From Water to Words
My name is Tele. Pronounced Tell-ah – as in storyteller. (If spoken with a non-rhotic accent, that is, softening the “er” into “ah”!)
Ahhh, stories. Stories have always kept me afloat. As a misfit kid, books were my earliest and most trusted companions. As a lapsed social worker turned tree hugging, tofu eating feminist fisherman, books have been mirror and open door, backpack and Band-Aid, flashlight and hug.
Time and time again, words have saved my life – first by reading, then by writing and sharing them.
Born in Alaska, I spent a landlocked early childhood at my parents’ veterinary clinic. Sled dogs were frequent visitors, as were spindly-legged moose calves. But my folks had a vision of adventure beyond the clinic walls. When they weren’t tending to their clients, they were building a 45-foot sailboat in the backyard.
I became a child of the sea, initiating a lifetime of seasonal, migratory motion as my family embraced a new venture: commercial fishing. I sold my first catch for the price of an ice cream cone.
All these decades later, salt water still flows through my veins. May through September, I’m on the 43-foot F/V Nerka with my sweetheart Joel, trolling for king and coho salmon on the outer coast of Lingit Aani, Southeast Alaska. October through April, in the rich farmland of Washington’s Skagit Valley, I sell our catch, sharing Nerka Sea Frozen Salmon’s salmon love, and I write. I spend land time distilling ocean experiences into written words, shared in the hope that they might be someone else’s mirror, their open door, a flashlight. A hug.
From water to words. One informs the other. Like trolling’s hook-and-line practice, handling each salmon individually, I string words together one by one. Both a laborious, beautifully inefficient process, choosing quality over quantity. Being present with what’s before me. Finding value first in the work itself, then in the honor of sharing it with others.
We can feel so alone, surrounded by incomprehensible vastness, humbled by our insignificance. Then a silhouette breaks over the horizon, a light emerging through the gray. Forging relationships within solitude, holding space for one another’s human-ness, cultivating connections that allow us to feel a little less lonely… This is the beating heart of why I write.
Thanks for being here. With salmon love,
T
