Wilderness Blues- Ramblings from the Great Land

  Ahhhh... Christmas. It's come and gone for this year. I hope yours was a delight, as mine was. It was fairly quiet this year. All of my children are grown up and gone. I'm left with the memories of Christmas's past when they were all growing up. Prior to moving to Hoonah the kids had never really experienced Christmas with a tree and the presents and a special dinner. The holiday wasn't celebrated at the time on the farm, so for ten years they had little idea that it was any different than any other day. Once we moved to town though, Christmas was celebrated in the Botts home with the tree, the dinner, the gifts and lots of love and laughter and noise. It was a lot of fun, and still is, just on a smaller scale. We had our annual Shoe Box Dinner at my daughter, Jennifer's house. She takes shoe boxes and decorates them with gift wrap and puts in a drink, some fruit, candy, chips and a small gift and then we enjoy a tuna melt sandwich. For me she put in ...

With one paw up waiting for his cereal Cereal is always better with a little milk on it     I'm sorry to say that I've allowed things to get completely out of hand around our house. We ( actually I) have stooped to new lows in coddling our dog Rigby. He was already pretty well spoiled, demanding that we share our food with him. From the red and green peppers, lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers and carrots that we put into our salad, to slices from our mandarin oranges that Jan receives from work at Christmas. Of course he's always insisted on having a sliver of cheese whenever I imbibe and on those occasions when we barbeque shish-ka-bobs he's unrelenting in his begging. Its enough to want to make you go out for dinner so you can enjoy your meal in peace. In the morning when we have bananas he insists on having a few slices, and if we aren't johnny on the spot in getting it for him, he fairly well squeals with the most intense, shrill bark that I've ever ...

   I was at church a few weeks ago and ran across a paper that said-Billy Graham's Prayer for our nation. This was a prayer that Graham made at the age of 95. He had a birthday this past November. In 95 years of living a person sees a lot of changes. The changes he's seen, and indeed all of us have seen if we've lived any time at all, should cause us to sit up and take notice. You don't have to be a news junkie to know that there is a lot of trouble brewing in this old world. Whether you want to be impacted or not, you will be. There's no hiding from the down hill slide that we seem to be on. Reverend Graham addresses that in this prayer for America that I would like to share with you.   "Heavenly Father, we come before you today to ask your forgiveness and to seek your direction and guidance. We know your word says, " Woe to those who call evil good," but that is exactly what we have done. We have lost our spiritual equilibrium and reversed ou...

Before After It's wintertime. We established that in the last post, just in case there is anyone living in a climate like Miami where they aren't really sure if it's winter or not, at least not by looking outside. I guess one way to be sure down there is by the influx of pasty white bodies that show up on their shores like beached whales. Anyway, one of the fun things about winter here- ha,ha, ha, I'm just kidding there really isn't anything fun about winter here, at least not in my eyes. But, if there is anything good to be said about winter here in Alaska, it's that all the time spent inside can result in effort in the kitchen. After Thanksgiving I was feeling pretty well bloated on turkey and pie and jello salad. After a few days, it doesn't have the same appeal. Well, it's been a week since Thanksgiving, and I haven't had any pie or jello salad or cake or other sweet and tasty treats for the better part of a week, and today while I was d...

         I don't know if I'm allowed to use this title for this post or not. It's the title of an album by one of my favorite musical artists, Enya. I happen to love the name  and I just happen to love the music as well.  The statement pretty well sums it up. Although we had a pretty mild fall overall, and I guess according to the calendar it's still considered fall, by the time November arrives I usually consider it winter. It really wasn't all that bad until recently. As you can see, we've got a little snow and ice, and believe me, the water is cold enough to steal your breath away should you happen to fall in. As unpleasant as it is, this is the kind of weather that these salmon need. Today it actually got fairly warm- into the mid thirties, but tonight under clear skies it's pretty doggone chilly. My brother used to say that it was as cold as a nun's buns. I don't know how he would know...

 I went into the bathroom today to do something, probably the usual things that you would do in the bathroom, and as I was looking in the mirror I became aware of my eyebrows. If I could have gotten a closeup picture of just my eyebrows I would have. They're so big that I had to grow a mustache just to distract people. I notice that I seem to squint a lot, like I'm looking into the sun. Of course there isn't much sun here normally to look at, so obviously that's not the problem. The reason I seem to squint is that my eyebrows have a tendency to poke me in the eyes- the very thing they're supposed to be protecting! What gives? Periodically I trim them, but it doesn't really seem to help, I think it just causes them to grow at odd angles, mainly all in a downward direction towards my eyeballs. My dad had bushy eyebrows. They were pretty intimidating. It's probably a good thing that men have pretty bushy ones. It would be hard to be a person in authority i...

