Back in Sit­ka from a coho trip, I feed 17 days’ worth of rank socks, hood­ies, soap, & quar­ters into the fishermen’s Co-op wash­ing machines. Near­by deck­hands slump into a bat­tered couch, stare down at phones or up at the TV, salmon trollers zoned out on real­i­ty show crab­bers. Not my scene. 

Leav­ing the laun­dry room, I step into the hall­way & time-trav­el back to my child­hood. Long wood­en frames line the walls, pic­tur­ing hun­dreds of trollers that, col­lec­tive­ly, pulled hun­dreds of tons of salmon from South­east Alaska’s out­er coast. A few 8x10s date back to the 1940’s – black & white time cap­sules of phone booth cab­ins, Ton­gass poles logged & lugged down the dock – but most are from the Eight­ies & Nineties. Boats surg­ing into waves, boats with proud cap­tains beam­ing from a full fish hold, boats long since lost to rocks, fire, divorce. Boats I grew up with. The Co-op mount­ed these frames in the mid-Nineties, someone’s vision to doc­u­ment the fleet. But ener­gy waned. There are few addi­tions after the turn of the cen­tu­ry. The emp­ty glass of the top row leaves the hall feel­ing like an aban­doned fam­i­ly scrapbook. 

Amidst the many boats cap­tured here, some­times all I see is one that isn’t. The Willie Lee II – my par­ents’ boat, the one I grew up on. My mom always intend­ed to sub­mit the per­fect shot – in front of the glac­i­er, or in Lituya Bay. But the per­fect shot nev­er hap­pened before she sold out & the Willie Lee left Alas­ka to mold­er in West­port, then Ilwa­co, under new hands & a new name. Fail­ing to cap­ture the ide­al of what was, instead it’s as if we were nev­er here at all.

Over time, I would grow to love the boats, & their peo­ple by asso­ci­a­tion: Simon on the Lav­erne II, Valle Lee Ron, Steve on the Aquila. But as a child new to the fleet, I didn’t yet know either. I first fell in love with fish­er­men by their voices.

The VHF was live­ly back then. Nine years old & perched on the pilot seat, my hand was always poised to switch over, fol­low ver­bal bread­crumbs from chan­nel 16 to six-eight, six-nine. Trolling was a self-pro­fessed gentlemen’s fish­ery, & the radio was my fin­ish­ing school for the ten­nis-vol­ley of con­ver­sa­tion: acknowl­edg­ing your partner’s com­ment, lob­bing a return query back. The val­ue of being self-dep­re­cat­ing, quick to deflect com­pli­ments while build­ing oth­ers up – noth­ing too over the top, don’t make any­one uncom­fort­able, but encouraging. 

“Noth­ing goin’ on over here. I can’t catch my ass with both hands today.” 

“Ah, you’ll make a day of it, you always do.” 

Radio chat­ter was lan­guage immer­sion school, & I was a dili­gent stu­dent. I absorbed fleet norms & eti­quette among the dropped con­so­nants & cadence, iden­ti­fy­ing part­ner boats & striv­ing to crack their secret codes. (“We’ve got a pur­ple apple over here.” “You’re smokin’ us, we’ve only had a blue banana all morn­ing.”) I tuned my ears to hear what they said in every­thing they didn’t. The bal­ance of being able to whine for days, with an under­ly­ing opti­mism that kept their hooks in the water. The artistry of casu­al, unself-con­scious pro­fan­i­ty. I aspired to mim­ic the pre­cise weary into­na­tion of a per­fect­ly groaned “Christ on toast.”

Fishin’ sto­ries enter­tained, but some­thing big­ger bewitched me. Those face­less fish­er­men filled my dad’s silences, & I loved them for that. I will always love fish­er­men for that. 

Mid­way down the hall, I stop at a por­trait of a steel troller, a man in a painter’s cap with his arm slung around a curly-haired woman. Decades before I learned of the Gath­er­ing, he was my first Fish­er­Po­et. A born sto­ry­teller, con­tent to spend hours key­ing the mic while his crew han­dled the deck. Kneel­ing close to the speak­er, I hung on every word.

