Wilderness Blues- Ramblings from the Great Land

It's a beautiful day here in sunny Hoonah Alaska. The only problem is that it's in the single digits and not supposed to go much higher. I don't know how the sun can be out and have so little heat to offer. I've known a few folks like that- beautiful people with no warmth to their character. Perhaps it's just as well- if they were good looking and kind too they might be intolerable. Anyway, it's too cold to wander around outside today so I thought I would tap into the archives of my  picture files. The top two pictures show the Mickey V on anchor in Neka Bay this past year. Neka Bay is named after a local Tlingit man who used to shoot a small cannon every time the fleet came back in. I saw a picture of him in a book. He's a very distinguished looking fellow and the cannon looked like it could do some damage if he loaded it with a pound or two of shot. The Mickey V (5) is owned by a friend of mine, Marc Miller. I don't know what happened to Mickey's ...

When the kids were visiting over the Christmas break, Autumn said she wanted to go out and get pictures. We had one day when the sun came out and it just so happened to be at a time when I could go out, so we ran up to a spot that overlooks Port Frederick and back towards the old Whitestone logging camp. The last picture shows the downtown float and cold storage. When we first arrived in Hoonah the cold storage dock was half rotten and dangerous to walk up and down at low tide. A number of boats used to tie up to it, sometimes six or eight moored along side each other. It could be a real pain if you were the one tied to the dock and wanted to get out . That was long before the boat harbor was in existence. The breakwater is attatched to Graveyard Island. I believe the NOAA charts lists it as Pitt Island. Today it was once again used as a burial place. Karl Greenwald was laid to rest there. He used to commercial fish with his brother on a seine boat years ago. I had the pleasure of doi...