Evolution

I just sent an email off to some friends of our's stating how this blog might very well be undergoing a state of transition. I began writing it pretty much under the influence of chocolate cake and the encouragement of another friend, who said it was easy and could be done just like that (snap your fingers)! The impetuous was to leave a trail for where on the planet Steve and I are and what we are doing there. A blog seemed to have a much more serious level of commitment to it than say, e -mail. Which I was never committed to. Secondary motivations were there too: Greenland does not offer up much literature published in English explaining what Greenland is. As our friends, whom we were eating this cake with and speaking to about blogs, are both travel writers with a very successful book about Mexico, now in its 13 edition (or is it 14Th?) do this for a living, I received much encouragement about blogging on the subject of Greenland. Also, as one posts on their blog, they are nearly daily, writing. This is good fodder for the hopper. But as one writes in this freestyle format one lacks an outline or a goal to meet or develop any congruent idea. The way I blog is similar to the way I ski down the mountain; I may know the general area I am going to go to, but for the life of me, I wont know what I am going to ski until I have skied it. And so my writing about Greenland has evolved into my witting about writing. I guess I have developed a bad case of, writers blog.
What I don't believe is that for any one who is consciously recollecting memories of a past that was at times fabulous , though at other time, traumatic, the experience would be easy or pleasant. There is the desire to burn all the damn stuff I have inscribed with my thoughts during those years on the sea and forget about it, though we all know this isn't possible. ..The forgetting about it. There is also an urgent expectation for myself to cull through it all, as I did the fish and the crab, sorting out what is worthwhile from what is just crap and preserving the "keepers".

