Fisher-Readers, Please Meet Fisher-Writer Rich Bard

Posted by Tele on November 17, 2012 in Alaska, Commercial Fishing, Reading & Writing, Salmon Trolling | 10 comments

The Fisher Poets have been on my mind lately. Less than two weeks until a per­for­mance at Seattle’s Fish Expo (Thurs­day the 29^th, 11:30 — 1:00), and organizing’s already under­way for the main event fes­tiv­i­ties in Asto­ria, Ore­gon. (Mark your cal­en­dars: Feb 22 — 24, 2013!) A phone con­ver­sa­tion with fish­er­man writer/photographer Pat Dixon got me all sen­ti­men­tal for the men and women who’ve turned our pro­fes­sion into art. So many of us have picked up pens, gui­tars, paint­brushes, any­thing to exter­nal­ize our con­flicted love/hate/fear/craving for boats and the sea. More of us than you’d think: there’s a tremen­dous wealth of artis­tic tal­ent in the fleet, of every fish­ery and region. Dur­ing night wheel watches, while the hal­ibut sets soak, when the fish aren’t bit­ing… We have some excel­lent oppor­tu­ni­ties for ven­tur­ing into our cre­ative selves, and are sur­rounded by a trea­sure trove of characters.

With all this on my mind, last week was the per­fect time to receive an unex­pected email from Rich Bard. A South­east Alaskan troller in the 1980’s and 90’s, Rich stands out in my child­hood mem­o­ries as a kind man who exuded thought­ful con­fi­dence, a com­fort with him­self, oth­ers, and going his own path. Rich was also one of my ear­li­est role mod­els of a fish­er­man who sought the grace of writ­ten words. When car­bon monox­ide killed one of our fleet’s most beloved mem­bers, Rich memo­ri­al­ized him with a poem that turned our col­lec­tive grief into some­thing heart­break­ingly beau­ti­ful. (My friend Mar­lin and I, teenagers at the time, care­fully cut the poem from the pages of the Alaska Fisherman’s Jour­nal. Years later, we could still recite it.)

Rich’s boat stood out, too. The Anna was a lovely for­est green sail­boat, a sleek aft-house ketch rigged as a salmon troller. Though the Anna is still trolling out of Sitka, Rich is not. He sold her about ten years ago, leav­ing the troll fish­ery to deliver boats through­out the Pacific and Caribbean instead. The troll fleet has some­thing of a revolv­ing door (says she who had her own walk-away period) and I’m always fas­ci­nated to see how folks who’ve left will deal with their new, non-fishing life. Appar­ently Hooked has pro­vided Rich both vic­ar­i­ous thrills and mixed feel­ings. In his email, he wrote, “The trolling addic­tion remains strong, and your engag­ing view of the all-encompassing joys and frus­tra­tions of a lifestyle that’s very hard to repli­cate in any other pro­fes­sion also dan­ger­ously rein­force the ever present urge that I should get back in.”

(You’d be wel­come back on the drag, Rich. Many thanks for the kind words.)

Though we were both at last year’s Fisher Poets Gath­er­ing, I didn’t get a chance to thank Rich for his great read­ing — an excerpt from a novel he was work­ing on. I’m thrilled to share that he’s fin­ished that novel, West of Spencer, and has pub­lished it as an e-book, avail­able through Ama­zon and Barnes and Noble.

Here’s the overview:

Bo, a salmon troller in Sitka, has been drink­ing steadily through the long dark Alaska win­ter try­ing to get over a bro­ken heart. The tactic’s not work­ing out too well. Spring and the need to get his boat ready for a new sea­son offer some dis­trac­tion, and Bo’s love for women keeps him above the poverty level on that front, but he just can’t put the past behind him. The only time Bo feels really free of regret is when he’s out on the water, wholly involved in his work, trolling for salmon. After some rad­i­cal swings of for­tune dur­ing the short spring open­ings, the main king salmon sea­son starts out west, and a weird chain of events puts Bo in jeop­ardy of los­ing everything.

West of Spencer nails the hard-working, hard-playing lives of fish­er­men who ply the Gulf of Alaska waters. The novel doesn’t shrink from the grit of the fish­ing life: in the sting­ing spray and the blood on the deck, we get the true feel of life onboard, from a wild ride in a near-gale to the pen­sive calm of the quiet coves. The nature of a tight-knit com­mu­nity comes through on the boat radios, on the docks, and at the Quixote Club, a favorite water­ing hole. Through­out, Bo and his friends look, how­ever errat­i­cally, for a deeper under­stand­ing: who is God, really…what are we sup­posed to be doing here…why is love so elusive…and, where the hell have the fish got­ten off to now?

Trollers hap­pily spend every spare moment talk­ing about gear — what we’re run­ning, what we’re catch­ing on, what worked last sea­son but isn’t doing shit this year. That’s the fun part of our obses­sion, but the bot­tom line remains: you can’t catch fish if your hooks aren’t in the water. There’s a sim­i­lar hunger among writ­ers to fill up on work­shops, retreats, exer­cises, groups, any oppor­tu­nity to com­pare lit­er­ary prac­tices. As trollers talk hoochies, writ­ers tire­lessly dis­cuss our lat­est work in progress, how it’s going, what’s work­ing, what’s not. And just like keep­ing one’s hooks in the water, in the end the only thing that will result in a fin­ished book is the sheer dis­ci­pline of keep­ing your butt in the chair. I get that, but still couldn’t resist ask­ing Rich how West of Spencer came to fruition.

“I’d had a rather vague idea of a novel I could write about Sitka for some time, but like many (most?) writ­ers, motivation’s the big issue,” he explained. “Jour­nal­ism, with its dead­lines, can be rel­a­tively easy, but a long spec­u­la­tive work needs its own moti­va­tion. I finally got started through a des­per­ate urge to pro­duce some­thing (any­thing!) out of a par­tic­u­larly gloomy North­west mid-winter. Con­tin­u­ing it pro­vided an out­let when I was hired as cap­tain to help an owner who didn’t han­dle the tropic heat very well get his boat from Florida through the Canal and north (as one of my crew remarked after a tem­per flare-up, “Yep, every day the boat gets a foot shorter.”) By the time I fin­ished that trip, the book had gath­ered its own momen­tum and it was a com­par­a­tive coast to the finish. Not sure if the urge to get out­side one­self dur­ing time of frus­tra­tion is the best source of moti­va­tion, but it’s worked for me.”

As delighted as I am by my fel­low troller’s accom­plish­ment, I’m less delighted to admit that I haven’t yet ven­tured into e-reader ter­ri­tory. (E-reader? Please. I’m still cling­ing to my dumb flip phone, no mat­ter how overtly the Ver­i­zon staff sneer.) So I’m turn­ing to you, sweet Hooked friends. Those more tech­no­log­i­cally advanced among you who crave a well crafted, utterly authen­tic nau­ti­cal tale, please do check out West of Spencer. Thanks for show­ing your sup­port for a fel­low fisher-writer, friends, and many con­grat­u­la­tions on your work, Rich!

Long­time Hooked read­ers may remem­ber last year’s poetry com­pe­ti­tion, chal­leng­ing Fisher Poets to use the line “work is our joy.” Rich’s piece, shared in the video below, was one of my favorite entries for sheer cleverness. 

Rich, 2.25.12

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