This morning we put the net in the hatch, chained the skiff to the back deck, and stowed our gear. After a hard season of scratch fishing and weather comparable to what you typically encounter further north on the Aleutian chain, we'll cross Dixon Entrance tomorrow on our way south to Bellingham.
It's time. Since my last post I've had the satisfaction of feeling that after two years of this routine I finally have a sense of what it means to be a deckhand on a commercial seiner. The shared camaraderie with captain and crew is something I will miss, along with the thrill of catching fish, the satisfaction of hard physical work, and the beauty of the Alaskan wilderness. But I won't miss the hard drinking, the brawls, the miserable weather, the close quarters, and above all, the sense of remoteness from a larger world of diverse people, places, and ideas.
In retrospect my memory of what I've left behind grows fonder, and my heart tends to yearn for what it is I don't have. I think this is a human tendency that's fairly common, and I will almost surely slip back into romantic visions of everything this time was (and wasn't) as I'm holed up in a pub at Oxford writing my master thesis. But after two times around my hope is that I've seen with a little more clarity the life of a fisherman and that my decision not to choose it for myself is an informed one. Though even greater adventures await, each time away brings me closer to knowing where it is I will ultimately land, like an oscillating pendulum that slowly loses energy as it tends towards a central point.
I now have a couple weeks divided between time with friends, family, and pre-Oxford prep before I fly to DC on the 27 of September, and from there to the UK on the 1 of October. Pray for safe travels back through the Inside Passage: if the weather stays as bad as it's been we may be in for some rough riding.
Aaron
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
from Annabelle's Chowder House
This will truly be a short one, since one beer and 2 hours of internet later these people will probably expect me to buy something else soon.
Fishing has picked up considerably over the last couple weeks, though each day continues to be fraught with misadventure. In fact, Jim informed me during our last opener that I have the distinction of being "the dumbest cocksucker I've ever met." Humbling, yet I can't help smiling even as I write those words. Over the past two days we caught 70,000 pounds of fish, which works out to be a pretty healthy share for each crew member. Combine that with our other good days to date, and the hope that we'll get a couple more, and the season is slowly winding down in a halfway-decent fashion.
We woke up this morning and spent several hours repairing the net, re-sealing the hatch, working on the winch, and changing oil filters. Ass-chewings received during fishing days notwithstanding, I feel more integrated into this crew than ever, and am proud of the time that I've spent here. The other day Jim looked me in the eye and said, "Aaron, I'm gonna tell ya, you're a good crew member." In a way, that's worth more to me than any accolade I ever received at Stanford.
Only a couple weeks now. I'm looking forward to seeing some familiar faces again.
Love,
Aaron
Fishing has picked up considerably over the last couple weeks, though each day continues to be fraught with misadventure. In fact, Jim informed me during our last opener that I have the distinction of being "the dumbest cocksucker I've ever met." Humbling, yet I can't help smiling even as I write those words. Over the past two days we caught 70,000 pounds of fish, which works out to be a pretty healthy share for each crew member. Combine that with our other good days to date, and the hope that we'll get a couple more, and the season is slowly winding down in a halfway-decent fashion.
We woke up this morning and spent several hours repairing the net, re-sealing the hatch, working on the winch, and changing oil filters. Ass-chewings received during fishing days notwithstanding, I feel more integrated into this crew than ever, and am proud of the time that I've spent here. The other day Jim looked me in the eye and said, "Aaron, I'm gonna tell ya, you're a good crew member." In a way, that's worth more to me than any accolade I ever received at Stanford.
Only a couple weeks now. I'm looking forward to seeing some familiar faces again.
Love,
Aaron
Thursday, August 7, 2008
in port in Ketchikan
Normally I wouldn't post entries so close together, but last Wednesday was a day worth writing about.
Last Monday Fish and Game finally opened Jim's favorite fishing spot of the coast of Gravina Island, a spot of good news in what has otherwise been a fairly dismal run for the past couple weeks. "That's where I make my money, boys, where else can we go?"
So we headed south from Wrangell early Tuesday morning, arriving at Gravina that afternoon around 2pm. For the first time this season we saw jumpers all along the coastline, another reason to hold out hope for the following day, and turned in early after a meal of roast ham and potatoes au gratin. The engine roared to life shortly before 3.30am the next morning and we crawled out of our bunks to face what we hoped would be a decent fishing day. Instead up line up with the majority of other boats on the southern boundary of the fishing area Jim headed to the northern boundary, where he's had some great hauls in the past, and we staked out our spot.
No jumpers. "F*ck! Get out of fishing, kid, it stinks," Jim said. Swallowing the disappointment brought on by the mysteriously vanished salmon we got our gear ready fully anticipating yet another 20 hour day of scratch fishing.
Our first set we only had one jumper go in, so we were surprised to haul in around 3,000 pounds. Our second set we didn't have any jumps, but hauled in around 3,500. Things were beginning to look a little better, though we all hoped that the fish would throw us a bone and start jumping. We continued that way until noon, when all of sudden fish began popping up all over the place. We made a set off the beach, and for the first time since our good day in area 7 had the satisfaction of seeing the water boil as we hauled in a 10,000 pound set of fish. Success!
Then the throttle controls went out, meaning that Jim was unable to control our speed. As Jim screamed himself hoarse I stood in the stairwell between the wheelhouse and engine room, relaying commands to Harold and Tim, who were frantically scrambling to fix the system below. No use: we couldn't get the controls back. "We're f*cked! We are completely f*cked," Jim shouted over and over again. But the fish were jumping, and with Tim working the throttle manually from the engine room we made another set at low speed. After we had the net out my job was to stand in the engine room and switch the controls on and off again and again, waiting for the digital status panel to say something other than "error 62." After I had done this about 50 times Jim ran down into the engine room, and yanked on the cable shaft that connects the control box to the engine. They started working again! A couple minutes later, as I was standing on deck watching jumpers pour into the pen, Jim came out of the top house and started poking fun at himself for being such a hot case. The tension that had built up during the last 1/2 hour suddenly expressed itself in a deep, uncontrollable laughter that rocked my whole body, very nearly becoming a sob. It's bad enough to almost lose a day fishing: it's 10 times worse when you're doing well for the second time in bum season.
As we hauled that set in Jim started complaining about the winch (which brings in the purse line) making a clinking noise. Just as we finished bringing in the purse line the chain in the winch snapped. I was dumbstruck: how could it be that our luck was this bad? Every day I pray that God provides this boat with what we need to thrive financially and relationally, but the constant stream of misadventure was beginning to seem like a cynical, mocking rejoinder. Yet as if to remind us that we still had things to be thankful for, the winch only broke after the purse line was in, allowing us to keep the set. In the end, we succeeded in rolling another 10,000 bag.
