Tele Aadsen

writer - fisherman - listener

There’s some­thing about last sum­mer that I nev­er told you.

Remem­ber this August post, when I shared lit­tle glimpses into the first few days of our king salmon open­ing? And one of those glimpses was that Joel’s hands were giv­ing him ter­ri­ble, knuck­les-of-ground-up-glass grief? And that you nev­er heard what hap­pened next, despite a cliffhang­er end­ing and an assur­ance that I’d pick up the sto­ry on a lat­er date?

Sor­ry about that, friends.

We did indeed claw our way through that nine day king open­ing. Back in Sit­ka, Joel went to the doc­tor, got some meds that didn’t sit too well with either of us. Over the fol­low­ing 15 day coho trip, every day – every hour – involved a reassess­ment of his well-being and what we should do, waf­fling between the con­fi­dent “I feel good today, I think I’m fine,” to the cau­tion­ary “What if we real­ly land on ‘em in the next king opening?”

You know that Joel and I are pret­ty attached to hav­ing the Ner­ka to our­selves. (And Bear, of course.) Opti­misti­cal­ly “cozy” for the two of us, I can’t imag­ine life in the tiny cab­in’s ear­li­er incar­na­tion: hus­band, wife, two ener­getic lit­tle kids, deck­hand. When we final­ly admit­ted that we might have to hire a third per­son, we talked not about which dream troll deck­hands we knew – they were all tak­en, any­way – but who we’d be will­ing to live with.

What about Bet­sy?” one of us said.

Yes!” the oth­er enthused. That our friend Bet­sy had nev­er been trolling seemed com­plete­ly irrel­e­vant. We knew her as an über-com­pe­tent, hard-work­ing, con­sci­en­tious, full-heart­ed and utter­ly delight­ful human – who also hap­pened to be a pro­fes­sion­al­ly trained, fan­tas­tic cook.

We were both con­vinced. But Bet­sy and her part­ner Devon run a fuel tank clean­ing busi­ness. How could she go fishing?

Trolling into a pock­et of cell ser­vice, we called to ask, just in case.

Joel’s hurt? Sure, we’ll make it work.

Receiv­ing such self­less love can be blind­ing. How did we get so lucky to have friends like these?

I didn’t tell you any of this at the time because I’m bad about con­tin­u­ing a sto­ry­line I want­ed you to hear it from a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive. As a fish­er­man and a writer who writes about being a fish­er­man, I think a lot about how to trans­late expe­ri­ences that are sec­ond nature to me, in ways that invite Hooked’s many land­locked read­ers into a for­eign world. In some instances, like this unfin­ished busi­ness from last sum­mer, I’m not the best per­son for the task.

Betsy, Scrubbing

But this woman is.

Luck­i­ly, Bet­sy is a great sto­ry­teller, and just post­ed a reflec­tion on her time aboard the Ner­ka. I’m grate­ful for her time aboard and her will­ing­ness to relive it all on the page, and am delight­ed to share it with you now. Enjoy this snip­pet, with link to the full read below:

A fine spray of salt sea and fresh rain mist­ed my face as I retched car­rot cake-fla­vored Clif bar over the rail. Remorse washed through me. Not shame, though the shame of being so sea­sick as to neces­si­tate puk­ing over the rail was there, too; but guilt. I had man­aged to eat two things that day: an Eng­lish muf­fin with hon­ey and but­ter, and that Clif bar. It was­n’t the waste of food that made me feel guilty, either, but rather the sim­ple fact that I had men­tioned that car­rot cake was my favorite fla­vor of Clif bar while Tele and I were shop­ping to stock the boat for a week or two, and Tele had gen­er­ous­ly bought an entire case of them for all of us to share. And I was pret­ty cer­tain I was the only one on board who felt that way toward that par­tic­u­lar fla­vor. Now, giv­en my fair­ly lim­it­ed adult his­to­ry of puk­ing, I was pret­ty cer­tain that I would not be capa­ble of stom­ach­ing car­rot cake Clif Bars for a while. Maybe years…

Con­tin­ue read­ing “An Adven­ture of Salmon and Self-Aware­ness (and a Healthy Dose of Self Deprecation)” 

 

I won­der, friends… What helps you con­nect with someone/something that’s for­eign to you? Are there par­tic­u­lar exam­ples (rela­tion­ships, books, movies, con­ver­sa­tions) that have helped you under­stand or iden­ti­fy with some­thing oth­er­wise out­side your own life experience?