Month: August 2021

           

My Grampa Sherman passed away on May 2^nd 2021. He was 10 days away from turning 79. I miss him every day. This man is an absolute legend. I could tell you hundreds of stories about him. I’m going to tell you one today that is one of my favorite memories with him.

            Back in the good old days when we’d actually get a winter here the whole town would go for snow machine rides whenever they had the chance. If it wasn’t for hunting, it was for ice fishing, if it wasn’t for that, it was just for the fun of it. Grampa Sherman built this badass snowsled out of an airplane engine and people would take a bunch of kids down to the ice fishing lake in that. Everyone else would be out on their snow machines. Well one day when I was a little kid, I can’t remember how old I was but I was young, everybody went for a ride and nobody told me or offered to take me. Grampa Sherman was going to go down to the Fox Den (a cabin he built while people were putting in the waterline so they’d have somewhere warm and safe to go, more on that for another post). Grampa went to the Fox Den every single day of the year rain, shine or blow. Anyway, he told me I could go for a ride with him. I’m like heck yeah of course. I just wanted to get out cus I was the only kid left behind in the village (dicks) and I didn’t care if it was just one ride to the Den with Grampa. I went to his house all geared up, like a puff ball, I could barely move. Got on Grampa’s Yamaha Venture 600 and off we went. There’s a lil snow machine/truck trail we follow from here to the duck lakes in between town and the Fox Den. Part of the ride is spent on the river. Now Grampa Sherman isn’t like a cute old Grampa going slowly along the river bend. This mother fucker got us onto the river and blasted us WIDE OPEN on the snow machine. I was holding on for dear life back there. I had to use the handles on the back seat cus Grampa was so round I couldn’t hold onto him. If you’ve never been on a snow machine ride like that, you have no idea how sore your arms get from just holding on. And my grandfather is just rallying us to the Fox Den. It took us maybe 5-10 minutes to get there, no joke.

            So, here’s Grampa and I at the Den by ourselves. The stove is already going so it’s nice and toasty in there. Grampa sits in his seat and has me put a tape in the tape player to listen to his tunes. He cracks open a beer. Then all of a sudden my Uncle Ern shows up in his truck. The crazy bastard took his Toyota pickup and drove along the sea beach to the Den in the middle of winter. The Sea Beach is full of ice and big ice chunks and frozen like 5 miles out into the sea so he had a smooth ride. Not only that, he brought us a surprise. I step outside onto the cute little front porch of the Den to greet uncle. He gets out of the truck and he’s like “baby, come and look what uncle found.” I go to look in the bed of his truck and there’s a big, beautiful live king crab sitting there with it’s eyes googling around. My uncle found it on the beach on his way down. Him and I went back out to the beach to clean the crab while Grampa got the water on. That was the first time I ever cleaned a whole crab. I felt bad for it. I just saw it moving around, it’s weird little eyes watching me. I wonder if it knew it was gunna die. Maybe that’s why it was sitting on the beach. Maybe it was giving itself up to us. We went back to the Den and boiled those legs up.

We cross the river at the den when we go ice fishing so, here comes all the assholes from across the river. All my friends and cousins and aunties and uncles pour it on wide open across the river and over the frozen swamp. Everybody pulls in like “oh boy we had so much fun ice fishing.” I’m like, “yeah I had fun too,” as I’m mowing down a king crab leg in my hand. Everyone was like “where did you get crab?!” Like, oh, Uncle Ern found it on the beach. They literally did not believe us, haha. It was so much fun and so cool. Literally one of my most favorite memories snow machining and with my Grampa.

            I am a commercial salmon fisherman. So that means I work all winter and fish all summer. That means I don’t really get a break. Prepandemic, my breaks were work trips. A paid trip out to Anchorage is the closest thing I had to a vacation until I went on a real one in 2019 to Cabo San Lucas. Now that was a good time. It was the first time I had ever been out of the country. The first time Darren had been out of state! We went with three of our friends for only 4 short days. It was the time of our life. We went snorkeling, had a catamaran boat ride, watched a show at our resort, bought Cuban cigars, and on the last day partied at Cabo Wabo, giggling marlin, Mango Deck, the Tiki bar, and ended at Squid Roe. We did all the partying on the last day and flew back to the US with a real fancy hangover. Worth it. By the way, coming back to the US after being on vacation is like coming back to hell after spending time in heaven. One minute you’re in happy Cabo with all the smiling people and good vibes. Then you get back to miserable US with scowling faces and cranky bitches. I was like omg, take me back. I still feel that way and I cannot wait to go back to Mexico. Someday.

            Anyways. This summer, our fishing season has been less than mediocre. It has been, for lack of another description, SHITTY. Our fishery in Nelson Lagoon has been being depleted for about 20 years. We fight with the board of fish and outside fishermen all the time. It’s exhausting. I will write another post about that on its own cus I don’t want to get into it right now. The fishing has been so bad this “slack season” (slack season is the time between the sockeye salmon run and the coho salmon run). We usually keep fishing and at least make a set a day while we’re open, but it has not been worth it. Darren and I have taken the last two weeks off from fishing and it has been so much fun! I kept saying the last two weeks “I’m on vacation.” And that’s exactly how it’s been feeling.

            We have been hunting, gathering, and subsisting the last two weeks. First we had to gather alder for our smokehouse. We are smoking fish for the first time ever this year because we finally have our own smokehouse. I was busy picking strawberries and checking for salmon berries every time we take a ride down the coast. My mom and Darren picked a bunch of mossberries and mom is taking some out to my Nana, who lives in ANC. We have 20 fish in the freezer for the smokehouse. That will be 2 loads of smokefish, we’re going to get more fish, but that’s what we have so far. We were also fortunate enough to see an itxayax (caribou) and Darren got it with a perfect liver shot. No meat damaged (besides that piece of liver). That experience is so rewarding. You get to look at this beautiful animal and they look back at you and you can just feel it in your body when they’re giving themselves up. Darren got his .223 out, no scope, and just like that he got us food for our freezer. That’s one of the sexiest things a man can do in my opinion. He’s out in the tundra gutting a cherished piece of meat with his bare hands. WOOOO my husband is a hottie.

Okay, okay, moving on. These past two weeks have been so refreshing. I feel like I’ve been on vacay except I didn’t have to leave home and risk getting COVID. Not only that, but we got so much done for our winter food supplies. Even though we were mostly working on gathering food for the winter, it felt like a vacation. It is such a great feeling to pick berries from your land that naturally produces delicious, healthy and sweet fruits that you get to put away for your smoothies, jams, pies, and so on. To use your bare hands to provide meat for your family, hanging it, packaging it, putting it away. Finding alder wood, cutting it, skinning it, and letting it dry. Putting fresh fish away for your first smokehouse. It’s all a labor of love. These are things that we love to do. This is the kind of stuff we live for out here. Not only did we get all that “work” done, we had a blast while doing it. Half of my family was with us, my parents, my aunts and uncles and a couple of our friends. Darren’s sister and her boyfriend. Doing these activities with our family makes it that much better. We’d get done berry picking, head out to the sea beach and start a bonfire. We had a cookout two days ago and grilled out on the beach along with a bonfire. We brought our dogs with us yesterday while we got more fish for the smokehouse/freezer with the family. Everybody was laughing and visiting and having such a good time. That’s what I’d call a vacation. Or like my cousin said, a “staycation.” I’m very thankful for what we were able to do in the last 14 days and I’m excited for what the rest of this summer has to offer for us.