CHRONICLE: Tatoosh Island

Saturday morning, my friend Steve took me fishing north of here toward an island called Tatoosh. We loaded up the Golden Rule and left Knudson Cove, tired and mellow for different reasons. We hopped north of the Revillagigedo coast and started trolling maybe a mile off-shore. The poles got dropped in the water, and we enjoyed the creature comforts of this fine boat. The Rule, a thirty foot metal-hulled Almar, is complete with a dinette, kitchen, bunk, and head, and features a nice deck out back for fishing and the like.

Twice in our outing we spotted pods of humpback whales bubble-feeding. This is fascinating. The whales swim in slow circles, releasing air bubbles forming a large column around a school of herring. They gently make the circle smaller until the school is densly packed, afraid to swim through the bubbles. When this is accomplished, the whales then open their giant mouths and swim upwards, into the fish, and breach the surface of the ocean. What we see from the boat is a huge mass of seagulls diving for fish in the moments before giant gaping whale mouths jut out of the water. It's pretty spectacular.

After catching one (and only one) silver salmon, we trolled to Tatoosh, where we navigated inside a narrow channel. Steve wanted to show me some virgin cliffs, ripe for the climbing. It doesn't look like a very difficult peice of property, and the whole experience has done a lot to motivate my climbing sensibilities. I miss being outside, truly being lost in it. It may be time to get out soon.

THOUGHTS: Some Weird Astronomical Timing/Respecting the Natural Flow

Weird how some events seem to converge at certain times. People who don't know each other, somehow feel very similar things at very congruent times. Even if the things they feel aren't related, somehow the scope of their emotions and the type of their emotions seem to ramp up at similar times. Some would accredit this to fate or astrological timing. I don't care much to figure out why, as it takes my focus away from immersing myself in the simple fact that it purely IS.

I sit here pounding away on a tiny keyboard with my sore thumbs after having put in an arduous day at work digging holes and pouring concrete.  My house's emotions were somewhat spun into a negative place through my own ignorance, which has happened before. That was addressed. Then I had a conversation and a text-ersation with two very close friends on separate issues, issues which I was helpless to change except by lending an ear (or eyes) and some very gentle words of encouragement.

Life experience has taught me not to dwell on my own shortcomings, to quietly and affirmatively listen to those who need to be listened to, much like a barkeeper in a small hole-in-the-wall does to the wayward patron. Listen. Keep their glass full, and they'll keep the cup full of thoughts and emotions, a cup more fruitful when shared than when imbibed alone.

We all fall victem to ourselves and our surroundings too often. More often than not, it's to ourselves in our reactions to our surroundings or our actions. What we frequently fail to realize is how much our own head chooses our path for us instead of just letting us go with the natural course of things.

The Dark Side

If you're at all a follower of the Star Wars saga, you've likely heard Master Yoda say things like: "fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to the Dark Side." Yes, he's said many other things, but because of my mood this evening, this one has jumped to my mind. However, like a mathmatician, I've rearranged the wording to answer my own mood. If fear leads to anger, than one could assume that the root of anger is fear. And since I'm in a grumpy mood, I could assume that it's really because I'm scared.

Then again, Yoda may just be full of crap.  Who knows?

At any rate, I find myself in a conflicting and admittedly selfish mood this evening. The ebb and flow of life has presented upon me several congruent issues, things which some would consider great joys, others which some would refrain from even discussing, and still more that are simple, clear-cut, black and white as day and night, yet, for some reason, has left a small and menacing trace of itself in my head.

I suppose I should do as I've preached on this blog before and just let things be as they are, take them at face value, acknowledge their part in me and my part in them, and move on, instead of letting my mind sever and reconnect and break and repair, over and over again, my understanding of what is. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, right? And if life was ever truly broken, then none of us would be around to figure out why anyway.

Huh.

...I think I may be on to something.

More of the Political Game

A few days go, I got caught up in the local nonsense. It's interesting to live in a state that only has one representative to the U.S. House of Representatives. It's also weird that when I've contacted one of my U.S Senator's offices, I've gotten a call back from that Senator, albiet after a month or so. In Colorado, the closest I ever got was seeing a representative in a "town hall meeting", which was unfortuntely little more than a speech given in too small a venue to make it seem more intimate.

