SITKA — Flakes falling like wet socks from the skies, coating alder branches and truck hoods and boat anchors. Dumps followed by the cold right hook of a sunny day, clack of snow shovel scraping gravel. A snowman with a torso made of ice from a 5-gallon bucket. Radish eyes. Varied thrush in the maple outside our home, kicking snow from the branches. Insisting spring isn't too far away, despite all evidence to the contrary.
My wife Rachel orders seeds off the internet, the vision of dirt turned warm in our hands easing these ice-pinched days.
In our household "Hakuna Matata" from "The Lion King" has become an anthem, as Haley Marie, our 2-year-old, obsesses over the cartoon grubs that "taste like chicken." Meanwhile, each morning we're out in the chicken coop feeding our cranky barred rocks and single Rhode Island red grubs. It's all very confusing.
Herring boats raft up on the dock in the driving snow, dragging their set skiffs like ducklings behind. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game took a test sample of herring off Kamano Point, reporting an average weight of 133 grams.
The fleet has gone out twice, most recently on Wednesday, when a friend, in a spotter plane, watched one seine set lasso up a humpback whale, which was none too happy and had to be let loose. Another seine got "corked," or sunk by too many herring.
Imagine this: You cinch a net up on a bunch of marbles, the marbles sink the corks on the net, the net goes underwater, moves to horizontal in the current, and marbles spill out. Heartbreaking.
Seafood processors work overnight, with the fleet about halfway to its quota of 14,600 tons.
Bear on the beach
Jittery, feral seine crews can be spotted around town, trudging through the slush with suitcases of Rainier, hollow-eyed after long runs from points north and south. All creatures — sea lions in the harbor, eagles perched on rigging, whales like popcorn in the Eastern Channel erupting cones of mist from their blowholes — anticipate the arrival of the opalescent, oily herring, and the turquoise waters as they spawn. This weekend, a buddy and I plan to run north in the skiff to harvest roe on bull kelp.
Bizarrely, considering the snow and cold weather, bears awake. The other day Fish and Game posted a notice of the unusual stirring. Out diving for sea cucumber across the channel, a couple friends and I saw a bruin sprinting the length of the beach. I had engine trouble, and tied up temporarily to the F/V Larkspur to drain water from the carburetor.
"You interrupted the hunt," the skipper said, obviously annoyed, his living movie interrupted. "Bear was running after Bambi until it heard your boat engine."
Pursuing Bambi on a sunny beach. It doesn't sound like such a bad way to wake from months of slumber. At least it's the real thing and not a cartoon — I'd certainly trade beach-hunting a deer to another iteration of Pumbaa's wailing over how he cleared the savanna with the punch of his flatulence.
We have a Forest Service cabin reserved for the end of this month, to celebrate my wife Rachel's 31st birthday. No cartoon warthogs allowed, hear me now all ye 2-year-olds.
Jury's out on what the salmon season will look like this summer, although early returns have caused Juneau to cancel its salmon derby. The possibility that Sitka might do the same put everyone aflutter — but the show will go on, despite the size of the winning fish falling each year.
This summer I'll deckhand with père et fils Jordans in hopes of repeating the show of three years ago, when fish were on every hook. But with warming ocean temperatures and salmon runs in free-fall up on the Kenai and elsewhere in the state — a good season is by no means a sure thing. Which is no good because electric rates will shortly go up in town, to pay for the new dam we put in a couple years back. A wicked rumor circulated that the electric output hasn't gone up an iota — hence our periodic reliance on diesel generators. The rumor was quickly quashed in a letter to the editor, but you get the idea. People are skeptical.
They're coming, right?
In a strange twist it was one of those old town generators that supplied my World War II tugboat the Adak with a cylinder. The fellow who ran maintenance on them led that charge. Fairbanks-Morse was the engine maker. Can you imagine that, scouring the wormholes of the internet, searching for a cast-iron cylinder of the most obscure type, used in locomotives? Only to find it right under your nose.
As I write now snow starts, a woolen blanket of it covering the asphalt here at the Highliner Café, where I go to not hear "The Lion King." Sun, warmth, a warthog who cannot stop farting.
Somewhere out in the dark waters beneath the volcano, far below the cliffs of St. Lazaria Island, where the puffins nest, the prismatic torpedoes of king salmon gather, preparing for their run home.
I just know it.
Brendan Jones is the author of the novel "The Alaskan Laundry," awarded the Alaskana Prize by the Alaska Library Association. He has also written for The New York Times, NPR and Smithsonian Magazine.