Fish­er­men don’t get much fan mail, but this fel­low came back from a trip to a note tacked to the Co-op bul­letin board like some­thing passed in school, his name in a child’s scrawl. Who knows all the cringe-wor­thy gems eleven-year old me said – I like your sto­ries? What I do remem­ber writ­ing was the breath­less admis­sion that I hoped to crew for him someday. 

Weeks lat­er, a pink “While You Were Out” memo met me in the office. The fish­er­man thanked me for my note & said he’d be glad to help me find a good boat when I was a lit­tle old­er. It didn’t feel like a slight – rather, the oppo­site; a gift of con­ver­sa­tion­al reci­procity, so rare in my fam­i­ly. I kept that scrap of paper for years. Long after I’d learned to read the bro­ken blood ves­sels of his nose, after I’d heard dock whis­pers of the deck­hand he’d abused, after he & the curly-haired woman had divorced & the steel troller sank & even after he died, I held onto his acknowl­edge­ment. Proof of a child seen & heard. 

Over the years, there was less to hear. The VHF start­ed to qui­et with the new mil­len­ni­um. More folks got secret radios, toss­ing aside code sheets to talk wide-open via scram­blers, alien squawks dis­tort­ing those beloved voic­es. Then, in the 2010’s, we got the InReach.

As smart phones altered land life, the InReach for­ev­er changed the troll fleet. Satel­lite tex­ting: no need for a secret radio, no need for a scram­bler, just text your bud­dy the hot report, 160 char­ac­ters at a time. Which bud­dy? Any­body. The InReach oblit­er­at­ed the rit­u­al of for­mal code groups. A fleet elder once schooled me on the dis­tinc­tion between friends at the dock & friends you share infor­ma­tion with. Now guys we bare­ly know come up to Joel & me, “Hey, lemme get your InReach.” Any per­ceived bound­aries are gone. One boat sees you make a back-tack in the morn­ing, the whole fleet will be there by dusk. Talk­ing with one skip­per in town last sum­mer, he flapped his arms in dis­gust. “I hate the fuckin’ things, worst god­damn thing that’s hap­pened to this fish­ery.” But he had one. So do we; so does every­one else. 

What with every­one tex­ting, the radio’s most­ly silent now. The cul­ture changed. The gen­er­al con­sen­sus is that seri­ous fish­er­men don’t talk on 16. The excep­tions are crude, cussing some­body out for goug­ing on the tack, & don’t much sound like the gen­tle­men trollers once believed them­selves to be. I don’t know many of my fleet­mates’ voic­es any­more, don’t rec­og­nize them on the dock, & it pains me to admit I don’t rec­og­nize some of the boats, either. Shrug­ging aside tra­di­tion & super­sti­tion, more new­com­ers chris­ten their ves­sel with a new name. It’s under­stand­able, the yearn­ing to make your boat your own. But boats are big­ger than their cur­rent han­dlers; they are their own beings with sto­ries that pre­date us, & iden­ti­ties & secrets & souls inde­pen­dent of us. That’s why I study these old pic­tures like I’m try­ing to mem­o­rize each vessel’s geneal­o­gy – the Fas­ci­na­tion became the Lorelei Bell / the Nina Bel­la became the Sea Road / the Alham­bra became the Kar­la R became the Con­stance – because with each new incar­na­tion, it’s hard­er to remem­ber who they used to be. 

The radio is hushed now, the boats repaint­ed & renamed. I know many of my fleet­mates now not by voice or ves­sel, but by pro­file pics on Face­book. Often, I know more of them than I’d like – that guy thinks Sandy Hook was a hoax; this one bangs out long screeds at friends of dif­fer­ing polit­i­cal views, sign­ing off with a smi­ley face. Com­ment threads are not help­ful. Instead of feel­ing clos­er, much of what I hear through the screen makes me pull away. Plen­ty of them feel that way about me, too, dis­mayed to learn how far to the port I list. We’ve nev­er had so many ways to be con­nect­ed, yet our com­mu­ni­ty feels ever more frac­tured, pre­car­i­ous & fragile. 

