, cedar-shingled affair constructed by the CCC back in the '30s. It's a funny place for a shelter because although there's a constant drone of flight seeing plane traffic, they're not allowed to drop people on shore due to some part of the Wilderness Act. Anyone who stays there has to hike a mile up from saltwater; Dean reported a total of three parties encountered over the duration of the summer.

The mornings at Nooya are almost always thick and gray, the fog crouching over the water until the sun gets high enough to burn it off. Spiderwebs turn into works of art under a coating of dew.

Morning mist over the lake's outlet, seen from the bridge.

The bridge itself is an impressive piece of engineering, all the more so because it was created solely by hand. Dean and his crew mates found the tree, cut it down, towed it over, and rigged pulleys to haul it into place with muscles and hand tools alone. I feel lucky I got to check it out.

The fog burning off Nooya Lake in the morning.

Flying out, and the view over the inlet to the lake.

Back over Revilla Island, remembering how different this place looks from the air.

It wouldn't be Ketchikan without the cruise ships. This one had two pools and a mini-golf course.

It's hard to believe that it's already September, and I've only got two weeks of gainful employment left. I can only hope you've enjoyed reading about my adventures as much as I've enjoyed writing about them. Life continues to be one heck of a ride.