   There is something about music that touches all of us-at least everyone who can hear. I wonder if songs play in the minds of the deaf but they don't know how to express the melody. I believe Beethoven was deaf, but I'm not sure if he was born that way or if it came upon him later on in life. I guess I should research that. Whether you're riding in an elevator and having Musak piped in or shopping in your favorite department store during the Christmas season and listening to Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer for the four hundredth time, we're surrounded by music. If I may, I would like to give a word of advice to retailers all over the country. Stop trying to sell Christmas before Halloween is even here. Remember that your customers have already heard the country rendition, the rap rendition, the new age rendition and the original rendition of Hark the Herald Angels Sing more times than they care to ever hear again in their natural lives, long befor...

      I'd like to borrow a line from Brittany Spears and say "Oops I did it again." Now,I don't know what Brittany did again. For awhile there she was doing some pretty bizarre things, but I don't think the song is about any of those; of course I could be wrong. The thing I did again, so stupidly I might add, is I managed to cook the Di Giorno pizza without first removing the cardboard. Twice! How can anyone  cook the cardboard with the pizza twice?Somehow I managed to set the timer for the required amount of time for  a soft crust, and I did turn on the oven and took the plastic off. I don't know why I didn't notice the cardboard. I just laid it right on top of the stone wear pizza plate and shoved that puppy in the oven and slammed the door shut. I was actually feeling pretty proud of myself. It was Saturday evening and we were hosting our friends, the Pinards, for a friendly game of rummy. The game usually starts at 7:00 and Jan doesn't get off...

      There is something about the fog that appeals to writers- artists- philosophers. I'm not sure what it is. For certain it changes the scene before you. If it's not too thick, as is the case in the above pictures, it can add a bit of mystique to the ordinary. I see the Presbyterian church almost every day. There's nothing outstanding about it that I can see. Perhaps because I'm so familiar with it I don't really pay too much attention when I pass by, but throw in some fog and all of a sudden I see it in a whole new light. The bell in the cupola stands out as well as the cross and trees beside the church. The same with the giant Spruce in the middle picture. It's an impressive tree in any kind of weather, but in the fog it fairly well shouts. "I alone am left of the old growth forest that once grew in the center of town. From my towering heights bald eagles see far out into the bay. On my broad branches the raven and the crow perch...

     I imagine that those looking at this particular post are probably wondering-"what the heck is Botts showing me a picture of a stinking mop for?" Well, I'll tell you why. I have a contract to clean a government building here in town, which of course involves mopping. I needed a mop awhile back when the one I had finally started showing signs of old age. The strings were falling out, I couldn't tighten the hardware any more so the head started flopping back and forth and the handle was developing splinters. My wife happened to be going to Juneau so she picked  me up a new one. Now, I don't mean to be ungrateful. As you know, beggars can't be choosers. That being said, let me just mention that buying a mop is like buying underwear- one size doesn't fit all. It would be nice if it did- then as you got fatter, or in the unlikely event that you lost weight, you wouldn't have to go through your underwear drawer  and start tossing your boxers and bri...

The Crazy Horse Monument The scale model of the monument- 1/300th the size The seventh and eighth generation grandsons of Crazy Horse Artifacts from the Crazy  This will be the last post about the trip we took. As I mentioned previously, it means more to us than to anyone else reading this. I did want to share one of the more memorable parts of the trip though. While we were still on the Lincoln Highway in Wyoming we stopped at one of the rest areas and spoke to a rather interesting fellow. He was sporting a long white beard and carried a Diamond Willow walking stick. Unlike the generic travelers that you see most everywhere, you could tell he was a character and he had an air of knowledge about him. I was drawn to his t-shirt. It showed Mt. Rushmore, which was on our list of places we wanted to visit on this excursion down south. Unfortunately, the buffoons running the government couldn't get their act together and the government was shut down, which of course mea...

The Payette River, Idaho Shoshone Falls, Idaho Falls Idaho Shoshone Falls/ Snake River Momma  Jan at Shoshone Falls    I thought I would spend a little time in the next few posts speaking about our trip. Obviously it means much more to me and Jan than to anyone else, so I won't go on and on, but we don't make it out of Alaska too often so when we do get a chance to go it's a kind of big deal. We left Juneau and flew to Seattle and on to Boise Idaho where we rented a car. I wasn't about to rent a car in Seattle- way too busy for me. When we got to Boise we waited for our luggage which never came. Hey... I just remembered that Alaska airlines has a policy that if you have to wait more than twenty minutes for your luggage they'll give you a twenty dollar credit or refund or some such thing. What the hell? Where's my refund? Those sapsuckers owe me forty dollars- twenty for Jan and twenty for me. It's not the first time they'v...

  We began our trip several weeks ago by boarding the Alaska Marine Highway ferry, Aurora.   I dropped back to the cafeteria to grab a cup of coffee and watched with amusement as one of the officers posted the menu. I've had clam chowder before, and I've certainly eaten Rock fish, though not grilled. I have to admit though, I've never tried Beef Strokenoff. Sounds like something you might find on the menu of a brothel in Las Vegas or some such thing. When I saw that I had to do a double take. Then I started doubting myself, thinking that perhaps using a "g" instead of a "k" was wrong. I know that I've forgotten a lot of things as I've aged, but this is definitely the wrong spelling. Perhaps the officer was Russian and was spelling it the way she pronounced it, who knows. In any event I agree with a friend who, after she saw the menu, said, "I think I'll stay with  the cheeseburger.

