Alaska! Up North and to the Left

by Steven Swaks

  “Port, Starboard, can’t you speak English like a normal human being? Can’t you say left or right like everybody else? You can be such a pain sometimes!”

  Bill grunted and looked away fidgeting with the net. I did not really know him, I had only met him a few times before we purchased the boat, but I felt I would only be able to deal with him for a few hours. I let him play with the boat to keep him busy and calm, but also because he was much more experienced than I was, which proved to be a wonderful learning experience just watching him operate the boat.

  “Cara, honey, would you mind to start throwing the net?”

  Cara looked at Bill with compassion and love, “You big idiot.”

  Lydia and I glanced at each other nauseated.

  Cara started to throw the 75 foot long net into the river. In my city folk’s eye, a fishing net was like those giant butterfly nets pulled by the trawlers in the middle of swelling waves under heavy rain. Our little net was very different. Aside from its recreational size, it was a large rectangle with small orange buoys running along the length and weighted on the opposite side. As the net was submerged, it deployed in the current. The buoys kept it floating on the surface and the weights sank the rest of the net to form a vertical wall perpendicular to the river. Once the net was fully deployed, we sat there and only waited a few minutes. As the fish hit the net, the head passed through the mesh, but the rest of body was too large to follow. The gill cover turned into an arrowhead lodging itself in the mesh and prevented the fish from backing out, therefore trapping it. Once in a while, as the salmon poked the net, a buoy went down and came right back up.

  “Time to pull this sucker back up!” Bill snarled.

  Amanda pulled the net back into the boat with me. It was a lot heavier than on the way out. We not only had to fight the current, we were also carrying a few rebelling salmon fighting their way back to freedom. After pulling the first five or six feet of net back into the boat, the first salmon appeared. The fish was well alive, kicking, and determined to escape. The net had only blocked it without harming it. It was another three foot monster flapping at the edge of the boat entangled in the net.

  “Get the club and knock it!” Bill yelled.

  Amanda was fighting with the salmon to take it out of the net. My left hand was helping her, my right one dove to get the wooden club, while I was wondering what I would be doing with it once in my possession. The salmon was finally out of the net, still fighting with the energy of a last battle.

  “Club him!” Bill was screaming. I was confused, club him? How? Where? I was holding the club on my right hand and the fish on my left. “Get it on the nose!” Bill yelled.

  The first blow went straight for the nose, along with the sound of cracking cartilage. Did fish actually have a nose? This did not feel so bad. I hit it again. A little blood came gushing out of the mouth. Amanda did not know what to think, she was disgusted by the tribal spectacle, yet amused by the liberation I was experiencing.

  “Hey, Amanda, do you want to nuke the next one?” She looked at me with a grin on her face.

  “I’ll pass on it,” waving her hand at the same time for a more visual negation.

  The process reiterated multiple times during the following minutes, pulling the net salmon out of the water, taking the fish out, smacking them with the club, throwing them into the ice chest. I was getting the hang of this.

  It really took proper timing to pull the net out of the water. Too soon and the run would have been poor, but too late and it could have been too much. How could it be too much? As the net was pulled into the boat, we had to stop to remove and whack each salmon, but it took time to disentangle and murder them. While we were butchering the fish, their little buddies did not stop crashing into the net which soon became a drag. The legend even says that a fisherman was too slow to pick up his salmon and his boat sunk under the ever increasing weight of his net.

  The entire process only lasted, who knew, thirty minutes perhaps. In what seemed an instant, the net was entirely back in the boat, and all the salmon were in the ice chests. We sat back and looked at each other. It was the calm after the battle. In a single throw, we must have caught fifteen salmon.

  The trip back was more relaxing, Bill had had his dose of adrenaline and looked calm. Cara was taking it all in, the river going by, waving at other boats passing by. Lydia looked like a little ball, buried under layers of clothing, attempting to stay warm, her mosquito shirt completing the panoply of the city girl on an Alaskan outing. She did look strange with her tightly zipped mosquito proof hood. She looked like a hooded criminal in the electric chair just before the executioner moved the handle. Amanda was staring at the dead fish, but she looked like she enjoyed herself. We were far from society’s expectations, she was in the right now mode. For once, she did not think about getting married, she did not care about always being the single one of the bunch. It was only a little group of friends enjoying themselves and living in the moment. Tomorrow was so far away.