Fishing

Ever since I started thinking seriously about writing a book, I have begun doing some light research on the state of the Bering Sea crab fishery. Any one who considers their self to be an, up to date on contemporary affairs, kind of person, will be able to guess what the biggest hitter is out there on the world wide web even if they, like me dont watch TV.
The television series, The Deadliest Catch, produced by the Discovery channel corporation. Not only does TDC pop up all over the screen whenever the key words, crab, Dutch, Bering Sea or commercial fishing are used, but the site itself offers up a myriad of further links: the local newspaper of Unalaska, the Aleut corporation's own history of the Unangan peoples (named Aleut by the Russians), employment in the fishing industry and a hyperlink to the USCG.
From TDC's home page I can navigate around and look at boats I used to be familiar with captained by men whose faces I at least remember, though a few of them, I knew. I even worked for one of the captains who will be featured in this season's upcoming or already on going show.
And so, I posted a comment on the TDC's blog site which featured this old skipper of mine who has been married for 15 years, has two children, (and admittedly likes spending time with them) and prefers gardening of all things during the off seasons. If you were to spend some time surfing around in TDC's website, you would find this a rather unusual dossier compared to most of the men who captain the boats. For example, in an interview with the skipper of the, Wizard, when asked about his family, you could tell he had become a little bit uncomfortable. Or maybe to be fair, he was embarrassed, caught off of his tough macho guard. He blushed, made bashful movements in his chair and finally said, "The most important thing in my life". The trouble was, he had already given away this answer, between the lines so to speak, in regards to how he felt about fishing, his boat and being a captain on the Bering Sea. So before I posted my comment, I carefully read through all of the other people's comments. I did not want to sound arrogant or sentimental or God forbid, to say something that might cause a row of some sort. But there didn't appear to be anything overly spellbinding or even pertinent, mostly just fluffy little 3 liners about wanting a date with one of the crew members or a pep- o -rally inspired , "GO Deadliest Catch Go"!
Sigh. This is difficult for me, but also inspiring. I realise I am supposed to be writing about Greenland but in a way, Greenland is writing about me. Fishing thoughts and memories have always been flowing through me as if they had a tidal current all their own. I don't expect these sensations to ever completely go away, and so I write:
I introduce myself as having never watched the deadliest Catch, but of having worked on the decks of such boats for eight years. I then give sensitive honest credit to Capt F of the Early Dawn, a very good man indeed who was never out of line, rude, crude or unimproved. Perhaps that is why he has a wife of 15 years. I thank him for having the guts to hire a women and for paying her full share and allowing her to work one of the most prestigious positions on a crab boat deck, the rail. After I sign off, I leave for the green House. Thoughts start flooding in: What if he contacts me and asks me to be a crew member and I become just another character on the Discovery Channel? What if the Discovery Channel contacts me? What if no body even cares?
After all those years out there in Dutch Harbor beating the docks for jobs on boats that are now famous actresses in a popular documentary, I sense the Ego beginning to rise. If I were a "guy", maybe there would not be such a loud voice coming from the previously so well silenced Id, but as far as I can tell, in over four years of production, not a single "girl" has ever stood upon the working deck of any one of those boats and that irks me, because I know, it cant possibly be true. And now there is a connective thread between me and one of those boats. It is weird, but even from a capitalistic point of view, although I tend to be more of a socialist, if I were to be hired as a TDC crew member, I could really market this unwritten book of mine. ...I mean, "come on!" look at what the making of Hollywood's The Perfect Storm did for Linda Greenlaw! Besides, worrying parents and concerned, loving others, seriously, compared to the days when I fished, (when there were no camera crews or crab rationalization laws to keep the danger level in check), this stuff today has got to be a piece of cake! Plus you get two pay checks for being a sailor; one from the boat and the other from TV!
But according to the great philosophers , there is no such thing as chance. Which means, be careful what you wish for. And, as Steve points out, I am training for a triathlon..........
As a testimony to this life, we have all too make sure we do our best. If not to ourselves, then at the very least, to others. Of course, without doing unto ourselves first..........anyway, I was once interviewed by an anthropologist who had received a grant to go to Antarctica and talk with the women in the trades. Up until that year, there was little to none of this type of historical data. She felt it was very important. The number of women working on the Ice had increased from less than 2 percent in the early 1970's to over 45% in the later part of the last century. I reluctantly told her my story and she was almost annoyingly adamant about having my picture taken in the shop next to the bulldozer I was working on. I refused, saying that I was no different than any of the other "guys". I had learned this behaviour as a survival mechanism (in fact one skipper wrote my name out as Shawn in order to get around the companies policy of not hiring women due to fear of sexual harassment suits) called, don't act like your special. This developed into a credo. I even worked for a women who owned and skippered her own crab boat, who once gracefully bowed herself out of a television interview with the Anchorage daily news. I forget what she said verbatim, but it was roughly, "I am not special".
The thing is, she was. And she still is.
I did not live through the women's liberation movement. I have seen a few females act obnoxiously about their modern day emancipation. One moment they wont allow a door to be held open for them, then the next they are bitching about having the man not open the door in front of them. I understand that I may have taken allot of things for granted in the past, but some world traveling and some maturity (a grey hair) have inspired me to re think most of these things.
The sexes are different. Men can be flight attendants and women can be crabbers. But, it is wrong when they do it to prove some kind of a point or to get some sort of self aggrandizing attention from there position. But whenever any minority goes against the grain led by adventure or desire, passion or curiosity, there should come, from society, an awareness of this unusual circumstance. An acceptance. And certainly, if a documentary is going to call itself a documentary, it should do its best to document the truth and to learn how to at least try and partially dissolve its mantra of rough neck tough guy machismo in which they have steeped this "real life" depiction of the industry in. After all isn't it enough that we as humans have almost depleted all of the worlds seafood stocks without having to make it seem like a bunch of Quipeqags are still out there with harpoons and tattooed faces killing the leviathan? Shouldn't we take a pause from all that manifest destiny style guts and glory and show the more meaningful side of this rapidly diminishing life style? Rather than scare people out of their armchairs into a deeper and deeper depression for having to go to an office job which requires a commute (actually more people still die in traffic accidents than on the sea) why not show that there are still a places in the world where we can spend our lives with nature. There are still fisherman and skippers and gulls and sunsets and cold sparkling mornings at which dawn is all your own....
I have seen grown men break down and cry. I have seen guys leave the boat with their head hung low after only one short trip. I have seen them fight each other over loosing a bet on a ball game and I have seen them shaking from the DT's so badly they cannot light their own smoke.
I have also seen them hugging each other and calling their Moms over the single side band radio just to tell them they are OK.
I doubt any of this gets shown either.
I felt a glimmer of hope when surfing TDC' links.; there were two "crab related blogs" posted by seemingly female names. I was thrilled that they might be women deckhands, but no. One was a women who wrote erotic romance tales. The other was a relationship advisor who loved crab fisherman. Wink Wink.
My head is smart enough however to recognise that even though two of the world's oldest professions, like peanut butter and chocolate are, "two great tastes that still go great together" there has also got to be a more modern version in which this stereotype is abandoned for valor.
I suppose all writers need to have their minds re-steeped in that which caused the idea of a great enough subject to write about, in the first place, from time to time; to get the description of any fine tea down well enough to seek its flavor, one must not merely recollect a memory, but have a sip from a freshly brewed cup. Though the experience may be different the writer is too, and this is exactly the point, if the writer is aware of having changed, then how can he or she write honestly about that which has changed too?
And how could she not be in the least bit be tempted by a chance of being documented in a role so unique, so familiar so inspiring, whose televised image of, "smart like tractor strong like bull" could use some serious censor.
I would defiantly wear a tutu.