     I'm painfully aware that I haven't done a post here for several weeks. The fact of the matter is, I was on a vacation. I needed to go south to visit my mom and see how she was doing, so we turned it into a road trip of sorts. We flew into Boise and drove around Idaho for a few days, then across Utah and Wyoming to visit my daughter Camille. From there we went to Custer, South Dakota. Unfortunately, the elected officials whom we voted on to run this country are so incompetent and partisan that we were unable to visit one of the places that I had my heart set on visiting- Mt. Rushmore. It wasn't a total loss though. I thoroughly loved the Black Hills of South Dakota and we visited the Crazy Horse Monument and museum. We watched the seventh and eighth generation of Crazy Horse perform several native dances and it was a pretty impressive display. If you ever wonder about a great place to visit I would highly recommend Custer. The area is beautiful, ...

  It's hard to believe but for all intents and purposes the 2013 fishing season is over, at least for me.  In my last three trips out fishing I've only caught a total of ten cohos- hardly enough to make it worth the while. With fuel costing upwards of $5.00 a gallon and the boat burning about eight gallons a day on a short day, it doesn't make sense to go out. Last year, or maybe it was the year before, I started heading out on the last day of the season. I saw that even the hard-nosed trollers were tied up and even though I made it out of the harbor, I got discouraged and turned around and came back in without even dropping a line. On my way back in I saw one of the guys who fishes only sporadically anymore, and then usually doesn't do much, leaving the harbor. I wished him luck but frankly didn't believe he would catch anything. As it was,  he went just to Point Sophia and caught sixty cohos for the short time he was there- about six hundred ...

   Hi- thanks for joining me here. Tonight I would like to share with you a tale. Unlike the tales of the Grimm brothers, this tale is true and involves yours truly. This tale is from a long time ago, relatively speaking, and while it could have been sad for me, fortunately it wasn't. So, sit back, grab a refreshing beverage, cold or hot and join me as I travel back in time with a story from my past. Years ago, in a simpler, happier time, there was no EPA or other government sanctioned terrorist groups. In those days, when Autumn came and the leaves began to fall, folks used to rake them up and pile them in huge stacks out on the curb. Kids used to ride their bikes through them and scatter leaves over the same areas they had just been raked away from.  Eventually, I guess in an effort to keep from having to rake the same leaves again, it was a common practice to set the leaves on fire right there on the street. Now, I have no idea how the asphalt kept ...

   When most folks think about Alaska, sharks never even come to mind. I'd never heard that there were sharks here until I started commercial fishing some years back. One year I leased the troller Acadia from one of my friend from the farm. It was June and I went up in Port Fredrick to a place just known as the waterfalls, oddly enough because there is a waterfall right there. Anyway, one of the local highliners, Joar Savland, was fishing his boat, the Standy up there. I was still learning the fishing business at the time, so I thought it would be wise to follow behind him a few boat lengths and spy on him with the binoculars, you know, see what he was using, how fast he was trolling and so on. Well, I got distracted somehow, maybe I even had a bite, I don't remember, but anyhow I lost track of him for a bit. When I located him again I noticed a fin circling a ways behind his boat. I thought he had knocked a big King Salmon off his line and it was stunned. I figured that i...

  Today is Labor Day- September 2. It's hard for me to believe that it's upon us already. Back in May, at the beginning of the fishing season, this day seemed so far away. The days of summer were almost twenty four hours long, with some semblance of darkness occurring in the wee hours of the morning. Now I have to rush home to beat the dark, lest I be caught in the middle of Icy Strait in the pitch blackness. I guess Labor Day is considered the official end of summer, although ours ended several weeks ago. That old familiar chill in the air followed by the first brown leaves falling from the alders were a sure sign; that and the white, shriveled tops of the Fireweed. Oh we still had some gorgeous days, warm, even hot, but they are coming to end. In the thirty six years that I've been here I can't remember a finer summer though. I hope we don't have to pay for our unexpected pleasure this winter. Well, I have a houseful of family visiting and I...

    Coffee breaks- we all take them. They are an important part of every work day. At some work places they are spelled out- there will be two breaks a day from this time to that time. At other places the time is optional depending on the situation. It's not a good idea to go on a break at a place like, say, the bank, and leave all the money unattended. I have to admit that there have been times when I pulled up to the cold storage to sell fish or get ice and be told that the crew was on a break and I would have to wait until they returned. God forbid that the foreman would have to operate the winch or press the button to start the ice auger. I don't think that's very good business to make your customer wait. However, the options for selling elsewhere or getting ice are pretty limited, so I guess they have the upper hand in that situation.     I'm self-employed so I can take a break whenever I want... and I do. Sometimes multiple breaks. Frankly when I'm out fi...