By now we were excited: this was easily the best fishing we'd seen all season. Despite having a broken winch, Jim decided that we'd make the set and fix the winch while towing. If we didn't succeed in fixing it we'd have to back-haul the net, cut our losses and head to town. Harold and Tim went to work, and 35 minutes later, after inserting an additional half link into the chain, we had the winch working again. "I wish you boys could have seen it," Jim said after we starting hauling gear, "while you boys were working we must have had a hundred jumpers go in!" That set was the biggest I've ever seen--probably over 20,000 pounds of fish. As we tried to roll the bag over the rail the whole boat keeled over and the rigging groaned in protest. Then the bunt line, which lifts the bag onto the deck, started snapping. Just in time Tim unhitched the single from the ring bar, ran across the deck, and snapped it onto the bag. "This day is unreal," I said to myself, as fish poured over the rail, filling the hatch and stacking up on the deck.
We made one more haul and filled the boat. Beautiful. After offloading half our tank on a tender we went back out, caught a couple thousand more pounds, and called it a day at closing time. In spite of an exhausting day filled with near misses we caught 60,000 pounds of fish, by far our best day of the season. Having paid for fuel several weeks ago in area 7, this day went straight into our pockets.
It turned out that we were the high boat in the fleet on Wednesday, and word has gotten out: we'll probably have to fight harder for our sets this weekend, but the fish are arriving, and we know that we can catch them. Furthermore, after last Wednesday I know that there's almost nothing this crew can't handle. The season will probably run for another two to three weeks, so it looks like I'll be home in late August or early September.
I love fishing,
Aaron
Last Monday Fish and Game finally opened Jim's favorite fishing spot of the coast of Gravina Island, a spot of good news in what has otherwise been a fairly dismal run for the past couple weeks. "That's where I make my money, boys, where else can we go?"
So we headed south from Wrangell early Tuesday morning, arriving at Gravina that afternoon around 2pm. For the first time this season we saw jumpers all along the coastline, another reason to hold out hope for the following day, and turned in early after a meal of roast ham and potatoes au gratin. The engine roared to life shortly before 3.30am the next morning and we crawled out of our bunks to face what we hoped would be a decent fishing day. Instead up line up with the majority of other boats on the southern boundary of the fishing area Jim headed to the northern boundary, where he's had some great hauls in the past, and we staked out our spot.
No jumpers. "F*ck! Get out of fishing, kid, it stinks," Jim said. Swallowing the disappointment brought on by the mysteriously vanished salmon we got our gear ready fully anticipating yet another 20 hour day of scratch fishing.
Our first set we only had one jumper go in, so we were surprised to haul in around 3,000 pounds. Our second set we didn't have any jumps, but hauled in around 3,500. Things were beginning to look a little better, though we all hoped that the fish would throw us a bone and start jumping. We continued that way until noon, when all of sudden fish began popping up all over the place. We made a set off the beach, and for the first time since our good day in area 7 had the satisfaction of seeing the water boil as we hauled in a 10,000 pound set of fish. Success!
Then the throttle controls went out, meaning that Jim was unable to control our speed. As Jim screamed himself hoarse I stood in the stairwell between the wheelhouse and engine room, relaying commands to Harold and Tim, who were frantically scrambling to fix the system below. No use: we couldn't get the controls back. "We're f*cked! We are completely f*cked," Jim shouted over and over again. But the fish were jumping, and with Tim working the throttle manually from the engine room we made another set at low speed. After we had the net out my job was to stand in the engine room and switch the controls on and off again and again, waiting for the digital status panel to say something other than "error 62." After I had done this about 50 times Jim ran down into the engine room, and yanked on the cable shaft that connects the control box to the engine. They started working again! A couple minutes later, as I was standing on deck watching jumpers pour into the pen, Jim came out of the top house and started poking fun at himself for being such a hot case. The tension that had built up during the last 1/2 hour suddenly expressed itself in a deep, uncontrollable laughter that rocked my whole body, very nearly becoming a sob. It's bad enough to almost lose a day fishing: it's 10 times worse when you're doing well for the second time in bum season.
As we hauled that set in Jim started complaining about the winch (which brings in the purse line) making a clinking noise. Just as we finished bringing in the purse line the chain in the winch snapped. I was dumbstruck: how could it be that our luck was this bad? Every day I pray that God provides this boat with what we need to thrive financially and relationally, but the constant stream of misadventure was beginning to seem like a cynical, mocking rejoinder. Yet as if to remind us that we still had things to be thankful for, the winch only broke after the purse line was in, allowing us to keep the set. In the end, we succeeded in rolling another 10,000 bag.
By now we were excited: this was easily the best fishing we'd seen all season. Despite having a broken winch, Jim decided that we'd make the set and fix the winch while towing. If we didn't succeed in fixing it we'd have to back-haul the net, cut our losses and head to town. Harold and Tim went to work, and 35 minutes later, after inserting an additional half link into the chain, we had the winch working again. "I wish you boys could have seen it," Jim said after we starting hauling gear, "while you boys were working we must have had a hundred jumpers go in!" That set was the biggest I've ever seen--probably over 20,000 pounds of fish. As we tried to roll the bag over the rail the whole boat keeled over and the rigging groaned in protest. Then the bunt line, which lifts the bag onto the deck, started snapping. Just in time Tim unhitched the single from the ring bar, ran across the deck, and snapped it onto the bag. "This day is unreal," I said to myself, as fish poured over the rail, filling the hatch and stacking up on the deck.
We made one more haul and filled the boat. Beautiful. After offloading half our tank on a tender we went back out, caught a couple thousand more pounds, and called it a day at closing time. In spite of an exhausting day filled with near misses we caught 60,000 pounds of fish, by far our best day of the season. Having paid for fuel several weeks ago in area 7, this day went straight into our pockets.
It turned out that we were the high boat in the fleet on Wednesday, and word has gotten out: we'll probably have to fight harder for our sets this weekend, but the fish are arriving, and we know that we can catch them. Furthermore, after last Wednesday I know that there's almost nothing this crew can't handle. The season will probably run for another two to three weeks, so it looks like I'll be home in late August or early September.
I love fishing,
Aaron
Monday, August 4, 2008
Sitting on a dock of the bay... (still in Wrangell)
Though we haven't had a good day fishing since I wrote my last post, it's still unclear whether or not we'll be heading home soon: apparently this is the worst that my skipper has seen things in his entire career. There are spots of good news here and there, however, and everyone's holding out hope that a late run of pinks could save the season. The other day Jim told me we'd probably be sticking around till September, but with all the grumbling about how bad things are nothing is for certain.
I'm not worried about the money: though it would have been nice to have made the 20,000 dollars per guy that the crew made last year, I can meet my needs between here and Oxford with a couple hundred. What really gets me down about the prospect of heading home in a week or so is the thought of prematurely concluding my time with Jim, Harold, Tim, and Drew. I love these guys a lot, and each of them, in their own way, teaches me much more than I could set down here on this blog. We're very different men, and the tension natural tension between us, combined with our shared camaraderie, creates extraordinary opportunities for growth each day. I also have no idea what I'd do with a month and a half of free time. I'm not worried, though, the way always becomes clear as I walk along it. I am confident that I will return from Alaska not one day too early or too late. I just hope this means early September rather than mid August. At least we're working around three days per week, which is a lot better than one: guys get restless sitting on anchor or bumming around the dock for too many days on end!
