Seldovia on Memorial Day Weekend, 1975

Four of us stayed at the end of the Homer Spit in Land’s End bunkhouse Friday night while awaiting our Memorial holiday adventure to Seldovia. Two guys from Kodiak joined Dan and I on the excursion. Roger was an old friend of Dan. The other’s name has escaped me. The three had purchased property in Seldovia, and wanted to walk over and inspect their new acquisition. They had bought about 25 acres on the Slough near town. Each had a two acre lot on the water, and the rest of the property, laying adjacent to the lots and climbing to the top of a hill behind, was held jointly by the three. So we had a two part objective. The other - to retrieve our fishing gear from Yukon Island, where we had stashed it a week earlier

This time out the waves were not so big, the wind not so calm. Calm seas usually occur in early morning or late evening. In between, as the day bores on, the sun warms the air, and starts it to moving. High winds and high tides go together. We were in a high tide cycle that weekend, and higher winds were definitely with us - choppy seas rocked the boat as we rounded the Spit and headed for Yukon Island. A gentle morning breeze pushed two and three foots waves at us, a little spray portended heavier stuff to come.

The four of us, big deckhands, quickly hustled the gear off Yukon, and directed the skiff into the Eldred Passage, running parallel to and just off the island‘s shore. We decide to stop for a break, though it escapes me as to why. Maybe it was for lunch, maybe we wanted to do some clamming, or maybe the weather was picking up. I no longer remember, but we put to shore on either Yukon or Hesketh.

We spent a couple hours on the island. The first thing we discovered was that none of us had thought to bring food. There wasn’t a candy bar between us, and we were all prepared to dine. Nothing! Dan had brought some old frozen fish to use as bait. Roger and his buddy stuck pieces on the end of a stick and tried roasting them over the campfire; can’t remember if any were consumed; don’t recall any accolades about the seafood cuisine.

Dan and I retrieved our fishing poles and used an old fish to try an catch a fresh one. No fish, but we were flabbergasted to land a small King Crab. Its legs probably measured a two feet span. We broke the leg joints into pieces small enough to fit into a like-sized pan, and suspended it over the fire. There was enough to provide four modest meals. No butter! I did not know King Crab were in the bay, and never heard of anyone catching them before or after.

Entrance to Seldovia Bay

We made it to Seldovia without further incident, but I can’t tell much about that visit as memories of it have merged with hundreds of later ones. We probably ate at the Seldovia Lodge. We did slept on Dan’s land, on bare ground, with sleeping bags laid on plastic sheeting with other piece draped over us - tent like. In the morning we probably returned for breakfast at the Seldovia Lodge and then set sail for home.

Seldovai Boat Harbour

The passage out of Seldovia Bay proved easy. We rounded Seldovia Point, Barber Point, passed McDonald Spit, and tacked into the Eldred Passage without much trouble. When we came to the end of Yukon Island and started across the open bay, the boat began to ship water. Wind knocked the top off waves and sent a continual spray into the boat. Within a short interval there was several inches of salt water sloshing around in the bottom. I grabbed a coffee can we used for bailing and started scooping water over the side. Two buckets of clams sat in the bilge, and before long the two Kodiak guys dumped the clams to the side and started bailing. We were able to keep up but decided the wiser move would be to turn back, find shelter, and wait out the wind for a few hours.

Crab boats in Seldovia Harbour

Dan directed the skiff onto the leeward side of a small peninsula projecting into the bay. It lay almost due south and about four miles off the tip of the Homer Spit. We beached the boat, water logged, and clothes soaked through, but happy to be on dry land. Roger built a fire, while the rest of us finished bailing the boat, and restoring the clams to their buckets.

The peninsula was narrow, jutting out a hundred yards from the mainland. A homestead sat at the junction of land with smoke flowing from its chimney. Before long three or four left the cabin and headed out the peninsula toward us. The men arrived well armed. They carried rifles and at least two had holstered revolvers strapped to their side. They wanted to know our intention. Why were we camping on private property?

We apologized for trespassing, and explained our dilemma; that we were returning from Seldovia and thought it prudent to wait out a dangerous sea. We told them we were four harmless seafarers temporarily cast upon their shore - two teachers and two Alaska Fish and Game biologist taking refuge from the storm. They accepted our explanation and withdrew. A short time later they sent am unarmed emissary to invite us to share their Memorial Day dinner. We thanked them for their gracious invitation and ask when they should expect our presence.