The Snow Bunting

I go out like the contents of a glass
into water, into wind.
Diluting, freezing, becoming vapor.
No, I do not go out like this, but in wool and synthetics,
worm -spun-silk, cotton stuffed with eider down.
My feet are in socks
then socks again.
I push them into smoothly smudged rubber boots.
Warm, old, arctic boots ,once white, now have the look of a news paper, worn.
What happened to the small bunting flown so far off his course?
Flying over, then dipping his body low enough to chirp.
He belongs in the turning of the willows near where the sled dogs live,
rattling on towards the fjord.
Not here, up on the void-less ice cap going out, like the contents of a glass.
Into water, into wind, into snow..............


Sometimes birds are blown off of their course or loose their migratory way. Though small flocks of geese have been seen, arctic sand pipers and snow buntings are more common. They appear in the air low and flitting, an obvious anomaly to the summit of the Ice cap where nothing has ever lived or would ever choose to live, except for a few strange people bundled in clothes melting snow for water.
The other day one such snow bunting graced us with his tiny presence. We always put out a bowl of hot water, which will last a few hours in its liquid state. Sometimes the birds take shelter in the lees then fly away. other times they die here and their frozen bodies are placed in special perching places safe from any further harm until they are completely buried in the accumulating or drifting snows.
This little one simply disappeared. We all like to hope that he made it back home to the sea's more temperate shore.

A man out standing in his field.

This morning we ate our oatmeal. With flax seeds and walnuts and yogurt and prunes and for Steve, maple syrup. Real ample syrup. Some people from Vermont brought some up this past summer. I prepared the bread dough for its final raising before the oven and we talked about our plans for the day. I volunteered to take out the trash. Our trash consists mostly of food scraps and cans and plastic bags and cardboard boxes. Unfortunately recycling is not yet an option as Greenland is still burning all of their trash. It is cost prohibitive for the NSF to charter the NY Air National Guard to fly an annual estimation of 4 tons of waste back to the States. However, the NYANG does agree to fly it back to Kangerlussuaq from Summit Summit. I have just tried to give you a hyper link to Summit's own web page, complete with daily weather updates, by writing code. We shall see if it works. But I digress, the trash that Summit generates gets packed into a rectangular box built up on top of an air force pallet. The rectangular box has a lid. So on trash day you go around camp with a sled and collect all the garbage and then tug the sled over to the trash pallet where you try your best to cram it into all of the empty spaces inside the box. Once the trash pallet is full, we go through a process of removing the outer plywood form, drawing up the mess with cargo netting that has already been sleeved inside the box long before any trash was put in.
This may sound confusing so I will make a short film of the transformation when we do it , which we will be doing soon as I can no longer fit down inside of the box to compact the existing trash.
The hardest thing about taking out the garbage is ignoring any whims to pilfer things. If you think it is expensive for the NYANG to fly trash home, think about how much it would cost us! Of course, we do recycle the things none of us could live with ourselves for NOT recycling like ink cartridges, batteries, aluminum and copper.
After taking care of all of my municipal duties, (power, water and waste) Steve and I went back into one of the three, 20 foot long, insulated, heated container vans to count widgets and bits.
It was a most remarkable day.