Wilderness Blues- Ramblings from the Great Land

The sign kind of says it all doesn't it? How many times have you felt this way... the boss is yelling at you, your spouse is being a jerk, the kids are acting up, you just found out the repairs that your car need are going to cost you the next two months salary. Things happen in life and you just wish that they would happen somewhere else to someone else. I don't think that any of that crossed my daughter's mind when she bought this sign for us. Maybe she was thinking about addressing the neighbor's dogs when she picked it up. I think I've mentioned before that Hoonah has a leash law, but it's not always enforced. In fact it's seldom enforced so we get random dogs running through the neighborhood at times and since they don't like to get their butts wet, they prefer to visit a yard that has been groomed. Namely mine. I don't mind picking up after Rigby, but that's where I draw the line. It would be nice if I could train him to use the toilet like...

I'm not sure what mountains these are. They may not even have a name, I don't think most of the mountains around here do. They sure are pretty though. They aren't too far from False Bay. Whenever I see them I know we don't have too much further to go. You can see the blue sky in this photo. Totally unlike the a normal September as I mentioned in my last post. Today is more typical- it's blowing about twenty five with rain coming down in sheets. Thank God things are returning to normal. If we kept having all that good weather who knows how many people we'd have living here. On our way out to False Bay a few weeks ago, shortly after we left the pavement, we passed the remains of two more fine old wooden boats. The green one is the Judy Ann. It belonged to Terry Shepard, a little gnome of a man who calls himself the Hobbit. He looks the part. Just over five feet tall with a full grey beard and a walking stick, he called the Judy Ann home for years. When I first me...

We've been enjoying the most lovely September that I can ever remember in my thirty four years of living here. Typically, you don't need to look at the calender to know that September has arrived. Usually the continuous rain and cold winds leave no doubt in anyone's mind that winter is on the way. Most years, by mid- September the mountains over at Homeshore would have terminaion dust on them. That's the first light dusting of snow that shows on the higher elevations. That's sure not the case this year. The weather has been unseasonably warm...hot even. I don't want to complain, but I probably will anyway. I just worry that all this sunny,dry weather will play havoc with the salmon. We need all the rain we usually receive at this time of year so the creeks will fill up and provide a good place for spawning. Fortunately I never had to worry about whether or not it rained- we had kids in all kinds of weather. Oh well- enough of that. As I was saying, this weather...

I went out fishing on Friday. The season is rapidly coming to a close and I wanted to eleviate any feelings of guilt that I will most certainly experience this winter for not putting enough time or effort into the season. As often happens with me, I go through these long droughts with no fish during the typical day. Sometimes, if I happen to have a good book to read, I can just put the boat on auto-pilot, aim for the deepest part of the bay and start reading, occasionally looking up to see if the lines are jiggling. Depending on how long it's been since my last bite, and how interesting the book is, I'll either jump up and run outside to go pull the fish, or I'll reluctantly put the book down and walk slowly out to the cockpit, put on my wet, stinky gloves and proceed to pull up the fish, cursing it for not biting sooner, before I got so engrossed in my story. If the fish is especially big, to where the tattle -tale springs are really pounding, the adrenaline spikes and I c...

I've been wanting to post to this blog about one of the most trying weeks I've ever experienced in my life, but before I could, I had to wait until this evening. On Saturday night, August 28, I was sitting in my living room when I heard a shot ring out. It's not all that unusual to hear shots here in town, especially around this time of year. Frequently Brown Bears wander in to town in search of food and the police are called to chase them off with rubber bullets. Shortly after the first shot, I heard two other shots. I heard a truck come charging up the road and screech to halt out front of my neighbors house. Haley Tokuoka flew out of the truck and ran into her parents house, screaming "Oh God! Oh God!" A few minutes later my daughter called to let us know that Haley's husband,Matt, and another police officer, Sgt. Tony Wallace had been shot. At the time it wasn't known if the shooter was roaming around the town freely or if he had gone in to his house. ...