We four tidied up as much as possible (combed out hair), and preceded, single file, down the path to the house. After introductions to maybe a dozen people, adults and children, we were all seated at a very long table to share a pleasant dinner - fried chicken wings being the main entrée. The unusual offering was pickled kelp, that tasted like…pickles.

Before leaving we had a chance to return their gracious hospitality. Upon stepping from the house we noticed the owner was in the act of removing debris from a nearby area, and were told the place use to be a fox farm. Fox farms were found all over the Bay in the 1930s and 40s - a major industry of the region. The fox cages had to be wired on all sides, including the bottom, to keep them from digging out. Now they wanted to put in a garden but found that old chicken fencing lay beneath the ground and was matted in the sod, nearly impossible to dig out.

We took long coils of rope, laced them through the fencing at strategic points and harnessed them to two teams of pullers. Like plow horses, we strained against the buried obstacle, broke it loose, and rolled the ancient fencing out of its shallow grave. Half hour later we were walking single file back down the path to the boat and heading toward Homer over a moderate sea.

Venturing by Ourselves on to Kachemak Bay, 1975

Seldovia, Alaska is a small fishing village across the bay, and nineteen miles west of Homer. It had originally been a native village, became the center of a major herring fishery in the early 1900s, and was the main town on Cook Inlet through the fist quarter of the twentieth century. Canneries, built on pilings, lined the waterfront with boardwalks linking them one to another. Its setting, picturesque in the classic Alaskan way, was forever changed with the Good Friday tsunami of 1964. The canneries, the boardwalk and much of the town was swept away.

Dan Wilson, 1976

Dan Wilson bought land on the slough in Seldovia in 1974, decided to fish for halibut the following summer and wondered if I might be interested in working as a crewman on his boat. He couldn’t pay anything, but would trade room and board for my labor. We’d be fishing out of Seldovia, could stay on his property, and would dine on freshly caught fish all summer. That seemed like a grand idea, so I promptly signed on as his first mate and only crew member.

Dan Wilson (left) works on his skiff, 1976

Dan acquired a twenty-two foot open dory, and a 35HP Evinrude outboard that winter. He purchased longlines, buoys, buoy lines, anchors, snood lines, and hooks, the gear necessary for fishing halibut. He borrowed a boat trailer, loaded the equipment into the boat, and the two of us headed south on a Friday evening in early May of 1975. Our plan was to take the gear over to Seldovia on Saturday, stash it on his land, and return to Anchorage by Sunday evening. School was still in session and we had to be back home to teach on Monday morning.

Dan knew an older couple living in Homer that summer. They were staying in a small travel trailer while the man worked at the new hospital being constructed. They graciously feed us on more that one occasion that season. Their trailer was a bit too small for overnight quartering, so we often stayed on the Spit, usually in my Alaskan Camper, sometimes in the bunkhouse at Lands End.

We launched our boat the next morning and ventured out onto the bay - two slightly intrepid sailors, gazing upon, and wondering if those really big waves that we were heading into were a normal phenomena. There is a deceptive illusion about boats. They appear enormous while dry docked, or on a trailer, but instantly shrink as soon as they are placed in water. Our skiff, after launching, seemed no more than a pint-sized toy boat. Once riding those big waves it shrank to the size of a wine cork.

There was no wind. We were sailing up one side of a big roller, sitting momentarily on top, and then gliding down the other side - one large, gentle roller after another - the likes-of-which we had never seen before, and never saw again. The waves must have been fifteen feet high, and their length, from crest to crest, measured forty to fifty feet. Dan was cautious, holding a moderate throttle as he drove up each hill and slid down its backside. We were not making good time. There was no wind spray, and the bow never plowed into the bottom of a trough splashing water into the boat. The ride was more like that of a kiddy roller-coaster. We judged that there must have been a big storm a long, long way off, and these giants were the remnants sweeping up Cook Inlet and turning into Kachemak Bay.

Yukon Island

What might have been a two hour crossing turned into a full morning, and we were only half way to Seldovia. We never felt in danger, but did notice a bit of stress as time was running short. We had cleared the open part of the bay, were passing the eastern end of Yukon Island, and about to enter the more protective waters of the Eldred Passage when Dan decided to stash the equipment right there on the island.