The book of Ecclesiastes concludes with the admonition that to fear God and keep his commandments comprises the full duty of man. After spending 12 chapters reading about the futility of all pursuits "under the sun" I was anxious to study, yet again, how one accomplishes this. Despite the fact that I've been a Christian years now, I'm amazed at how pressing this question always seems to be, at how unsettling it is to ask myself whether I am truly following God or simply inventing even cleverer ways of concealing my pursuit of my own ends. I find that it is never entirely one or the other, and that discerning my wrong motives and strongholds of insecurity is a never-ending process of leaning on God's grace and returning to the example of Jesus to reveal to me what it means to pursue Him with a pure heart.
As I've been reading through Matthew, I've been struck by two insights so far. The first is that during Jesus' baptism, the text says that "he," not necessarily the other bystanders, "saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him." It is also not clear that Jesus' audience hears the the voice from heaven saying "this is my son, whom I love, with him I am will pleased." I checked out the accounts of this story in the other gospels, and in none of them is it stated (though not ruled out, either) that anyone other than Jesus sees the vision or hears the voice. I wonder what it would mean if the vision and the voice where indeed unique to Jesus. I've often thought of him as "God in a box," simultaneously aware of his divinity and the experience of being human. I'm not sure that the gospels support this interpretation, however. Here and elsewhere Jesus seems to exhibit a relationship with God the Father that is far more dependent on God's willingness to meet him in prayer and to comfort him with His Spirit. A provocative question: did Jesus, the man, need the affirmation of his identity as God's son before he was led into the wilderness to be tempted? How does this principle translate into the life of the believer? Even more provocative: does Jesus never explicitly claim to be God because, in a sense, he wasn't? The gospels make it clear that his conception was divine, and that the Word which with God in the beginning became flesh and "made its dwelling among us." We know that he lived a sinless life, and that he died and rose again, but I wonder if the unity between Jesus in the flesh and the Word of God was as complete as the church often supposes it was. And if it was, how well did Jesus the man grasp this? When he says that "I and the Father are one," and that "those who have seen me have seen the Father," is he literally saying "I am God," or is he referring to something more subtle, perhaps even more profound? We know that he is seated at the right hand of the Father, and that ultimately all of creation will be made new through him, so please don't misunderstand me as trying to arrive at something along the lines of "accessing the God in all of us." It's only that now, more than ever before, I am struggling with how to understand Jesus. This point is profoundly important in the life of the believer, and there is something troubling me about the way I have typically thought of Him that doesn't quite fit, something I deeply want to understand.
The second insight is much simpler and (hopefully) less controversial. It that the unifying theme of the Sermon on the Mount is that of trusting God to be who he says he is: perfect, loving, and fully in control. Drawn out explicitly in the "don't worry sections of the text," which deal with relying on God to meet the believer's physical needs, this theme is implied throughout the entire sermon. How will the poor in spirit, the meek, and the dispossessed inherit the earth in a world that worships power, where the wicked so often rule the righteous? What reward will the man reap who does his good deeds in secret in a world that glorifies the praise of others? Why give to those who are already inclined to take from you in a world of opportunists, both crass and subtle? It is only possible to put the Sermon on the Mount into practice if we set aside our futile self-reliance and in all things allow the basis of our action be a deep faith in the perfect, unchanging nature of a God who is working to heal a broken world and draw all people to Himself. "Great," I say to myself. "Now that I have this knowledge in my head, how do I make my heart obey?" And I am lead back to my consideration of Jesus, his relationship with the Father God, and what this means for the life of the believer.
Just yesterday we were taking turns setting with four other boats, which gave me enough time to finish Sherman Alexie's "Indian Killer," a disturbing and convicting novel about racism and the history of racial violence that has shaped the Native American experience. I was particularly struck by the final encounter between the protagonist, an adopted Indian without a tribe, and a white mystery writer who poses as a Shilshomish Indian. In this scene John says to Wilson, "Please, let us have our own pain," before turning and leaping off a 40 story building. "The White Man's Burden" really hit home as well. In this book Bill Easterly ties the West's arrogant, messianic self-perception that it is tasked to save "the Rest" to contemporary aid efforts, and explains why a system dominated by planners who lack feedback and accountability can never bring about economic of political freedom. The path to development, he suggests, is through a bottom-up system that empowers "seekers," innovators who develop local solutions that work and are accountable for achieving results. This process is inevitably piecemeal and decentralized. Hard medicine for a kid who won a Rhodes scholarship with original intention of studying Development Economics!
1/2 an hour till Java Junkie closes. Hope you're all well, and that the weather is far better on average down there than it is up here!
Take care,
Aaron
I'm not worried about the money: though it would have been nice to have made the 20,000 dollars per guy that the crew made last year, I can meet my needs between here and Oxford with a couple hundred. What really gets me down about the prospect of heading home in a week or so is the thought of prematurely concluding my time with Jim, Harold, Tim, and Drew. I love these guys a lot, and each of them, in their own way, teaches me much more than I could set down here on this blog. We're very different men, and the tension natural tension between us, combined with our shared camaraderie, creates extraordinary opportunities for growth each day. I also have no idea what I'd do with a month and a half of free time. I'm not worried, though, the way always becomes clear as I walk along it. I am confident that I will return from Alaska not one day too early or too late. I just hope this means early September rather than mid August. At least we're working around three days per week, which is a lot better than one: guys get restless sitting on anchor or bumming around the dock for too many days on end!
The book of Ecclesiastes concludes with the admonition that to fear God and keep his commandments comprises the full duty of man. After spending 12 chapters reading about the futility of all pursuits "under the sun" I was anxious to study, yet again, how one accomplishes this. Despite the fact that I've been a Christian years now, I'm amazed at how pressing this question always seems to be, at how unsettling it is to ask myself whether I am truly following God or simply inventing even cleverer ways of concealing my pursuit of my own ends. I find that it is never entirely one or the other, and that discerning my wrong motives and strongholds of insecurity is a never-ending process of leaning on God's grace and returning to the example of Jesus to reveal to me what it means to pursue Him with a pure heart.