Alaska feels disconnected from the rest of the country. In a way, it's because the people here are proudly defiant, and in another way, they're shamefully dejected. Either way, people feel like they're on their own up here. For having such a vast quantity of so many natural resources, there is also a lot of federal interference in the procurement of those resources. The timber industry has been annhiliated here. There was a huge pulp mill not one mile from where I live now that employed hundreds of people just over a decade ago. Many of those who lost their jobs blame Washington for the more strictly watched and counter-productive rules and regultions in timber.

Alaska trips me out.

PROPHECY: The Dark Bridge

I was running. It wasn't for fear or hurriedness, but for the sake of doing so. I was jogging. Jogging through dark, moist, warm tunnels past friendly people. I was home. I ran through some long corridors until I happened into a large, cavernous room. A hole in the roof let the morning sun shine in. I ran across a large bridge, and I thought to myself how wonderful this bridge was, that if Ketchikan had bridges like this, I would have take up jogging eons ago just for the sake of crossing this bridge again and again.

At the opposite end of the bridge was a very old direlect bridge. I stopped and looked at it's rusty look, the copper and bronze construction giving it a very steam-punk feel. The darkness of the cavern seemed to make an exception for this antique. The boards accross the main span had rotted or fallen out years ago, but I could climb on top of the metal truss and cross it. The rock island on the other side seemed to be a mossy oasis. Children were playing there under a happy mother's supervision.

I climbed up and crossed, finding myself not on an island, but on a rock slap, similar in size and shape to a large cargo pallet, suspended from the cave roof by two ropes. The children and mother had vanished. Suddenly aware of my precarious situation, I watched as one woman simply jumped off, across to the adjacent cliff less than a yard away. Easy, I thought.

As I prepared for my own small jump, I then found myself laying on the slab. I felt weird. Something wasn't right. I was still upright. One of the ropes had come undone. A single rope held the slab aloft, and I was laying on it, vertically, hanging by that single rope. I reached up, wrapped my arm through the rope hoping that if it did break, only the rock would fall into the dark gorge below me...

Malcolm the Captain and the Blustery Cove

Today was an interestin day meteorologically. Big word. Twenty points to me. We had a high tide of nineteen feet this afternoon, which brought all of the boats in the city harbors up to street level. there were flooded parking lots all over the place. According to all of the tide books, Thanksgiving will bring us a nineteen point two foot high tide. It's very neat to see.

Tonight my phone beeped at me to let me know of a weather advisory. We're expecting fifty mile per hour gusts of wind tonight as a front moves through. Some gusts could get into the seventy mile per hour strength, and in channelled areas a few miles north, eighty five miles per hour. If you think about it, that's almost hurricane strength!

I had to come home a few minutes early today to tack some tar paper onto the side of the house that needs siding. It sounds and feels like I did that just in the nick of time. Our kitchen window was just starting to lak a little bit where the wind had previously tore some of the tar paper off. The disadvantage to renting a house is being unable to fix your own stuff. Still, I was glad to get out and put that tar paper up at least. That made me feel productive.

The Political Game

The politics here are unlike politics back home in Colorado. For starters, we're a much smaller state, demographically, with lots of industry. To put this into perspective, because of the revenue the state gets from fishing, oil, and lumber, the state is running a budget surplus, even factoring in the infamous Permanent Fund Dividend, which granted each Alaskan around $1,170 this year. (No, we get it next year. You have to be here a full year to qualify.)

Locally, the closest city is Ketchikan, seat of the Ketchikan Gateway Borough. Here in Alaska, we have boroughs and census-designated areas instead of counties like most of the lower 48. Alaska doesn't have a lot of boroughs. In fact, a very significant portion of the state is unorganized, meaning it falls directly under state jurisdiction. Some nearby cities, like Sitka, Juneau, and Yakutat (I use nearby in relative terms, they're hundreds of miles away from us here) are consolidated into City-Boroughs, much like Denver is a City-County.

Like cities elsewhere, Ketchikan has a city council and a mayor. The borough, however, has an assembly and a mayor as well, unlike counties down south, which have commissioners. Borough residents here often feel cheated, as so much of their commerce and taxation takes place in cities, regardless of whether or not they actually reside in them, and they can't vote for politicians that make the rules for those taxes. Hence the move nearby to consolidate into City-Boroughs.

It's very intriguing to me how the machine works up here. I hope to elaborate on the state and federal sides of things later. For now, I hope you learned a little bit, and I'll keep writing as often as I can.