The boat edged up to shore and I jumped out pulling the bow onto the sandy beach. The tide was still coming in so there was no fear of the boat going dry in the time it took to carry the tubs of gear up the beach and into the woods. We felt somewhat like pirates hiding our treasure as we stacked the tubs and covered them with a tarp. Thirty minutes later and we were in the boat heading back to Homer. Memorial Day was coming in two weeks. We’d complete the transfer then.
GO TO: Seldovia on Memorial Day, 1975

At Bay with Lawyers, My First Exploration of Kachemak Bay

Most of my adventures on Kachemak Bay were shared with friend and fellow teacher, Dan Wilson. The first episode occurred in 1973 when a gaggle of lawyers hired a boat to carry them across the Bay to Hesketh Island. Dan finagled a ride, and we joined the legal group aboard a WWII vintage Landing Craft, one similar to the those seen in films landing Marines on hostile beaches. This one was probably designed to carry heavy equipment as there was space in the well to easily accommodate the fifty people along with their gear - enough for a weekend camp out.

Landing Ship similar to what the Lawyers hired

The craft left the boat harbor early Saturday morning, rounded the tip of the Homer Spit and set a southwest bearing. We were presented with a calm sea under a cloudless sky, and that placid experience made us more confident when we later ventured onto the bay ourselves. We were both more neophyte than old salt. Dan was from Texas, and I grew up in Indiana. The only thing the two states have in common with the ocean is flatness. Once you’ve experienced days of calm seas, when the boat drifts aimlessly with a gentle roll, can you appreciate a revisit to the flatlands, and feel the same rolling sensation induced by the prairie visage.

Sixty Foot Rock

The boat crossed the open water and eased into the Eldred Passage, a sheltered channel between the southern shore and the island chain made up of Sixty Foot Rock, Cohen, Yukon, and Hesketh islands. We sailed past them and turned into the western shore of Hesketh. After ten miles and sixty minutes the craft pulled onto its beach. The bow gate dropped and the legal team disembarked, lugging packs and ice coolers up the graveled beach and into the woods. Dan and I chose a less populated site to make camp.


Elephant Rock, Between Yukon and Hesketh Islands

We spent two nights on the island. I remember only a few events during the outing. That first night the lawyers had a bond fire to which they invited Dan and me. I don’t recall how Dan happened to find out about the excursion, but we felt a bit like intruders. The only person I recognized was the wife of one of the lawyers. She had done her student teaching at West High. The rest were strangers. So, here we were, a couple of nerdy biology teachers, out numbered twenty to one, and surrounded by a gang of litigating lawyers who probably knew little more about the life around them than we did about the law. Dan and I didn’t wish to bore them by expounding on local fauna and flora, and we were unfamiliar with the vocabulary of their arcane language so we kept a respectful silence while sipping the wine they offered.

A typical Scene on Kachemak Bay

There was a low tide, a clam tide, the next day and many of us wandered onto the exposed sea floor. I had taken my little Kodak along, was snapping a number of pictures, but set it down on a rock, not thinking to retrieve the camera until after fifteen feet of water covered it. I found it sitting on the same rock at the next low tide, decided it was ruined and figured the to invest in a new one. There are no photos to record the Hesketh adventure, and several subsequent outings, as I didn’t get around to replacing it for a couple years.


I don’t know the size of Hesketh Island, but would guess its foot print covers over a hundred acres. Members soon diffused over the islands expanse exploring coves and beaches. Until that time, our presence on the island was probably unknown, but the owner was in residence, and soon showed up in the attorney’s camp. I didn’t hear all the specifics, but it seems the lawyers had neglected to seek permission to camp on private property. Maybe they had relied on the boat’s skipper to place them on a nice camping spot and he had pulled a fast one.


The owner might have requested a camping fee, but graciously declined that alternative. He could have ordered us off the island, but swimming was our only option. He may have had an impulse to sue, but that probably did not seem prudent as he was standing in a nest of lawyers. I understand he let them know he did not much appreciate the invasion of his privacy, and made a point of not inviting them back.
THE END

Regrets

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other.

Those first lines of Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken best exemplify my thoughts on “Regrets”. There is no use in having any. They are acts in futility . I do not think of things in that way. By this time in my life I have looked down thousands of roads, and then taken others. Many of them would have lead me into alternate life histories that I would not recognize now. Some might have been better, and others would most likely been worse. I can’t say. I’m only certain that they would have been different. Some of those forks in the road were merely narrow paths; some were super highways.

In the late spring of 1964, I was living in Bloomington Indiana attending Indiana University. I had been in school for about seven years by then. My brother had graduated, married and moved on. Most of the friends I’d made during those years had followed the same road. I wondered why I was still there.

