Bristol Bae
The Bristol Bay season was weird as usual, but we came out of it healthily, both in body and wallet. And we did it together. Awww. That's right, Mariah and I only yelled at each other a dozen or so times, and had only a handful of hours when we weren't on speaking terms.
At first I was more stressed about her getting hurt because I was constantly aware of every potentially dangerous situation she was in, since I was in it too. I expressed this concern to her, to which she replied "I've been doing this for years."
Oh yeah, she has. Since we had always been on different boats, in past seasons I had only seen her when the fishing was slow or we were hanging out on anchor. I guess I hadn't fully visualized her working on deck, constantly facing struggles similar to those I faced myself.
Upon realizing that it was demeaning to her and pointlessly stressful for me, I quit worrying about her so much. Despite my "Goddamn mumbling" and "Useless advice in the middle of shit going wrong" we began to work well together.
Once I quit worrying, I began to enjoy watching her work, not even in a weird way. It was just like "That's the woman I love, and she's good at her job, and her job is commercial fishing, and this is awesome."
Then it just felt natural. Many of the concerns of previous seasons were absent, like wondering when we would be able to text or scope each other with binos or tie up, Poseidon willing. We were anxious for the end of the season in a bad way compared to previous years, because we were already together having fun and making money doing what we hope to do for the foreseeable future.
At the end of the season I was to go seining and stay at my folks house in Petersburg while she would plan our wedding and stay with her family in Colorado. I tried to talk her into getting seine job as well, so as to more easily fund the wedding, but to no avail. So the end of the Bristol Bay season would be the end of our summer together, as opposed to most years when we looked forward to seeing more of each other after the Bay.
We agreed that the worst part of Bristol Bay had always been being apart, even when we were both there on separate boats. This season we didn't have to worry about that. Instead of missing each other or worrying about each other, we simply enjoyed each other's company. That left us free to worry about the activities of the salmon, biologists and processing plant managers, which made for a dream of a season.