Caregiver to Crew: Another Abrupt Course Change
I spent Saturday morning considering odoriferous towers of fish clothes. How threadbare was too much so? The same $3 Value Village hoodies and blood-browned T-shirts surrounded me, sorted into piles destined to serve yet another season. The grown-up voice in my head scolded every moment frittered away on something that fell so far below the more urgent jobs to prepare our house for renters. Really, you’re packing all of your socks now? And all your clean unders? You’re not shipping out for another...
read moreThe Gift of Injury: Community, Defined.
The 16 days since Joel blew out his knee have been a bit of a blur. Right away, our living room expanded. It became dining room, with steaming bowls of comfort foods like homemade mac & cheese and rhubarb crisp crowding the coffee table, and bedroom, where I draped a light fleece blanket over Joel on the couch and rolled a ThermaRest out on the carpet. Bear seemed confused at first, but quickly adapted to our family’s new studio setting, occupying the foot of my sleeping bag just as she would the...
read moreHooked on KPTZ Today!
Apologies for the last minute notice, friends, but I’ll be talking fish and writing on Port Townsend’s KPTZ this afternoon, 2:30 to 3:30 PST. You can livestream the show here, through KPTZ’s website. Big gratitude to host Phil Andrus for extending this invitation, for what may be a series of conversations over the course of the fishing season. No promises that today’s talk will be very eloquent — I’m admittedly pretty ragged today, charging between three counties from cold storage to...
read moreAn Abrupt Course Change
“Sometimes the slightest things change the directions of our lives, the merest breath of a circumstance, a random moment that connects like a meteorite striking the earth. Lives have swiveled and changed direction on the strength of a chance remark.” (Bryce Courtenay) I made smoked salmon chowder on Sunday afternoon. Sautéed onions and red peppers, tossed in potatoes, carrots, and parsnips, kept an anxious eye on the clock. It wasn’t the best time to start cooking. I needed to leave...
read moreFishing Green: Last Season Aboard the Nerka
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...
read moreBoston: Before and After
I’ve been spending some time off-line lately, friends. Asking my housemate to disconnect the internets before she goes to work, telling myself I don’t know how to plug it back in. Apparently I need trickery like that to write a book. Monday was one of those off-line days. I spent the morning down in my writing lair, trying to figure out just how to explain the mechanics of salmon trolling to non-fishing readers without boring them (and me) to tears. As soon as I paused for lunch, my phone rang. Joel...
read moreHooked’s Big News
(Hang on, sweeties… We’re going to take the scenic drive.) On February 22, after meticulously shepherding my proposal through revision after revision, my agent Pamela pronounced it ready to shop. “Let’s go,” she wrote. Time passed in a dizzying blur. I couldn’t have dreamed the response we’d get. Multiple publishers courting Hooked? From our respective sides of the country, I followed Pamela’s frequent updates in a cloud of disbelief. Remember I mentioned cutting back on...
read moreHooked Turns Two!
Birthdays are important to me, but I’ve been slipping lately. Just last week, I kept a close eye on the calendar, eager to call my dad on his high holy day. And I did call him – only to learn that I’d circled a date two days past due. Oops. Between that and the fabulous Wild Mountain Memoir Retreat, this belated recognition of Hooked’s second birthday isn’t surprising. Some might find it silly, fussing over a blog’s date of origin. Maybe. But in recognizing Hooked’s beginnings,...
read moreSelling Words: Remembering My First Time
I’ve been thinking about what it means to turn our experiences into words to be shared with others. Also, the disingenuousness of describing this process as “sharing.” Almost all of the writers I know hope to see their words valued not only in a your-truth-touched-my-heart sense, but also with an I-will-recognize-that-making-these-words-are-your-work-and-you-have-bills-to-pay exchange. But what’s the measure? What’s the balance between using our experience to – hopefully – connect...
read moreThe Golden Scrub Brush
One afternoon last August, the Nerka bucked hard into a steep Westerly chop. Struggling to keep my balance while flushing the blood out of a gutted king salmon, I groused under my breath. Only work half the year, watch whales, pretty much just a wildlife cruise… Right. Then an epiphany. National Fisherman publishes an annual “Highliner of the Year” issue, celebrating fisherfolks who’ve contributed to our industry. What if Hooked recognized stellar deckhands of our fleet? Delighted by this...
read moreFollow Tele & Hooked!