As I've been reading through Matthew, I've been struck by two insights so far. The first is that during Jesus' baptism, the text says that "he," not necessarily the other bystanders, "saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him." It is also not clear that Jesus' audience hears the the voice from heaven saying "this is my son, whom I love, with him I am will pleased." I checked out the accounts of this story in the other gospels, and in none of them is it stated (though not ruled out, either) that anyone other than Jesus sees the vision or hears the voice. I wonder what it would mean if the vision and the voice where indeed unique to Jesus. I've often thought of him as "God in a box," simultaneously aware of his divinity and the experience of being human. I'm not sure that the gospels support this interpretation, however. Here and elsewhere Jesus seems to exhibit a relationship with God the Father that is far more dependent on God's willingness to meet him in prayer and to comfort him with His Spirit. A provocative question: did Jesus, the man, need the affirmation of his identity as God's son before he was led into the wilderness to be tempted? How does this principle translate into the life of the believer? Even more provocative: does Jesus never explicitly claim to be God because, in a sense, he wasn't? The gospels make it clear that his conception was divine, and that the Word which with God in the beginning became flesh and "made its dwelling among us." We know that he lived a sinless life, and that he died and rose again, but I wonder if the unity between Jesus in the flesh and the Word of God was as complete as the church often supposes it was. And if it was, how well did Jesus the man grasp this? When he says that "I and the Father are one," and that "those who have seen me have seen the Father," is he literally saying "I am God," or is he referring to something more subtle, perhaps even more profound? We know that he is seated at the right hand of the Father, and that ultimately all of creation will be made new through him, so please don't misunderstand me as trying to arrive at something along the lines of "accessing the God in all of us." It's only that now, more than ever before, I am struggling with how to understand Jesus. This point is profoundly important in the life of the believer, and there is something troubling me about the way I have typically thought of Him that doesn't quite fit, something I deeply want to understand.
The second insight is much simpler and (hopefully) less controversial. It that the unifying theme of the Sermon on the Mount is that of trusting God to be who he says he is: perfect, loving, and fully in control. Drawn out explicitly in the "don't worry sections of the text," which deal with relying on God to meet the believer's physical needs, this theme is implied throughout the entire sermon. How will the poor in spirit, the meek, and the dispossessed inherit the earth in a world that worships power, where the wicked so often rule the righteous? What reward will the man reap who does his good deeds in secret in a world that glorifies the praise of others? Why give to those who are already inclined to take from you in a world of opportunists, both crass and subtle? It is only possible to put the Sermon on the Mount into practice if we set aside our futile self-reliance and in all things allow the basis of our action be a deep faith in the perfect, unchanging nature of a God who is working to heal a broken world and draw all people to Himself. "Great," I say to myself. "Now that I have this knowledge in my head, how do I make my heart obey?" And I am lead back to my consideration of Jesus, his relationship with the Father God, and what this means for the life of the believer.
Just yesterday we were taking turns setting with four other boats, which gave me enough time to finish Sherman Alexie's "Indian Killer," a disturbing and convicting novel about racism and the history of racial violence that has shaped the Native American experience. I was particularly struck by the final encounter between the protagonist, an adopted Indian without a tribe, and a white mystery writer who poses as a Shilshomish Indian. In this scene John says to Wilson, "Please, let us have our own pain," before turning and leaping off a 40 story building. "The White Man's Burden" really hit home as well. In this book Bill Easterly ties the West's arrogant, messianic self-perception that it is tasked to save "the Rest" to contemporary aid efforts, and explains why a system dominated by planners who lack feedback and accountability can never bring about economic of political freedom. The path to development, he suggests, is through a bottom-up system that empowers "seekers," innovators who develop local solutions that work and are accountable for achieving results. This process is inevitably piecemeal and decentralized. Hard medicine for a kid who won a Rhodes scholarship with original intention of studying Development Economics!
1/2 an hour till Java Junkie closes. Hope you're all well, and that the weather is far better on average down there than it is up here!
Take care,
Aaron
Saturday, July 26, 2008
bored in Wrangell
I've had a lot of time to compose these things lately...
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We’ve moved south, though we’re currently in port in Wrangell instead of Ketchikan. This has definitely been the best week we’ve had since coming up here, and though we’re not dancing yet, some of the crummy vibes that we’ve been fighting for the last few weeks look like they might be fading. We’ve had the opportunity to work a bit more, fishing Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday of this week, and are heading back out again tomorrow to fish until Monday.
Before talking about those days, however, I should probably explain the work I’m doing up here so that some of the terminology makes sense. The basic setup is a large boat (The Yankee Boy is 56x16 ft: some are larger, some are smaller, but that’s a pretty typical size), a small boat called a skiff (around 11x6 ft), and a 250 fathom long net (1,500 ft). The net has three parts: the cork line, which floats it, the web, which forms the barrier for the fish, and the lead line, which sinks the web. Rings hang from the lead line along the second half of the net, and the purse line passes through those rings. One end of the net is hooked up to the skiff, which has an enormous engine block that delivers nearly 300 hp, and the other end is hooked up to the big boat. While fishing, the captain and crew scout for “jumpers,” salmon that leap from the water and often indicate a school of fish, and when we think we’ve identified the direction they’re running we release the skiff from the back of the Yankee Boy. The Yankee Boy and the skiff then line out the net until it forms a taught semicircle, open opposite the direction of the salmon run, and tow for about 25 minutes. Once we’ve towed long enough, the skiff and Yankee Boy close up, forming a complete circle and the skiff man hands off his end of the net to the crew on deck. We hook the skiff on to the opposite side of the boat so that it can control our position while the Yankee Boy idles, and the captain comes down on deck to work the hydraulic controls. We use a power block—a large wheel suspended from the boom over the deck—to haul in the net, which the deckhands stack in preparation for the next set. The three jobs for deckhand are cork man, web man, and lead man: it shouldn’t be too hard to guess who stacks which part of the net. My job, web man, entails grabbing the bundle of web as it falls, and piling it in as orderly a fashion as possible while Harold and Tim stack corks and leads. As we haul in the net, Jim brings in the purse line using the winch, a large, metal rotating wheel, which draws the rings on the back half of the net together to form the purse. Once we have the purse formed we hop off the pile and hook the end of the net to the deck. Then Jim throws the power block into high gear and we stack at a much faster pace until we only have a small portion of the net remaining. This is the bag, and if we’re lucky it has a lot of fish it. We use a system of pulleys to haul the bag on deck, hook up the net to the skiff, and repeat for 15 hours a day.
Tuesday and Wednesday weren’t particularly thrilling: we spent two days in Anita Bay working to haul in just over 4,500 pounds of dog, and the red jellyfish were so thick that we felt they stung our necks, eyes, faces, and arms as they got pulverized in the power block and flowed over our rain gear. Though it would have been nice to do better, working is better than sitting on anchor and we didn’t have high expectations going in to the bay. The real day that we were all looking forward to was Thursday’s opening in area seven, south of Wrangell, where the pink salmon usually make a big appearance. Jim fired up the boat at 2:15am (I went back to bed until 4am, after we lifted the anchor) to scout out a spot and we made our first set of the day at 5am, hauling in about 2,000 pounds. Though this was half what we’d caught over the last couple days it wasn’t that much in absolute terms, and pink salmon are worth half as much per pound as dogs. We made a few more sets in the same spot, none of them larger than our first, and by 8am Jim was furious. “You know what you’re going back to school with, kid? A f*king baloney sandwich!” he would shout as we hauled in the net. I said that I liked baloney, but pepperoni was preferable if we could afford it, to which he said "Don't piss me off, kid. Cook! The kid's not eating lunch today" (I still got lunch).
