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.