  Cutting Ceremony

  July

  We headed back to the harbor. I parked the boat after half a dozen attempts and loaded our catch in the back of the truck, but we were not done yet, the cutting always came after fishing. Shirley, the nurse working with Lydia (yes, the one who had dared to call us at 10:30 pm to go fish the smelts), had a backyard custom designed for the task and she continuously harassed us to come to her home to clean the fish. The filleting was another excuse to get together and spend time with friends in her old fashioned country house perched on the shore of the Kuskokwim River.

  The five of us arrived at her residence after a short drive. Shirley’s house was a cute, small, white two-story house overlooking the Kuskokwim River.

  Shirley welcomed us with her typical precious and over articulated voice, “Oh, I am sooooo glad you are here. You can go in the back, you know the way.”

  Bill was a vet of Shirley’s back yard; Lydia and I were still novices.

  “Shirley, where’re the knives?” Bill grunted.

  “Let me go fetch them, I’ll be right back.” Shirley sang back.

  I have to admit, Shirley was different from the rest of us. Don’t get me wrong, it was not that she did not belong, she just lived in her own organic and compost-making world aside from ours. At one time she must even have been quite pretty, but years were taking their toll and robbing what nature had once offered. She had kept a beautiful silhouette from her youth and everybody enjoyed her vibrant, not to say slightly eccentric, personality.

  We worked our way to the back of the house. Not far away upstream, two barges were anchored by a small dock of Bethel’s small commercial harbor. Closer to us, the sea wall revived the smelt memories, Lydia frolicking in the water like a careless little girl, and I, simply enjoying the sights and sounds of children playing in the sand.

  The backyard was neat and well organized like anything else related to Shirley. One section was dedicated to a greenhouse for vegetables, the other one, on the opposite side of the house, had a well-manicured lawn with a little white fence hidden behind a small row of green bushes. Shirley had prepared three wooden tables to fillet the salmon and a garden hose to clean up the gutty mess.

  She came back with a collection of fine blade knives. Cara, Lydia, and Amanda volunteered to fillet, rinse, and split the fish among the different ice chests. As for the men, our testosterone levels dictated that we had to sit in the chairs, sip cheap beer, and make fun of them.

  Even if I had filleted salmon before, I was still incapable of differentiating the reds and silvers from the kings and chums. To my untrained urban eye, they all looked the same. However, the instant the blade broke the skin barrier, the difference became obvious. Shirley called me, and pointed at the newly severed tail of a salmon sitting on the table. The chums had a pale pink meat where the others were bright red. I know some might think that the outer appearance of the Red Salmon was, well, red, but it was not that simple. The Kings were a blue green with
silver on the bottom or on the sides, but so were the reds in the Bethel area. As the reds moved up to fresh waters, they changed color to a reddish tone. Even the size of the salmon could be similar, with an average red, silver, or even chum about the same size of a smaller king. That was the extent of my expertise on salmon biology.

  Of course, there is always the little guy in the first row of the class with his red pimples and his oversized glasses raising his hand asking a question that nobody else dared, or cared to ask, delaying the rest of the class or in our particular scenario, the end of the chapter.

  So here it is. What’s a sockeye? That’s really a lower 48 concept. I have never heard an Alaskan using that term! We have kings, reds, silvers, and the lowly chums, that’s all. If you really want to translate, the silver is the Coho, the red is the Sockeye, and his majesty the King is the Chinook. Good enough? Time to move on!