It looked like it was going to be another long, discouraging day fishing for peanuts on the Yankee Boy. Around 9am most of the other boats had moved on, and we moved further down the eight mile stretch of beach to try a new spot. For the first time since we started fishing, it looked as if we were actually going to have a decent one—we could see fish jumping every several seconds in the wide area encircled by our net. Then we noticed that a large section of the cork line was submerged, presumably hooked on a snag, which could be a log, or rock, or anything else that hooks the lead line and drags on the net. This problem is of varying degrees of severity: at the best, your net pops up after a couple minutes and everything is cool. At the worst, the net gets snagged so bad the skiff can’t haul it in. In this case the skiff unhooks and the crew back-hauls the net, possibly mending some giant tears in the web, purse line, or leads. Though we were fortunate enough to be able to close up the corks stayed under, and Jim expressed what we were all feeling when he stormed out of the wheelhouse railing about how jinxed we were. “Why does it always play out this way?” I asked in my head "Why can't we just catch some fish?" Not a minute later, just as we began to stack the net, the corks rose to the surface, lifting our spirits: even though a couple had gotten away we knew that there were still fish in that net. We brought the bag in, and for the first time of the season had the joy of seeing the water boil and the boat keel over under the weight of a several tons of fish. Praise God!
That set was probably around 4,000 pounds. Though not huge, it was the biggest bag we’d seen to that point, and we immediately set in the same area. It had become a beautiful, sunny morning, unusually clear and warm, and we had an open view down the four mile stretch of beach to our north. This makes for both a pretty view and a clear salmon run, and we quickly realized that this set had potential: Fish were jumping two or three at a time throughout the entire 25 minute tow. We started piling, and as we got near the end of the net the water once again began to boil, except earlier, and over a wider area. The sound the fish make as the net pushes them to the surface before rolling the bag is somewhere between being under a tin roof in a heavy rainstorm and standing by a river swollen by spring rain. It is one of the most beautiful sounds a fisherman can hear, trumped only by the sound of those fish pouring over the side, and the sight of the seething, flopping mass spreading out over the deck, around the cabin, and flowing into the hold. At last! That set was probably about 20,000 pounds, and we were able to make several smaller, though still respectable sized hauls before some of the other guys further to the south rushed up and set down the beach to our north, interrupting our clean run. No hard feelings, though: we’d do the same thing in an instant.
It feels great to catch fish, but the experience of being on deck doesn’t get any less stressful. The work is hard, particularly when we have to pull in some of the cork line by hand when it gets behind the leads, or when I take Harold’s lead line and pile it along with the web while he helps Jim roll the bag. There’s lot of shouting, cussing, sweating, slipping, and plenty of opportunities to get hurt. On our largest bag of the day the fish were weighing down the net to the point that a few started to slip over the corks. As Tim and I strained to haul in the slack I looked down into the sea of fish below me and wondered, for just a moment, what it would be like to fall in. On good days fishing is stressful, dangerous, tiring and lucrative. On bad days it is just the first three. Yet, as I stood on the back of the deck in the afternoon sun, feeling its warmth spread over my weary arms and back, and looked out over the islands I felt happy and at peace. “This is what I came for,” I thought, “days like this make all the other stuff worth it.” I mentioned in passing in my last post some the struggle with self love and insecurity that my experiences up here have raised; how I came here, in part, to prove something to myself. Though I continue to wrestle with God in my heart about what it means to truly throw off attachment to outside approval, to quiet my restless spirit and truly seek Him in all I do, Thursday reminded me that I really do love this work, this place, and this brief season of life for what it is.
That’s all for now, folks, thanks for staying tuned. On Thursday we made around 1,700 dollars per guy, which means we’ve just about covered our liability and can start making money. Hopefully we’ve got a few more days of the same ahead. Jim and the experiences crew still aren't optimistic though: the possibility is still very real that we'll be back in August. In either case, being here is proving to be a reward in and of itself.
God willing, I might make it back with a baloney sandwich and a couple bucks,
Aaron
Monday, July 21, 2008
en route to Ketchikan
I'm taking advantage of my final free hours in Petersburg to try and condense the last three weeks into something like a coherent thought.
It's certainly been a different kind of season than the last time I was here. For one thing, the high price of fuel has doubled the cost of the 22 hour round trip from Petersburg to the Hidden Falls fishery in Chatham Straits. In an effort to save money, the gentlemen of the Yankee Boy have been camping out on their boat away from town for the past few weeks, far from the internet and with only limited cell phone service. The isolation and change of environment has been at once refreshing, nerve-racking, and trying.
The major challenge that we've faced is the lack of fish. Living for weeks on an 18x50 foot seining boat isn't so bad when you spend most days hauling gear (fishing), but the runs have been weak enough that the Department of Fish and Game, which is responsible for managing fisheries around the state, has only opened Hidden falls twice a week (at most) since we've been here. We've only fished four days so far, and we haven't done that great on any of those days. The high price of dog salmon in this area--over 60 cents per pound--attracted pretty much the entire southeast Alaskan fishing fleet of 150 boats. This resulted in way too many boats scrapping for far too few fish--if you didn't make a several thousand pound haul at 5am, when the day officially began, then you were looking at 15 hours of doing your best to mop up the leftovers, which has been the story of our life so far. Adding to the stress is the fact that the pink salmon, a lower-grade fish that pays 30 cents per pound and that serves as the bread and butter of most guys' summer earnings, have not made much of a showing anywhere in the state so far. The skippers are getting worried that we are looking at another bust of a season through July and August, and this is concerning for everyone, including cannery employees to deckhands. The simplified formula for my summer earnings is as follows: (gross stock of fish)*(price of fish per pound)/10 - (food and beer bill)/5 - (fixed fuel share) - (taxes). The middle two terms come out to around 5,000 dollars of liability, while taxes are taken as a share of the non-adjusted gross earnings (though some of my expenses are partially deductible). At a 10 percent crew share I've only made 2,500 so far, meaning that I'm 2,500 dollars in the hole with my skipper before taxes. If the pinks don't show up we'll be lucky to even break even on the season, and will likely come home in by early- or mid-August.
