Tuesday, April 19, 2005
A Time to Celebrate
I read in the online obituary today a name I might have known thirty years ago, when I worked as a tenderman for companies around the San Juan Archipelago that processed the salmon caught by Croatian-American and American Indian fishing fleets. I could be mistaken, but even so the i-c-h ending of his surname was a giveaway; someone in his extended family of Adriatic immigrants was bound to have been a fisherman.
A dozen years after I left the collapsing salmon industry, I helped author a Natural Heritage Plan for Whatcom County that opened with a reference to preserving a northwest way of life made possible in part by the environmental stewardship of our Native American hosts. There are, of course, many interpretations of what that way of life might entail, but when we wrote those words, I was thinking of the period of time I spent loading salmon from seiners and skiffs into our iced hold and running our vessel through the night to docks in Anacortes or Blaine or La Conner. I was recalling the evenings at anchor listening to salty storytellers conjure sudden storms and outlandish characters and deckload catches that threatened to sink their boats.
But of course we were all nonconformist or eccentric in our own ways: playing trumpet on the Ajax in Mitchell Bay; smoking cigars on the Fishhawk by Lummi Rocks; listening to the World Series while mending nets and cooking Yugoslavian tomato sauce on the Del Rio near Deception Pass. That was the whole point. We were free to be odd, wandering around in the fog and tide, making a big haul or getting skunked, breaking down or giving a tow, and always able to laugh at misfortune as well as narrow escapes.
Many of those I knew had never done anything else, and never wanted to. Some had climbed on deck as soon as they could walk and learned to swim later, if at all. They still marveled at sunsets and eagles and Dahl's Porpoise and phosphorescent wakes, and were content to spend time off sitting around harbor cafes in flannel shirts and deck slippers talking about those of us who were most quirky of all.
It is certainly sad to see them go, but even sadder the way of life we all shared, and saddest of all, the orcas and kings and sockeye we celebrated and cheered and raised totems to. Our work was in our soul, and buoyed our spirits even when we stared at their foreboding. How can you convey that in words?
A dozen years after I left the collapsing salmon industry, I helped author a Natural Heritage Plan for Whatcom County that opened with a reference to preserving a northwest way of life made possible in part by the environmental stewardship of our Native American hosts. There are, of course, many interpretations of what that way of life might entail, but when we wrote those words, I was thinking of the period of time I spent loading salmon from seiners and skiffs into our iced hold and running our vessel through the night to docks in Anacortes or Blaine or La Conner. I was recalling the evenings at anchor listening to salty storytellers conjure sudden storms and outlandish characters and deckload catches that threatened to sink their boats.
But of course we were all nonconformist or eccentric in our own ways: playing trumpet on the Ajax in Mitchell Bay; smoking cigars on the Fishhawk by Lummi Rocks; listening to the World Series while mending nets and cooking Yugoslavian tomato sauce on the Del Rio near Deception Pass. That was the whole point. We were free to be odd, wandering around in the fog and tide, making a big haul or getting skunked, breaking down or giving a tow, and always able to laugh at misfortune as well as narrow escapes.
Many of those I knew had never done anything else, and never wanted to. Some had climbed on deck as soon as they could walk and learned to swim later, if at all. They still marveled at sunsets and eagles and Dahl's Porpoise and phosphorescent wakes, and were content to spend time off sitting around harbor cafes in flannel shirts and deck slippers talking about those of us who were most quirky of all.
It is certainly sad to see them go, but even sadder the way of life we all shared, and saddest of all, the orcas and kings and sockeye we celebrated and cheered and raised totems to. Our work was in our soul, and buoyed our spirits even when we stared at their foreboding. How can you convey that in words?
