Kodiak July 21

Chapel this morning for me was very clear and focused. I had slept well and arose in time to grab a shower. The duties of the day were very close to the day before.

Early in the day I met Anthony, whose job is running the shop and doing maintenance at the mission. {pic Anthony} My dad and him work very closely together most of the time. Anthony is Russian Orthodox and has the traditional beard and long hair. The mission works closely with the Russian Orthodox Church that Anthony belongs to.

I learned that he had been fishing for the last five weeks in Bristol Bay and my father had been covering for him. Fishing in Alaska is big business. The permits in Alaska are controlled by the Department of Fish and Game. They determine when and how much fishing can be done. Anthony bought a boat and permit this year and tried his hand at commercial fishing for the first time. {pic Anthony boat} During the course of the conversation I learned that the permit alone was $11,000.00 and the boat was $60,000. That’s a very large gamble for a man with a wife and three children with no commercial fishing experience. He had some awesome stories of his adventures during the salmon run. The Department of Fish and Game gives times to start fishing and when to stop. Fines start at $5000 for any violation. Anthony, being a green horn, accidentally mixed up the times to start fishing and they started two hours early one day. That's a big mistake, so he call the officials and told them what he had done. They couldn’t believe he was calling them and confessing. They told him to keep track of how many pounds of fish they pulled in, sell it and give the money to a charity. He told us he was so relieved that was the only punishment. The game wardens had been very strict but kind to them. From the details of the story you could tell that he was very stressed during the six weeks on the boat. In fact, he said that while on the boat he couldn’t sleep very well because he kept waking up thinking that the boat was drifting. He laughed and said he was still trying to wind down. The last three nights he had been waking up at home thinking that his house was adrift. I could totally relate to the disorientated sleep fear. It's weird how the mind works when programmed with a new experience. Your mind seems to release that experience gradually. I have spent several mornings during this trip staring up at the nylon ceiling of my tent wondering if I was dreaming, where I was, and once all that was riddled out I would finish by wondering exactly how many more days until I would see my family. It’s a lot cooler than it sounds. I grew more comfortable with the experience than I did the cold. Returning to work, I fear will be a welcome change with some remorse. My life is very blessed and very comfortable, however, I miss the undefined challenges of my youth that took me to Mayan temples in Mexico, rainforests and reefs in Belize and train ride across Eastern Europe. While visiting with Anthony I can see that the adventure is not truly measured in miles but in the challenges of the experience and the satisfaction of its navigation. I look forward to finding some local boundaries to push.

Ok, back to my day at the mission. My phone rang at about 10:00. It was my daughters - they were at the missions horse stable. I left Anthony and my dad visiting to shoot photos of the girls working with and riding the horses. {pic horse} They loved being around the horses almost as much as I enjoyed taking their photos. I’m pretty sure this horse thing is going to cost me a lot of money no matter how it works out. Just before 11:00 I ran back up the hill to find my dad and get back to work. The guys siding the house needed more lumber. So we trimmed a dozen and a half boards down to the right width. There were now 4 guys working on the house siding . {pic sliding a house} There original two had completed by noon over half the house. The two other guys had been running around trying to rent a powernailer. If they were lucky they would be able to maybe complete a quarter of the house by the end of the day. The two gentleman with hammers would have done three quarters of the house. Kind of funny but no one seems to care as long as the work gets done. Thats what I think is cool. The point is, it's just about working towards a goal, not the details.

After lunch we headed to the top of the mountain over looking Kodiak. What a great vista of the coastline. {pic coast of kodiak} We then headed over to look around the Coast Guard base. It's a very modern and well-equipped. We ate supper there and then headed back toward town. We stopped on the way home to look at a stream to see if the salmon were running. {pic coast of stream} Unfortunately, they weren’t running when we got there.