The fishing days themselves have also been trying. We showed up late to a Thursday opening at the fishery three weeks back, after having driven the whole night, and immediately started setting up our gear. Hidden Falls is aptly-named. From Catham Strait, between Baranoff and Mitkoff Island, one sees waterfall’s majestically cascading into various coves and inlets, fed by glaciers of the surrounding mountains. On a nice day, particularly at sunrise or sunset, the place can be breathtaking and you realize why so many people come up here on Alaska cruises. That Thursday, however, Hidden Falls was somewhat more forbidding. A thick, clammy layer of marine fog veiled the coastline, and above the fog the mountain peaks were covered with snow, speaking to the unseasonably cool weather coming on the heels of a severe winter. These mountains released a cold, constant blast of wind, which stirred up white caps in the strait, tossed our boat, and prompted us to wear extra layers of clothing under our rain gear. We started fishing around noon, and it wasn't long before I had the privilege of meeting Jim Glenovich the deck boss, who only bears a faint resemblance to Jim Glenovich the cheerful and easy going sea captain. "You f*ing cocksuckers! Haul that gear! f*k! F*K!!! I need four new guys, goddammit!!! Our luck is like sh*t!" Anyone who has been doing this for a while will tell you that the secret to not breaking down or blowing up is letting the skipper's tirade role in one ear and out the other, a lesson that I'd internalized during my time on the Reality, but that first day was a rude awakening nonetheless. I have never in my life seen anyone who gets as hot as Jim. It's as if underneath his normal self there is some incredibly deep well of rage, bitterness, and shattered hope, all of which boil to the surface during the 30 minutes or so per set that he's alloted to do his "ass-chewing." To be fair, we've been having an incredibly tough time. Just about every set we make we have to negotiate a new problem: the net gets snarled up, the ring bar get bent, the hydraulic oil starts leaking, the bunt get snarled up as we're rolling the fish on deck, or worse, the boat drifts over our cork line and releases a couple hundred pounds of salmon. We never had these problems on the Reality, and I get the impression that Jim isn't used to dealing with them either. Though I'm learning quickly, I often confront the same struggle on deck that I confronted while playing rugby: knowing how to put yourself in the right place at the right time, and make a substantive contribution to the team. When the lines are snarled, the wind is blowing, my face is covered with jellyfish tentacles, Jim is screaming himself hoarse, and Harold and Tim are frantically scurrying around trying to set things right I tend to either get paralyzed, or bumble around like a fool and try to look busy. It's getting better, though, praise God, and I've even been the one to catch several errors and set a few things right on deck the last couple openings.
A useful mental trick I found for staying upbeat: Despite all attempts to stay positive, there will inevitably come a time when, in a challenging or uncomfortable situation, your mind says "let's be honest, this stinks," and you really are in no position to argue. The appropriate response at that juncture is "yes, but it's funny." Then you start laughing. A couple weeks back I was up on the top deck helping keep watch for jumpers, fish that leap from the water and often indicate a school, and Jim was still seething: "this is a f*king goat show. Our luck is sh*t!" I couldn't help laughing, to which he snapped "you're f*king broke! do you like that?!" "No, I hate it" I replied, "but all we can do is keep hauling gear." I have no doubt that God has a clear purpose for my time here. Though learning to trust in his provision when circumstances are beyond my control--as they are in every sense of the word right now--I'm also learning to tap an inner strength and resilience that I'm sure will serve me well in times ahead.
When not fishing I've spent a lot of that time reading--so far I've got through The Gates of Fire, The Audacity of Hope, Chaos, and am currently working on Bill Easterly's White Man's Burden--playing guitar, working out, eating, chatting with my crew mates, and getting off the boat to hike around whenever I can. Some highlights so far:
The practical application of my struggle with this question has been around my alcohol consumption and language. If you think to pray for me, that my heart would stay soft and my mind sharp, I would be very grateful.
As always, I would love to hear your thoughts/responses, and to know how you are doing. We're sailing south for leaving for Ketchikan in one hour: Pray for pinks!
With much love and respect,
Aaron
It's certainly been a different kind of season than the last time I was here. For one thing, the high price of fuel has doubled the cost of the 22 hour round trip from Petersburg to the Hidden Falls fishery in Chatham Straits. In an effort to save money, the gentlemen of the Yankee Boy have been camping out on their boat away from town for the past few weeks, far from the internet and with only limited cell phone service. The isolation and change of environment has been at once refreshing, nerve-racking, and trying.
The major challenge that we've faced is the lack of fish. Living for weeks on an 18x50 foot seining boat isn't so bad when you spend most days hauling gear (fishing), but the runs have been weak enough that the Department of Fish and Game, which is responsible for managing fisheries around the state, has only opened Hidden falls twice a week (at most) since we've been here. We've only fished four days so far, and we haven't done that great on any of those days. The high price of dog salmon in this area--over 60 cents per pound--attracted pretty much the entire southeast Alaskan fishing fleet of 150 boats. This resulted in way too many boats scrapping for far too few fish--if you didn't make a several thousand pound haul at 5am, when the day officially began, then you were looking at 15 hours of doing your best to mop up the leftovers, which has been the story of our life so far. Adding to the stress is the fact that the pink salmon, a lower-grade fish that pays 30 cents per pound and that serves as the bread and butter of most guys' summer earnings, have not made much of a showing anywhere in the state so far. The skippers are getting worried that we are looking at another bust of a season through July and August, and this is concerning for everyone, including cannery employees to deckhands. The simplified formula for my summer earnings is as follows: (gross stock of fish)*(price of fish per pound)/10 - (food and beer bill)/5 - (fixed fuel share) - (taxes). The middle two terms come out to around 5,000 dollars of liability, while taxes are taken as a share of the non-adjusted gross earnings (though some of my expenses are partially deductible). At a 10 percent crew share I've only made 2,500 so far, meaning that I'm 2,500 dollars in the hole with my skipper before taxes. If the pinks don't show up we'll be lucky to even break even on the season, and will likely come home in by early- or mid-August.
The fishing days themselves have also been trying. We showed up late to a Thursday opening at the fishery three weeks back, after having driven the whole night, and immediately started setting up our gear. Hidden Falls is aptly-named. From Catham Strait, between Baranoff and Mitkoff Island, one sees waterfall’s majestically cascading into various coves and inlets, fed by glaciers of the surrounding mountains. On a nice day, particularly at sunrise or sunset, the place can be breathtaking and you realize why so many people come up here on Alaska cruises. That Thursday, however, Hidden Falls was somewhat more forbidding. A thick, clammy layer of marine fog veiled the coastline, and above the fog the mountain peaks were covered with snow, speaking to the unseasonably cool weather coming on the heels of a severe winter. These mountains released a cold, constant blast of wind, which stirred up white caps in the strait, tossed our boat, and prompted us to wear extra layers of clothing under our rain gear. We started fishing around noon, and it wasn't long before I had the privilege of meeting Jim Glenovich the deck boss, who only bears a faint resemblance to Jim Glenovich the cheerful and easy going sea captain. "You f*ing cocksuckers! Haul that gear! f*k! F*K!!! I need four new guys, goddammit!!! Our luck is like sh*t!" Anyone who has been doing this for a while will tell you that the secret to not breaking down or blowing up is letting the skipper's tirade role in one ear and out the other, a lesson that I'd internalized during my time on the Reality, but that first day was a rude awakening nonetheless. I have never in my life seen anyone who gets as hot as Jim. It's as if underneath his normal self there is some incredibly deep well of rage, bitterness, and shattered hope, all of which boil to the surface during the 30 minutes or so per set that he's alloted to do his "ass-chewing." To be fair, we've been having an incredibly tough time. Just about every set we make we have to negotiate a new problem: the net gets snarled up, the ring bar get bent, the hydraulic oil starts leaking, the bunt get snarled up as we're rolling the fish on deck, or worse, the boat drifts over our cork line and releases a couple hundred pounds of salmon. We never had these problems on the Reality, and I get the impression that Jim isn't used to dealing with them either. Though I'm learning quickly, I often confront the same struggle on deck that I confronted while playing rugby: knowing how to put yourself in the right place at the right time, and make a substantive contribution to the team. When the lines are snarled, the wind is blowing, my face is covered with jellyfish tentacles, Jim is screaming himself hoarse, and Harold and Tim are frantically scurrying around trying to set things right I tend to either get paralyzed, or bumble around like a fool and try to look busy. It's getting better, though, praise God, and I've even been the one to catch several errors and set a few things right on deck the last couple openings.