One late morning I was walking along Kirkwood Street toward the campus when I heard a knocking on the store window to my right. Two voluptuous coeds in bikini swimming suits were sitting in the window beckoning to me. I had seen them several times, and figured the store had hired them as live models to entice customers. I felt a bit of consternation as I went in to see what they could possibly want of me.

They smiled coyly, and explained that because of the hot day they were uncomfortable and would I please buy a couple poor girls a cone from the ice cream shop next door. Now, a smoother mover than I might have considered this a golden opportunity.   Unfortunately, I had just stopped by a gas station on the way to campus, and spent my last two dollars on gas. I was broke and lacked the experience, creativity, or finesse to take advantage of the opportunity.

In embarrassment I mumbled a response that was not all that nice. It was not so terrible, just an insinuation that they should pay for their own damn ice cream cones. The girls had been expecting a little fun, some banter, and were surprised by my unfriendly rejoinder. They excused me and I left - feeling a bit of a jerk.

Later I thought of all the smart lines I could have laid on them. “ I can see that you ladies obviously don’t have much on you - money that is - but I by chance have left my wallet at home. If you could see your way clear to loan me a couple dollars I’d happily buy cones and pay you back tomorrow”.

Or, I could have been the honest supplicant bemoaning fate. How I had elected to spend my last two dollars on gas in order to get there, but if I had chosen otherwise I probably would have run out of gas and not had the pleasure of making their acquaintance. It was a road I didn’t take - more of a narrow path, but some narrow paths run into major highways.

A couple years later I was in Chicago interviewing for a permanent job through an employment agency. One place they sent me was in an industrial part of town. I went into an older building and entered an old office. It might have dated back to the 1920’s or even earlier, with hardwood floors, worn and polished with time, and furniture from the same era. It was like entering a time-warp.

The place was clean and tidy. Two middle aged women sat at old desks behind fenced off railings. The main office sat across the room behind glass windows. They ushered me into see the boss, an old man in a double breasted suit with a matching vest - more time-warp. We sat and talked for quite a while. He ran an oil business, and wanted a young man to train to eventually take over. That is about all I remember about the job. What stuck me and called me back through the years was the friendliness of the three. It was a welcoming and comfortable place, and the old man probably had a lot to teach me. He offered me a job right there and then. I told him I had to think about but knew as I left that I wanted something flashier. I took another offer with a company that sold science equipment the next week and went down that road for a short while, but I always wondered where the other road would have taken me.

I started with a poem so it seems fitting to finish with this one by Omar Khayyam

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.

Fear and Foolishness - Part 3

Those fears are the type that had build slowly and I had time to think and wonder about the situation I’d gotten myself into. Other times things happened so fast that I didn’t have time to think about them. I just reacted. Instinct took over, hormones flowed, my heart rate and blood pressure went sky high, and I didn’t know whether to fight or run. Something like that happened to me in the summer of 1965 while I was in Canada on a fishing trip.

I drove up into northern Manitoba by myself and spent six weeks, first at Reed Lake on Canadian Highway 39, and then further north over a newly finished gravel road (Canadian Highway 6) that ended in the mining town of Thompson. Some years later the road was extended even further toward Hudson Bay. I camped 35 miles west of Thompson on a cleared area that had been used by the crew while they were constructing the road. A new bridge spanned the rapids that cascaded from Setting Lake into another big lake. The rapids were named Pisew Falls. The site was beautiful with lakes on both sides of the road., I spent two weeks there, seldom seeing another human being. I had no boat so I fished off the shore, and would catch a Walleye each morning to have for dinner that night.

Pisew Falls, Setting Lake, Manitoba

 One day I went to explore along the lake. Much of the shore was edged by giant boulders jetting out into the water, and it was easy walking, with open views for the first half mile. I came to a place where I had to cut inland to move around a small cove with steep walls. I went through a thicket of brush, turned back toward the lake, and was swinging my leg over a fallen log when I heard a loud screech off to my right. What happened next could not have spanned more than two or three seconds, but time expands for these events because too much happens to adequately fit into a normal time-space continuum.

I saw a wildcat crossing the ground out of the corner of my eye. It was closing fast. In an instant I had backed over the log, picked up a sizable stick, and was still backing up when I got a better look at my assailant. It wasn’t a wildcat after all, but an big owl. I remember a thought flicking through my mind - that the ground was an odd place to find an owl, but it was screeching bloody murder and still coming at me so I continued my retreat.


