Wilderness Blues- Ramblings from the Great Land

     Let's face it, we're all going to die some day. Who knows, it could be today. I'm fast approaching the age of seventy, and with all the pains that have become a part of my every day life, I'm constantly reminded that I'm not going to live forever, nor do I want to. I haven't got the strength. My wife and I had long ago drawn up a will. We didn't want the state determining where our estate would go. We still need to sit down and come up with a list of existing bank accounts and where our 401K and IRA's are located, and I suppose I should commit to paper where I would like some of what I've treasured in this world to end up. I won't give my wooden fishing boat to either of the boys, I don't want to burden them with that. I do have quite a bit of commercial fishing gear though that they could keep or sell. Then there are the tools and books and other odds and ends. I've already told my granddaughter that she can have my stamp collecti...

 It's been awhile since I've written any posts. I haven't been out with the camera much lately. I guess I haven't seen too much that I wanted to photograph. The weather has been foul for weeks, rainy, snowy, windy- typical weather for Southeast Alaska in the late fall/early winter. Who really wants to see pictures of cloud shrouded mountains or rain thick seascapes? I started looking back through the archives of my pictures hoping to find something worth while to write about and I came upon this bench from down at the cannery. I remember asking my friend John Kveum about it some time back, but I can't really recall what he told me. I know it's been around for quite a long time. Back in the days when the cannery processed salmon, many a captain or crew hand or maybe cannery worker sat on this weathered bench, knife or fid in hand and decided to leave his mark. I guess there's something in all of us that wants to make a statement or be remembered. Ma...

  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 ...