A useful mental trick I found for staying upbeat: Despite all attempts to stay positive, there will inevitably come a time when, in a challenging or uncomfortable situation, your mind says "let's be honest, this stinks," and you really are in no position to argue. The appropriate response at that juncture is "yes, but it's funny." Then you start laughing. A couple weeks back I was up on the top deck helping keep watch for jumpers, fish that leap from the water and often indicate a school, and Jim was still seething: "this is a f*king goat show. Our luck is sh*t!" I couldn't help laughing, to which he snapped "you're f*king broke! do you like that?!" "No, I hate it" I replied, "but all we can do is keep hauling gear." I have no doubt that God has a clear purpose for my time here. Though learning to trust in his provision when circumstances are beyond my control--as they are in every sense of the word right now--I'm also learning to tap an inner strength and resilience that I'm sure will serve me well in times ahead.
When not fishing I've spent a lot of that time reading--so far I've got through The Gates of Fire, The Audacity of Hope, Chaos, and am currently working on Bill Easterly's White Man's Burden--playing guitar, working out, eating, chatting with my crew mates, and getting off the boat to hike around whenever I can. Some highlights so far:
- Drew (the 20 year-old Western student who joined our crew the day we left) and I went to check out the salmon hatchery, and in addition to making friends with the employees saw a momma grizzly and her cub at a distance of about 50 feet.
- One morning, as I was sitting in the galley eating breakfast I heard a loud “SNUFFF” followed by a “THWOCK.” I hustled out onto the deck just in time to see a humpback whale—recently arrived from Baja Mexico in search of cooler water—in full breach, fins out and splayed wide as she rolled her belly up towards the sun before hitting the water with a terrific spray of white water and foam.
- We hauled a 7-8 foot long salmon shark onto the deck last Thursday. This was a legitimate, Discovery Channel-style, coal black eyes, sharp, pointy teeth, shark. When it came time for me to hop onto the deck after we'd rolled the bag of fish over the side I'll admit that I hesitated for a second! It was awesome to be in the presence of that animal, and I felt bad that we gaffed it in the gills, hit it three times on the head with a hammer, and then left it to struggle around on deck for half an hour. When it came time to hoist it over board we put a strap around its tail, and then used a winch to lift it over the side. Jim told me to grab a vickie, a thin sharp knife around the size of what you use a the dinner table, and saw its tail fin off. I told him didn't want to--it seemed kind of gratuitous to ruin such a powerful and beautiful animal that way, especially when I knew it was still alive--and he said "oh just cut the strap, then, you f*kin p*sy!" I was pleased to see the shark joyously thrash around in the water to free itself of the strap before diving out of sight. I was also glad we didn't haul it in again on the next set: in between whimpering parodies of me refusing to hurt a living thing, Jim threatened to leave me bleeding on the deck if we caught it again and it bit me. I couldn't help but laugh the whole time.
- Conversations with Jim and the crew have been awesome as well. For all the above, I don't want to leave the wrong impression about my skipper: though he gets mad, he doesn't stay that way, and when the day is done so is the ass-chewing, and he reverts to his normal self. He's opened up a bit about Vietnam, his philosophy about living well, thoughts about God, and has shared many hilarious stories of misadventures on the high seas. One of the things he has tried to impress the most upon me has been the importance of staying humble and genuine while in authority. His philosophy as a skipper is that he isn't good for much if he holds himself over his crew. He lives this out, getting up before any of us, working on different projects the whole day, doing dishes occasionally, and eating and drinking with us, instead of by himself in the wheelhouse. He tells me that I am here in his world only for a time to learn about this, and about the people who live in a reality that I will only ever be a guest in. Thought-provoking stuff.
- Bushwhacking in the Baranoff island mountains and hot tubs in the natural hot springs have been rejuvenating as well. I love being outside, and am awestruck by how beautiful my surroundings are every time I stop to look around. I forgot my camera back at the boat, but I hope to upload some photos soon.
- Reading Chaos and The Audacity of Hope was well worth it. I could write a full blog post about each of these books but I would boil it down to this: if you haven't read Audacity but are even somewhat interested in one of the most important Presidential contests in America history, read it. If you're scientifically or mathematically inclined, or are interested in how systems with fundamentally simple rules can generate complex behavior, read Chaos.
The practical application of my struggle with this question has been around my alcohol consumption and language. If you think to pray for me, that my heart would stay soft and my mind sharp, I would be very grateful.
As always, I would love to hear your thoughts/responses, and to know how you are doing. We're sailing south for leaving for Ketchikan in one hour: Pray for pinks!
With much love and respect,
Aaron
Saturday, June 28, 2008
an unexpected homecoming
Last Monday came around, and things were looking real good: the turbo and exhaust systems on the skiff were in great shape, the galley was stocked, and the crew was restless to get up north and fish. Then the steering mechanisms quit. The Yankee Boy still relies on an old school system that works through an array of points, electric switches that manually control rudder positioning. When you have a problem with your points you can't buy new ones at the store, rather you have to retrieve them from old school equipment that uses the same technology. In the end I'm not sure what the problem was, since my role is pretty much confined to performing the most menial of tasks, but the incident prompted Jim to push our sailing date to this Sunday the 28, at 10am.
My initial reaction was frustration: I'd been anxious to fish for months now, and the prospect of another week in Bellingham grated on me. I had hoped to come home, put in one full week of work at the harbor, maybe see a friend or two, and then leave. Like many of my peers who have gone off to college, I experience tension between who I have become away from home, and the roles that I am cast in when I return. What's more, in a place the size of Bellingham it is impossible to grab coffee downtown, go for a run, buy batteries at RadioShack, or go grocery shopping without meeting several acquaintances from years past. These impromptu encounters are strange, and often not that pleasant--"Hey man, what's up?! I haven't seen you in like, 3 years...nothing much, just graduated from college this June, and am headed up to Alaska before moving to the UK to start grad school...yeah, stats and finance at Oxford...what's going on for you these days?...well that's great, bro, I hope everything works out well for you...take care." The usual questions and same old small talk serve as a deafening reminder that our temporary physical proximity and a couple shared memories are no mask for the fact that time has created a yawning gap between us. We have changed in ways that we can't communicate in such a short meeting, yet we can only really speak to the other person with the past as our reference point. In many ways we're stuck talking to shadows of ourselves, knowing that the whole thing is merely an illusion, yet feeling obligated by prevailing social norms to engage in a show of artificial familiarity.