I raised my weapon ready for defense. I was also contemplating the possibility of abandoning the field of battle and plunging into the lake when I got my first real look at my adversary. It was a chicken…a damn chicken. I knew there was nothing to fear, and now realize that it was probably a ptarmigan, but at that particular time I was not much into bird identification. I was a sweating bag of nerves, and the bird seemed prepared to fight to the death. It was now circling, crouched close to the ground with its wings held out, making it look bigger and more menacing. I still had the stick in my hand and half heartedly through it in the direction of the bird, and then withdrew. I climbed a small knoll behind and sat on top in the cool breeze. I could hear the bird below screeching and thrashing about in victory for several more minutes. Sometimes experience doesn’t help.
THE END

Fear and Foulishness - Part 2

There are times when people are injured or killed because they aren’t experienced enough to know they are in danger. There are other times when a person becomes paralyzed with fear while another, in the same situation, may recognize there is no real danger. I’ve been in both situations.

A friend, Dan Wilson, and I were near the top of a mountain once and started across a boulder scree. Most of the rocks were small, only eight or ten inches on a side, stacked on top of each other, and the scree ran down the mountain several hundred feet. The rocks weren’t big enough to give solid footing and some would shift under foot and slide a bit. The scree was maybe a hundred feet across, and we were on a fairly steep incline. Under the circumstances, it was a bit scary to look down that steep slope. I started to wonder if we had made a mistake. Would one of the next steps result in a slippage and cause a cascading slide? Most of it seemed solid and we were, by then, over half way across - the point-of-no-return - so there was no sense in turning back. I picked every step carefully, testing each rock, and happily made it to the other side, but I still don’t know how perilous the situation was.

Another time I was on a snow machine heading up a river north of Eureka. Wilson was following on his machine, and I began passing open water near the shores. The river was wide and we were running right down the middle, but those open holes started to bother me. I could see water rushing in them and knew if I stopped my machine and turned off the engine I would hear the water flowing. I wasn’t about to stop. A moving snowmobile can pass over thin ice and be gone, but stopping is not a good idea.

I was following another snowmobile track so I felt somewhat secure as long as it did not abruptly end in a hole, but then the track suddenly made a tight 180 degree turn and went back the way we were coming. I was now riding point and entering uncharted territory. I got spooked. I went no more than another quarter mile and pulled onto a small island in the middle of the river. I told Dan I wasn’t going any further. He seemed to be a bit peeved, but did not offer to take the lead, so I guess he was no more sure of the ice than I was. Again, I don’t know if we were in any danger. Maybe someone familiar with the river might not have thought anything about it, but again, maybe those tracks that turned around had been made by a more experienced traveler or maybe the spook got them too.
GO TO: Part 3

Fear and Foolishness

In my youth I was neither fearless nor cowardly, but would describe myself as cautious. I remember Mom was deathly scared of snakes and swimming. I did not much care for snakes myself. I found something revolting about the thought of handling them because I always thought they were slimy until I touched a big Boa in a college class and found its skin to be cool and dry. I learned to swim when I was six or seven. I liked to climb trees and never feared heights.

There was, however, one specific thing that terrorized me. It was a dream. When I was five or six I had a nightmare from which I woke distressed and crying. I had the dream several times and always woke up terrified. They asked me what it was about, but I was never able to describe it. The rhythm and beat of that dream is still with me, but there was little then or now that I could tell you about it. There was no form, no monster, no scene. There was a sense of something expanding and contracting - pulsating. Some sound that rose, than sank in intensity; a menace that was near but could not be seen. If I were superstitious or a believer in the supernatural, I would think that a door briefly opened, and for short time I looked upon pure evil. I had other nightmares after that, but they paled in comparison.

Every time I went to a monster movie, I would swear that I would never go to another, but the next time one came into town, I would find myself sitting with my brother and several other neighborhood kids watching the latest offering. Most of the movies featured either, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi or Lon Chaney. I probably saw every horror film made during the 1940’s and 50’s : Frankenstein, the Mummy, the Werewolf, Dracula. I spent much of each show with my hands covering my eyes, peeking through splayed fingers.

I know of only one other dream I had and it ended with me waking up laughing. I dreamed that I walked into my bedroom. The closet was just to the left as you entered the room. In the dream the closet door had a window in the top half, and I saw Frankenstein sitting in the closet with his back to me. I ran away so fast that a cloud of dust, leaves, other debris rose in my place obscuring everything. I had injected that dust cloud into my dream after having seen a similar scene in a ghost movie in which Jack Benny and Rochester starred. It seemed very funny.

GO TO: Part 2