Tide, Feather, Snow_ A Life in Alaska - Miranda Weiss [36]
As we moved along the beach, a small skiff packed with a half-dozen people zipped by just beyond the edge of our nets. The passengers each held a dip net that dragged through the water, combing out fish. Every time the skiff passed us, the passengers dropped more fish into the boat’s hull.
Ecstatic cheers went up as a small, gray-haired Asian woman dragged her net onto the beach. An enormous king salmon—about thirty pounds—bucked in her net. It was late for this kind of salmon to be running up the river and it was beginning to look a little bit “spawny”—losing its silver brilliance, turning pink, and gaining hook-shaped jaws. But that didn’t matter. People clapped and the woman’s family crowded around her.
We continued to ferry fish to Cynthia and the kids on the beach—one, two, six, a dozen. All three of them sat on the sand removing the guts but they couldn’t keep up with us. After pulling in a few more fish, I took off the waders and joined the kids on the beach, while Cynthia headed into the water.
One of our three coolers was full of cleaned fish, and a few other reds lay twitching in the sand next to a pile of guts. We had no ice, but these fish were fresher than any you could find in the best markets. Kaya and Ghen were excited. At seven, Kaya had an unusually keen sense of observation. She watched half in awe and half in disgust as a boy about her age was vigorously hitting a salmon flopping on the beach with a small wooden club. A sharp smack stunned the fish so that it could be easily untangled from the net. But the boy’s blows were failing to still the fish. By some measures, it was a violent scene for a child to witness. But sentimentality quickly gave way to practicality. “Why doesn’t he just rip its gills?” Kaya asked. “That would work better.” I had looked up from the fish I was preparing to slit open and briefly wondered why it was so easy to surround myself with so much killing, why it was so easy to enjoy it. It seemed there should be some ritual of appreciation before we all drove off the beach lugging these tons of fish home, some kind of celebration to mark the sacrifice, but there was far too much work to do as the fish continued to stream in. The fish would be our food and also a kind of currency. It would provide gifts to send to family out of state; meals we gave to older neighbors, unable to fish themselves; and dinners to be shared on winter nights with friends. At that moment, nothing was more important than the harvest.
PEOPLE HERE WERE always gathering things. Coal was collected from the beaches to heat houses. Driftwood—from small, sinuous pieces to huge trunks of redwood—was taken from the dunes for construction and art, until a city mandate forbade it to protect the beach from erosion. Still, people hauled away heavy tree trunks that washed ashore each year. People collected sand to add to garden beds or to scatter across icy front steps. People took stones for their yards and to weigh down the backs of their trucks for traction in the snow. Dead trees were leveled to feed woodstoves. Water was piped off streams for the garden or from a spring to the kitchen tap. Nothing edible was ignored.
In a way, this sense of abundance reminded me of my childhood. The strip of woods on the far side of the creek behind my parents’ house was the source of all the raw materials my friends and I needed for a Saturday afternoon. But as I’d grown older, few things seemed free anymore. And there was so little raw material left at my disposal. Adult life seemed circumscribed by scarcity: never enough money, enough time, enough happiness. “Excess” had become a pejorative. But here, at this time of year, it was hard to feel anything but rich with the profusion of resources here. A few weeks earlier, John and I had dug dozens of long, thin-shelled razor clams from the Inlet’s muddy shores during a particularly low tide, and we collected steamer