Even more powerful than the tension between personal growth and encounters with old acquaintances is a deep fear of the ordinary. I went to deposit some checks the other day and my teller was a guy who knew me from CCF, my old Christian fellowship up at Western. I didn't realize that I knew him until it came time for me to present my ID, and he said "it doesn't hurt that I know you, either." I asked how things were going, and he told me that he had married another CCF gal, and that they had settled in Bellingham together, happy to have finished their undergraduate studies. Theirs is a representative example of the path that so many of my friends from WWU have followed: they fall in love with this place, and often with another person, and settle down never to leave again. I often have to remind myself that there is absolutely nothing wrong with this, that not everyone is as happy as I am to aimlessly wander around the world while changing schools every two years in pursuit of a high-intensity career path. Yet I wonder sometimes if the decision to stay in this town is really the best option for many of my peers, or if some of us have just settled without having tested the full array of possibilities open to us. I find this question so pressing because I went to college in Bellingham for two years, and am stunned to see, in hindsight, how small my awareness of the world outside of Bellingham was and how little I knew myself when I left high school. Though it was my deep desire to get to know it better, and pursue a life that would lead me along pathways less-traveled by my friends and family, I can't help but feel as though my life was saved by the Stanford admissions committee that made the decision to offer me a spot against hundreds of other highly-qualified applicants. The opportunity to leave Bellingham for Stanford was one of the most important milestones of my life, yet it depended so heavily on factors beyond my control. For example, the 2007 transfer student acceptance rate at Stanford was 1.9 percent, for a class size of 21, driven downwards by an unusually high enrollment of admitted freshmen. What if that had been my year? Somewhere along the line Bellingham became for me a symbol of forgotten dreams, unused potential, and remoteness from many of the more pressing issues that we confront as a nation and global village. Only as the frontiers of your life experience grow do you begin to understand how vast is the world, and how insignificant is your understanding of it: my time at Stanford set me on a path that has launched me out into that great unknown, yet the awareness that I only just barely left home unnerves me, and makes me wonder if I will ever again come as close as I did to settling for something less than life to the fullest.
As I left the harbor last Monday, however, none of this was clear to me. I just felt a lot of unrest, mingled with a twinge of relief of having an unexpected week of rest and sense that God had reached into my life and slowed the pace down for a reason. One valuable lesson I picked up during my first season in Alaska was that a major component of happiness in all times and circumstances is not sweating things out of one's control, even when things seem particularly crappy. So I decided to put fishing out of my mind until I heard from Jim again, and make full use of the days ahead.
As I thought of who I might spend time with that week, it occurred to me that two of my best friends were volunteering as counselors for the week at Royal Family Kids Camp. RFKC is a nation-wide network of Christian camps that is exclusively dedicated to providing abused and neglected kids with a week where they are loved purely, affirmed passionately, and allowed to experience the childhood that many of them have had stripped away from birth. I'd known about the camp for several years, but had spent every June since beginning college either out of state or out of country. Suddenly I began to see some purpose in my delayed sailing date: though Stanford had given me much, one of the things that I left behind in Bellingham was consistent service to young people, something that had been crucial to me throughout high school and my time at Western. I called a good friend and mentor who I knew was working at the camp, and with whom I'd served in children's ministry with at my old church for over five years. It turned out that a male counselor had gone home sick that same morning, and that their activities director was feeling over-extended and in need of a helping hand.
A couple hours later I had become the resident rocket-building experts, scrambling to keep track of children, small parts, bottles of glue, and the requests for help of bewildered counselors in training as they worked with their kids to assemble a rocket. The rest of the week was a beautiful combination of helping to set up activities, including an outdoor carnival that involved a rock wall, inflatable obstacle course, bungee run, cotton candy, and lots of prizes, and building relationships with the campers. I was especially moved by one young guy I met who had moved with his four brothers and sisters from East Palo Alto to live with his great grandma. On my first day at camp we built a rocket and played one-on-one basketball together during rec time, and I was immediately impressed by his blend of tenacity, vibrant energy, and personal warmth. Though he related well with the counselors and many of the campers, there was a select group of kids that he absolutely hated, and as the days passed it became clear that their rivalry would not just disappear. These kids' wounds create some extremely perplexing behaviors: they would go from being friends one afternoon to being at each other's throats in a matter of minutes. As a non-counselor volunteer, my role in the situation was limited, but I did get to have several conversations with this particular child about why he was acting out so badly. It came down to the fact that he has been taught from birth that violence is the natural response to the experience of anger. Though we had several conversations that seemed meaningful to me at the time, this kid's behavior only got worse throughout the week, and I began to wonder if anything any of these counselors or staff did really made a difference for kids like this one. Old questions about God's love for all people, and why it is that some of his little ones suffer so deeply and often grow to perpetuate the same evil on their own children surfaced as well. Here the Lord reminded my heart of a lesson that I had wrestled with over the course of spring quarter. This is that if we try and carry the weight of the world's brokenness on our shoulders, assuming responsibility for outcomes in others' lives that are ultimately beyond our control, it will break us instead. We are not the change agents: the most we can ever do is press into the God who loves us, offering up to him our talents, our gifts, our resources, and courageously, wholeheartedly pursuing a spirit-filled life. I've drawn great inspiration from John 11 and 2 Corinthians 11. The former is a lesson about physical brokenness as an opportunity for God's love to be revealed, while the latter emphasizes the sufficiency of his grace in the midst of persistent trial. I have to believe that the counselors and staff at RFKC are called to embrace the notion that we are only ever instruments for the transmissions of God's grace and love, and that ultimately we must entrust these little ones that we come to love so much over the course of a week to his care. You never know what stage of life a person is in, and I've become convinced that the majority of what we do on this earth is like breaking ground over a dry field or setting a foundation. Our work may one day result in an abundant harvest or a beautiful tower, but we must reap our reward not from seeing our labor come to fruition, but from the knowledge that we have lived out our calling with faithfulness, obedience, and above all, love.
The highlight of the week at camp, for me, was when I got to go out an fire off the rockets that we had spent much of the week making together. What a joy it was to see the anticipation in the kids faces as they watched their rockets soar hundreds of feet in the air, and to watch them take off racing across the grassy lawn as the rockets slowly parachuted to the ground. My little buddy from EPA and I had made a rocket together, and I'm pleased to report that his rocket performed excellently. As I watched him chase his rocket across the field on that beautiful sunny day I was filled with hope for him and for these kids. Sooner or later we all lose our innocence, but what a great tragedy it is to watch that be taken from children. In the space of a week, though, RFKC creates a place where they can experience that again, and awakens in all of us--not just the children--a longing to return to place of innocence and joy, a journey made possible by our loving heavenly Father.
I'm leaving for Alaska in two hours, and am so ready for this next leg of the journey. Next time I post to this blog I really will be in Petersburg!
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