Wilderness Blues- Ramblings from the Great Land

 I just got back from fishing down in Southeast on Saturday. I stopped in down in Ketchikan to visit my son Ben and his family and had a delightful time. The first day was sunny and beautiful and we got to see some great sites. The second day was horrible, windy and rainy, but it didn't stop us from going out. We dropped in to Creek Street where renown artist Ray Troll has a shop, the Soho Coho. I bought a couple of shirts and some cards that I'll probably do a post on at a later date.  When I left Ketchikan on Saturday the weather was getting nicer and made for some pleasant flying, although I had to make three stops before we got to Anchorage, so the flight lasted about seven hours. It was not my favorite thing to do, but it sure beats what this fellow had to face. I was in Hoonah and had just left the boat when I heard a helicopter flying overhead. It sounded like it was flying kind of low, so I looked up and was startled to see an airplane dangling from a cable under the h...

  As you can see from the pictures, this blog post isn't about chess pieces, it's about a fish. A king salmon. A white king salmon to be more specific. Last Saturday I spent the day fishing and in an uncommon bit of good fortune, I managed to land five kings. I actually had eight on. Two of them took spoons, and for whatever reason, managed to get off. I always play the scenario over and over in my head trying to figure out what went wrong when I lose one. The first one I lost I figured maybe he was still too fiesty to bring in. The second one I let soak a little longer, but I still lost him. Go figure. The third one that got off I never even saw. He hit pretty hard, and I let him soak for what I thought was a proper amount of time- let him tow the fifty pound cannonball around for awhile to let off some steam. As it was though, he swam into the leader above him and managed to tangle the two lures and got off. I can't say I was very happy, but I wa...

The Fairweather Mountain Range, outside coast                                                            Blue green glacial water in Idaho Inlet     The point I anchored behind in Idaho Inlet    I ran to the outside coast last week. Fishing on the inside has been almost non-existent. Well, at least the fish have been. What good is going fishing if you can't catch any fish? Granted it can be fun or relaxing or whatever you adverb you want to use to describe it, but when you're a commercial fisherman, you need to catch fish. That's the bottom line. Otherwise the adjective used to describe you is poor or perhaps destitute or penniless. Any of those would work. Anyway, I bit the bullet and ran out to the outside coast last week. I had to wait for a weather window. The week before I went o...

Door post with a goat head carved into it Shark backbone doorpost Killer whale doorpost Octopus doorpost Gordon Greenwald with one panel painted and carved Herb Sheakley carving a cedar panel It's been more than a few months since I last dropped in on the school auto shop to see how the Glacier Bay Tribal House project is going. I have to admit, I was pretty well blown away by the amount of work that's been done there. I love to see skilled people at work and it's obvious that the three carvers, Gordon Greenwald, Herb Sheakley and Owen James have carving skills in abundance. I regret that I was unable to sufficiently capture the detail and beauty of the carved objects. It was a little bit hard to get around in the building, and the fluorescent lighting leaves a greenish cast to the pictures. As you can see in several of the pictures, the upright blue lifts are still in place for raising cars  off the floor to work on. The shop hasn't been used ...

 I spent a delightful few hours this afternoon in the building that used to house the school auto shop. Who know's, someday it may be a shop again, but for now it's being used to carve a screen that will be transported to Glacier Bay National Park,  the original home of the Huna Tlingit. The project manager is Gordon Greenwald. Prior to his retirement from the Hoonah City School, he was the wood shop teacher, as well as teaching drafting and Northwest Coast Art. As I look around my office I see several plaques as well as a small paddle, a replica of what the local natives would have used to paddle their canoes up and down the Alaskan coastline. All have been decorated in the designs  similar to what  the Tlingit would have put on their paddles or totems or screens. Several of my kids excelled at Northwest Coast Art, even receiving requests for designs for paddles. The design of this screen is an original one that Gordy has made himself. I wish I could remember a...