Goodbye February...and Good Riddance

 For most of my life I've lived in a Northern climate, so February has always been an  unpleasant month to me.It's like a filler between January and March. It can go either way, giving little hints and hopes of the coming spring or unpleasant reminders of winter. In a lot of ways it's kind of like me- wishy-washy; unable to set a course and stay with it. I could almost handle knowing that the month was going to continue to be cold and miserable, like January. You expect it to be nasty then, but February is unpredictable. One day it's blowing forty knots with wind chills well below zero, and the next day the sun has come out and the icecicles on the roof are melting.

 Last week it was one of those brilliant sunny days and I was enticed out of my cave for a little walk down at the cannery. As you can see, I was the only one foolish enough to be out there. There was a pretty good Northeastern wind whipping up the whitecaps in Icy Straits. As long as I stayed in front of the cannery I was pretty well protected from the wind. Of course I didn't have sense enough to do that, I wanted to get a picture out and around the corner- right where I was exposed to the full force of that icy blast. By the time I got back to the lee side of the cannery, my face felt like a steak in a grocery freezer. I'm quite certain that if anyone had boxed my frozen ears they probably would have fallen to the ground where seagulls would have pecked at them or perhaps they would have dried and tourists could have skipped them across the water like flat rocks..."look, that one skipped twelve times Mom!"  I don't know why, but whenever I go out I wear my baseball cap. Of course it offers no protection from the cold. I guess I wear it out of habit, but also because it has a picture of a salmon on the front with a Hoonah Cold Storage logo on it.Some years back I sent my brother, Mark, a Hoonah Cold Storage cap that had ear flaps. It was the only year they had flaps- probably a good thing, they looked pretty stupid. Anyway, Mark wore it, most likely out of a feeling of obligation. The thing is, he lives in Florida. He said he put it on and started sweating like a fat lady in a steam box. When I was a kid,the makers of Arrid deodorant used to show a commercial like that. Why anyone would sit in a steambox I have no idea. Perhaps it was February and she was trying to warm up.

I'm not really sure why I took this picture of the marker on Cannery Point. I just happened to be there so I took it. There really isn't anything too amusing or witty that you can write about a marker. I can tell you that it marks a reef that sticks out off the point and apparently it's marker number 3. It has a green light that flashes every six seconds and according to  chart  number 17302 it stands twenty six feet off the ground and can be seen for seven miles on a clear night. Back when I had my fourteen foot Highlaker skiff I caught a thirty nine pound king salmon off that reef. For years it was the largest salmon I ever caught. What that has to do with February I can't say, but what the hell- it's my blog so I can put in whatever I want I guess. By the way, if any of my family is reading this, the wind knocked out the long distance and cell service so we can't get ahold of you. You can thank February for this inconvenience.