Tide, Feather, Snow_ A Life in Alaska - Miranda Weiss [7]
The next morning, we clambered down the bluff to where we had stashed the net in a wide plastic bucket. Neighbors down the beach, with whom we’d shared bonfires and beer, had asked to borrow the net. Emboldened by our success, John had offered to set it for them so they could pick it later in the afternoon. As we pulled the net from the bucket, we realized something was amiss. The float line had severed from the net. It had been cut. And the mermaid buoy was gone. We’d been vandalized, and I had that sick feeling in my stomach of having been robbed. It was a mixture of rage and embarrassment. I knew John was already calmly scheming about how to reattach the float line and get the net back into the water as questions spun through my mind. Who did it? What had we done wrong? Had we taken someone’s fishing spot? Was it because we hadn’t lived here for long enough? It was too purposeful to be random. Whoever had cut the line had to have been carrying a knife and had to be willing to walk away with a voluptuous mermaid under his arm.
We walked up the beach then down. Wind had picked up on the water and it nattered in our ears. We looked for signs: the mermaid buoy abandoned in front of someone’s house, resentful neighbors, suspicious tracks in the sand. We found nothing. There was no way to know who did it or why.
We trudged up the bluff to call the neighbors to let them know it would be a while before we could set the net again. John went out to the garage to look for odds and ends he could use to fix the net. I sat at the kitchen table and watched the birch tree in the yard lean against the wind. I wondered whether it was wind that helped make birch such a strong wood, and wind, too, that made these trees bear canopies of such delicately sinuous branches.
Here was the push and pull of this place. At one moment it felt like your own. But then the tide flipped, the high pressure broke, night swung its curtain in front of your eyes. The tide was beginning to turn, and soon it would rush across the mud flats toward the beach, first in a thin sheet and then in small waves, each tripping over the last. Within hours, the impressions our boots had left on the sand would be covered by water; there would be no evidence we had been there at all.
2
PASSAGE
FORECASTLE, ALSO, FO’C’SLE: n. The section of the upper deck of a ship located in the bow forward of the foremast.
On the day of my departure for Alaska, I sat at an empty picnic table near the edge of the dock eating my last meal on terra firma: Alaskan halibut fish and chips. The ferry I was about to board was tied up in Bellingham harbor—its most southerly port of call—and it heaved a bit, making preparatory grunts and murmurings like an orchestra warming up. The late summer sun scattered sharp shadows across the grass and wind snapped the ship’s flags. It was my first time traveling on my own, and, sitting at the edge of the continent, I was completely, terribly, and excitingly alone. I would be retracing the voyage of countless others who had traveled to Alaska before me: gold rushers, early pioneers, thrill-seekers, miners, surveyors, fur hunters, fishermen, law makers, sightseers, and naturalists. By sea, the trip would take one week.
After finishing my meal, I boarded the M/V Columbia, a stately white and navy blue–hulled ship. Like many of the passengers, I made the low-budget choice and didn’t pay for a cabin. Instead, I claimed a lawn chair that folded flat as my bed in the “solarium,” a deck enclosed by three walls and roof, with radiating heaters on the ceiling. I stashed my bags and set off to explore the ship. These ships had been the workhorses of Alaskan sea travel for many years, used for commuting between coastal communities and for delivery of cars to towns where they’d never been before. More recently, the ferries had become popular with tourists as a more modest alternative to