The fleet ain’t what it used to be. Hear­ing these words in my head, I am mor­ti­fied. I know bet­ter. Clutch­ing for the good ol’ days, we hold noth­ing more than one-sided selec­tive mem­o­ries. These frac­tures are not new. Some of the ugli­est things I’ve heard have been from white fish­er­men talk­ing about Native peo­ple, & one of my ear­li­est mem­o­ries is of a fel­low troller sneer­ing that my vet­eri­nar­i­an par­ents weren’t real fish­er­men. As a species, we’ve always rushed to paint some­one else as the Oth­er to cer­ti­fy our own belong­ing. There is no great, gold­en age to go back to. 

I pause again at the pho­to of the steel troller, the fish­er­man who showed me such kind­ness that even after learn­ing of his oth­er, less-kind acts, I still recalled him with love. The com­plex­i­ties that were part of his nature, they’re all part of mine, too. I don’t know why it’s got­ten so hard for me to hold peo­ple as they are. 

But the boats still do. So many of the boats pic­tured here were sanc­tu­ar­ies for their humans. Peo­ple who didn’t quite func­tion right on land, these boats accept­ed & car­ried them just as they were. Allowed them to find their foot­ing with boots on deck, feel­ing most secure while tossed in the trough. The world reduced to them­selves, a deck­hand or two – & those friends who always answered – “Yeah, I gotcha, go up one” – & always signed off “I’ll be stand­ing by,” & they meant it; what­ev­er you need­ed, they were stand­ing by. Because at heart, even anti­so­cial fish­er­men are social crea­tures. We crave con­nec­tion. And while the con­nec­tions now may sound & look dif­fer­ent than the ones of my child­hood, they’re still here – crowds monop­o­liz­ing the cof­fee shop & lin­ger­ing in the har­bor, speed bumps on the dock. 

This is why Fish­er­Po­ets is sacred to me. A con­duit to the past, a promise of the future. When Geno & Campbell’s grav­el voic­es fill a dark the­ater, when Jon beams with delight at Jay rip­ping on the har­mon­i­ca, when Pat erupts in laugh­ter & Moe weaves sto­ries like ocean cur­rents, I’m car­ried back to that kid kneel­ing on the pilot seat, hang­ing on every word. Like as long as Fish­er­Po­ets are hold­ing a mic, we’ll hold onto our history. 

One of these elders cocked an amused eye­brow at my con­cern. Far wis­er than me, he remind­ed me the nature of all things is to change. And he’s right, I know he’s right. To change is to evolve, to adapt new tra­di­tions, new rit­u­als, & who wants to be the ghost pac­ing the halls, rat­tling rusty chains of the way it used to be? I miss hear­ing the voic­es, I do. But there’s a week­end every Feb­ru­ary where as long as they keep talk­ing, I’ll keep lis­ten­ing, & in the long months ‘til then there’s the sweet­heart at my side. No coin­ci­dence that I fell hard for that boy all those years ago. A fish­er­man and a talk­er; he speaks all my love lan­guages. I’ve always been a suck­er for fishermen’s voices.

Laundry’s prob­a­bly done. Mak­ing one last pass, my boots fall on the same bat­tered linoleum as my fleet ances­tors trod, gen­er­a­tions rolling in from their own trips, wash­ing back out. The best tomor­row isn’t the one that looks like yes­ter­day. It’s one where today’s boat kids have the options to have their own day, what­ev­er it looks like. So this time, when I glance back, instead of see­ing the emp­ty frames as a sad, aban­doned project, they seem more like a thought­ful pause in con­ver­sa­tion, patient & invi­ta­tion­al, leav­ing space for oth­ers to fill the silence how­ev­er they see fit.