  Fish Camp

  July

  I had been in some of those sloughs a few times; those little chunks of river spreading like spider webs, connecting the dots between lakes and the main rivers, between streams and estuaries. There was Straight Slough which bypassed a large bend of the Kuskokwim River towards the north. There was the twisty Church Slough for a sneaky short cut to Kwethluk, where the boat riders played with the curves and avoided the sand bars or an occasional boat coming the opposite way. I had never ventured deeper than the well-established routes into the back alleys of the river. I had never been there to explore, led by someone else and without real purpose. This afternoon, I gave up any authority; I gave the bridle to Bill and became a passenger. He told us we would like it. Strangely, we believed him.

  The river was so much more than a plain body of water going by; it was a maze, an endless collection of islands, a complex network of streams branching out and joining in. Some of them led to the turmoil of a boat stuck on a sand bar, while others led to nothing, an impenetrable wall of vegetation marking the end of the trip. Other sloughs granted access to a marvelous ride. As the boat slowly moved along, a canopy of protective vegetation hid us from the sun. I know it might sound too city like, but it really felt like Jungle Cruise in Disneyland, the reality mimicking the fake. There was the same intimacy. It was sad, but this was what city life was reduced to, knowing the plastic and discovering the reality. Even when Lydia and I went to visit Europe, we compared the eleventh century medieval castle fortifications to Disney. The fake was the norm, the reality the extraordinary.

  As we followed the stream and veered to the left, a small summer cabin appeared in a clearing. There was a bungalow, a shack adjacent to it, and a covered wooden structure supporting a series of horizontal poles holding… I could not really tell, but something was dangling off those poles, some pink pieces of meat, fish perhaps, I could not figure otherwise.

  An older man was sitting in front of the cabin by a crackling wood fire. Our boat approached the narrow beach in a dying motion. As the bow hit the sand, the cabin’s front door flew open and a little girl ran out to him with long and silky black hair floating in the wind. Our arrival did not seem to arouse him; he only looked up towards us and waved a lazy and thick hand. The child was more inquisitive, yet shy at the same time; she hid behind the reassuring man and waited to see what would happen.

  Bill launched a loud “Hey Alexis!” the older man raised his arm again with a smile. Bill jumped out of the boat and threw the flimsy anchor on the beach like a conqueror on a new land. Cara followed, Lydia was next and I was the last one to step out. Where were we? A summer retreat? I had seen a number of those small cabins from the plane, but I was not sure what they were. “How you doing old man?” Bill barked at him.

  “I might be old, but I can still kick your ass!” Alexis replied with a grin.

  “Alexis, this is Lydia and Steven, they’ve moved to Bethel a few months ago. Are you gonna show them your camp?”

  “Sure, nice to meet you two. Never been to a fish camp before?” Alexis was well built and took his time to stand up from the low chair. There was no rush, he had time. This was his Alaska. He was native and embraced the area, there was no stress, he had learned to enjoy life, his family, friends, and was welcoming to strangers. Love and patience locked up and hid worries in a back corner of his mind, what a concept so far away from my torn reality.

  “No, first time, nice to meet you Alexis.” So, we were in a fish camp. I had heard the term a few times before, but I was mostly unfamiliar with its function.

  Alexis cleared his throat. Serena, his granddaughter, was still hiding behind him, clinging on to his leg, she must have been 5 or 6 years old with deep brown eyes and sun tanned skin.

  “Well, we stay here during the summer. We fish the salmon, let it dry outside, and smoke it over there.” Alexis pointed to the shack. So, the things on the wooden structure were drying salmon. My interest was on overdrive.

  “Can I?” I asked looked towards the shack and the drying salmon.

  “Sure, go ahead,” Alexis replied smiling.

  I walked a few steps towards it. Out of nowhere, I was slapped by an incredible smell. Smell?! Gasoline smelled, a sewer tank smelled, this was different! It was more, a scent, an aroma, a perfume, the elaborate blend of wood fire, and… smoking salmon! I was entering an olfactive trance.

  “Go ahead son, get in!” Alexis’ voice was a distant authorization. I vaguely waved my arm and mumbled a “Thanks…” I was right in front of the shack. From the river, it only looked like a tool shed, but up close, it was a large smoke house.

