aaronjmaier: dispatches of a bicycle hobo: July 2005

Four On; One Off

The hours are getting longer as the salmon runs increase coming into the month of August. I only have one day in town to buy groceries, do laundry, shower, and catch up with humanity. Wish I had more time to converse. The work is hard and the days are long, but I am loving it.

Fishing for the Halibut

Fishing for the Halibut
Originally uploaded by aaronjmaier.

My Dinner

My Dinner
Originally uploaded by aaronjmaier.

Sunrise at Kah Shakes

Sunrise at Kah Shakes
Originally uploaded by aaronjmaier.

My Office

My Office
Originally uploaded by aaronjmaier.

A Late Night of Fishing

A Late Night of Fishing
Originally uploaded by aaronjmaier.

My Bathroom

My Bathroom
Originally uploaded by aaronjmaier.

Awake in Alaska

I awoke this morning not knowing where I was or how I got here. My mind drifted gently in the ebbing tide of consciousness, slipping softly from the calm waters of evanescent bliss into the rolling seas of now.

"Now! Get your ass out of bed man! We're at the tender. Gotta unload in five minutes." It is four a.m. and all of my questions are being answered faster than my lumbering mind can process them. The forecastle smells of lingering farts and wet socks. I know where I am now. On a fishing boat seven hours north of Ketchikan, Alaska. How I got here I still do not know.

The five minutes have now passed and I am wearing stiff green hip waiters in three feet of 34 degree water surrounded by ten thousand pounds of gourmet rigor mortis. The acrid locker room smell has been replaced by the foamy broth of death and fish cum in which I am now wading. I flail away blindly with a plastic shovel pushing your dinner into a pulsing vacuum tube sucking the stiff corpses by the thousands one rung up the food chain.

A mammoth chum salmons writhes spastically in the blood and froth of a spawning journey gone horribly wrong. I admire his strength. I admire the beauty of his life cycle returning to trickling stream of his birth. I stand in awe of this amazing fish and bludgeon it on the head with the handle of my shovel. There is not opportunity for contemplation while wading in a pool of death. Ask Dick Cheney. He can tell you this.

As I crawled out of the now empty fish hold into the radiance of the raising Alaska sun with its brilliant yet gentle purple hues bathing the horizon I now knew exactly where I was.

I Lost My Friend Today

I lost my friend today,
packed
a life and
untold torment
in his father's GI bag.
He
left me
a bottle of cheap rum
and Bukowski.
I
Would have preferred
bye.

Life on the Boat

Deer Mountain
Originally uploaded by aaronjmaier.

2:50 am and the captain pulls up the anchor. Looking out the window of the hatch above my bunk I can see a thick stream of water trailing off of the heavy steel cable as it coils in from the bay. A loud thud announces the anchor's return from the depths of the sea and serves as my alarm clock to bring me from the depths of slumber afer a long night on wheel watch. After contemplating just how long I can sleep without missing breakfast I scurry out of the forecastle and into the galley for a hearty fisherman's breakfast and two cups of strong black coffee. Unlike most other jobs from which I have either wandered away in disgust or managed to get myself fired I am actually quite eager to begin my days work here upon the boat. Here on the fringes of what remains of one of the world's last great frontiers. The small band of gritty salmon fishermen working the rocky shores of Alaska are some of few remaining hunter/gatherers in our post-industrial society. This amazing world into which I have been cast boils down the nature of man - and all of its greed, lust, hopes, and fears - into its essential components. It is truly living. "Time to go kill some humpies!" snorts the skiff man through his thick gnarled beard as he pounds his coffee cup onto the galley table and we begin another day living our lives on this, the third stone from the sun.

Ultimate Alaskan Shopping Experience

Ketchikan Creek
Originally uploaded by aaronjmaier.

These tastefully restored houses used to hold prostitutes who serviced the voracious sexual appetites of lonely fishermen, miners and loggers on the Alaskan frontier. Recently a new brand of whore house has emerged where the pimps now sell jewelry and t-shirts to tourists seeking the Ultimate Alaskan Shopping Experience. The pigs have invaded this town and are turning the once rough and rugged logging and fishing community into Disneyland North. The whole downtown area has been transformed into a tourist holding pen where the lemmings pour off of the cruise ships and have three hours to buy as many forign-made souveniers as possible. And, yes, see a logging rodeo where all of the unemployed workers from the timber industry are now forced like caged circus bears to do tricks for their meals. Tour boats flood Ketchikan every day with thousands of shoppers eager to purchase a trinket reminding them of their visit to a quaint fishing town, yet equally eager to complain about the smell of salmon gurry in the water as they exit the boat. I wish they would bring back the old whores.