I wrote a long to-do list on the flight to Anchorage, and will hopefully be in Naknek this afternoon getting a head start on boat maintenance before my crew shows up. Catching fish should keep me busy until late July, but I promise I’ll have some new stories when you hear from me next.
If you’re a paid subscriber, send me a good mailing address and you can look forward to a couple postcards during the season, possibly with fish blood and scales on them. We hand off our mail to tenders, the larger boats that we unload our fish to. They take our fish and mail to the processing plant in Naknek when they go to unload, then the mail gets flown out on the next jet, sometimes alongside fresh fish.
It almost feels like sending out a message in a bottle, thinking about all the little things that have to go right for a physical message to reach friends and family, or visa versa (boxes of cookies always get to us eventually, but they might be a little crushed and moldy). I hope it’s as fun for you to imagine the adventure that Alaskan mail experiences.
My wife and kids, and our our au pair are all staying at my parents’ house in Petersburg while I’m gone. It feels good knowing that they’re all there for each other this year, and that they aren’t so far away from me. Maybe Mariah will want to rockstar out here for the peak of the season and pick some fish.
Maybe even bring the kids for the tail end of the season.
I even told my Dad he should come out and spend some time on the boat, something I’ve been promising my parents ever since they loaned us the money to buy the permit.
Can’t wait to see how it all goes. Every season is weird.