  I lifted the wooden plank keeping the door closed. I pulled open the door. A little smoke came out. Inside, the sight was nothing short of incredible, hundreds of salmon strips hanging on wood beams being smoked to perfection. There was no apparent fire, only a metal drum nesting hot ashes. I closed the door in awe, and walked my way to the wooden structure at the edge of the camp. The pink pieces of meat, the drying salmon, were patiently waiting to head to the smoke house. Again, there must have been hundreds of them. Wild Alaskan salmon was a fortune in the lower 48. Here, it was basically a free commodity.

  I walked back to the small house, Bill and Alexis were chatting by the fire, Lydia and Cara were nowhere to be seen, along with the little girl.

  Alexis enjoyed my amazement and pointed to the cabin, “Go meet my daughter, she’s inside.”

  I passed them and entered the single room cabin. There was nothing much to it, only the bare minimum to be comfortable for the summer. There was a short counter top with an orange plastic basin filled with water, a propane stove, and a rolled up mattress against the wall. It reminded me of the people spending weeks camping in France. Each year, early July or August, they came to summer camp with their caravans or RVs, and stayed in the same spot for weeks, enjoying a simple life with their recurrent neighbors. Thousands of miles away, it was the same tradition, a summer migration away from the daily routine and obligations.

  Rachel, Alexis’s daughter, was cooking dinner, some kind of salmon based dish -of course. Lydia and Cara were sitting on a small green couch.

  We quickly passed the formal introductions. Rachel appeared to be in her early forties, she had brown hair and was undeniably of direct Yupik descent. She beautifully wore the ever so slightly slanted eyes and darker skin.

  “Are you staying for dinner?” She asked.

  I did not have time to answer, when Bill walked in and blurted a loud and blunt explanation, “Sorry darling, not tonight, got to work tomorrow!”

  “I guess next time,” Rachel replied in a monotone voice.

  “Ok, got to get going. Rachel it was nice to see you, take care of yourself and that cute little girl.”

  Serena hid once again behind her mother, away from the tall and obnoxious Gusik. Bill was a stark intrusion in her beautiful native fairytale; he was an intimidating sample of elsewhere, the great unknown she did not want to discover. Far from him, her summer was peaceful and colored, scents and fish camp traditions away from the commercial summer resor
ts where the artificial oil lubed the tanned bodies.

  We thanked Rachel and Alexis before leaving on our flimsy craft. The little trip had been a great experience. The Yupik families gathered for the season, the men fished and the women prepared the salmon. The end of the winter marked a change of lifestyle, it was time to fix the camp and prepare for the fishing season. If some camps were small and housed a single owner, others grew into small seasonal villages, either way, they called for the pride and dedication of the owner.

  Fish Strips

  August

  When it came to cooking salmon, Alaska was truly the Mecca. Everybody was handed down grandma’s secret recipe and was proud of serving it to their guests. Newcomers did not stay on the side line, but rapidly caught up with their own discoveries. From there, a plethora of recipes dwindled down to the tables, to the great palatal appreciation of the guests. There was the unavoidable grilled salmon steak covered with an endless possibility of sauces, a baked potato, and some broccoli (please, no kale). The salmon pasta with pesto was one of my personal favorites. We enjoyed those recipes but they were still very much westernized. Then the fish strips came along. Let’s face it, just the name, fish strips, did not sound very appealing, it emphasized too much the fishy aspect of the question. When proposed to eat it, I felt like a mariner with my boots swimming in the middle of long dead fish. I always found a way to dodge those strips and I intended to keep it that way.

  In my flight school days as an instructor, and well before Norton, I was always the first one to arrive at the school. My first self-inflicted duty, before absolutely anything else, was to get the coffee ready. By the time the first students showed up, the aroma of the cheap wish-it-had-been-Arabica coffee was overwhelming the classroom and adjacent corridor. Many times, Henry, our student recruiter, vainly tried to propose me to eat the fish strips in the early morning hours, but I was most definitely not ready to disgrace my coffee, even the discount one brewing in our coffee maker. Sorry, it just would not happen.