Senses Poem--Alaskan Love Song--National Poetry Month

The jungle in back of the cannery at Uyak

I'm going to continue my Alaskan Love Song theme because it makes me feel cooler...:o) The Hubs still hasn't summerized the cooling, so we swelter in near or at triple digit weather. So this is a Senses Poem, and you can read about how to do your own here. Meanwhile, ta-daaaaaa:

Me on the day I caught my halibut (but not with this 

rod--a jig) This was for catching the bait.

Slickers were for babies. I still wear the red sweatshirt.

ALASKAN LOVE SONG

A whale passes the dock where I sit reading; it blows and lunges as it feeds.

The misty morning air smells of fish gurry and machine grease.

The gulls scream as they dive after the bits of breakfast roll I toss them.

The boards of the dock shove a splinter through my hand. I drag my gut knife out to cut the splinter away.

I can still taste the hash browns and salmon from the cafeteria.

This is a little bit of Heaven--at least until the work bell rings.

My Alaskan Heaven--with fish guts and exhaustion

© 2017 by H. Linn Murphy

Acrostic Poem--Alaskan Love Song--National Poetry Month

We're doing acrostic poems today. To see how to do this, go here. I'm missing Alaska today as the temps climb back up into the triple digits here. It's a good thing I stocked up on memories while there. Take me back!

A land of majestic mountains scraping the sky in stark winter coats

Laboring to fill cans with salmon--then smoking some, the scent of hickory teasing tastebuds.

A place where the sun lets me climb rocky faces all night.

Swimming in snow melt--so bracing and so full of marine life.

Kayaking across the bay to fish in the still silences.

An eagle spreads its wings above us as it rides the thermals.

North of everything, in my mind, the wind blows full of fresh green beauty.

Empire of ice and wind and bone-chilling cold.

Xtreme living at it's most primeval.

Prepare for bears the size of trucks, and mosquitoes big as cows.

Eskimos and Klinkits smile with their whole bodies. 

Rivers teaming with spawning salmon, like silver ribbons through green velvet. 

Indian fishermen grin over their gill nets. 

Everyone takes care of their neighbor, no questions asked. 

Northern lights ripple across the heavens in a grand spectacle. 

Cakes of salmon, so yummy and filling.

Ever in my dreams, so often in my thoughts. How I miss you!

© 2017 by H. Linn Murphy

Pt. 1--My Jumping Off Point

Have you ever taken a journey to somewhere you never planned to be in the first place? I have. That first step can be at once terrifying and exhilarating.

I was living in Oregon with my parents when I got a call from friends who were moving down to Utah. I was eighteen, a high school graduate, and after a semester of college I was ready for a change. I needed some excitement in my life--a taste of the Great Beyond.

So I called up my mom at work and told her I was moving to Utah to live with my grandparents for a bit. She calmly asked me, "When?"
"Oh...noon," I said, oblivious to the heart attack I'd just engendered in my poor mother.

And before she could pick herself up off the ground, I was off.

At first stare living with one's grandparents doesn't seem to fit the bill of an exciting experience--especially mine. My curmudgeonly grandfather refused to let grandma drive or spend money or even speak loudly. They never went far from home and living there was frankly a snooze-fest. 

However, my cousins (roughly my age) lived down the street, so I spent much of my time at their house or in their car or going dancing at the Star Palace. The other bit I spent working in an Italian restaurant, washing dishes. Clearly living the high life.

One day my cousin Tracy started talking about how she'd gone up to Alaska to work the year before. Her glowing accounts of fish and green magical tree-shaded hillsides and glinting bay waters caught my fancy. "Let's go work there," I said, clearly insane. But I was drunk on independence and jonesing for more adventure than my poor old grandparents could possibly scare up.

Climbing in the mtns behind Kodiak

So we did. I took my meager savings from the restaurant and we bought tickets to Kodiak via Seattle. When we got off the plane in Kodiak, we found ourselves in a tiny terminal containing the biggest bear I have ever clapped eyes on. That thing could have its own small state!

Flowers along one of two roads in Kodiak

We hitchhiked into town, (Where's a kidnapper going to take you? There are only two streets.) where, after much hunting we found the boarding house we planned to stay in. Our luggage, by the way, had gone to North Carolina or some other forsaken place not in our vicinity, and containing our money. I know. Criminal stupidity. But we did luck out.

boardinghouse mates: striped shirt--me, middle--Tracy

The boarding house was full of interesting creatures. A guy named Mike and I went climbing in the mountains above Kodiak all night. It was my first brush with the midnight sun. We'd forgotten water bottles and had to drink from a baggy we dipped into a run-off stream. I've never had such delicious water! It was so cold it gave me brain-freeze.

That time was fraught with several trips back out to the airport to try and claim our luggage, slogs down cannery row endeavoring to find work, Dan Fogelman music, and the tangy smell of pizza sauce from Captain's Keg, a pizza joint which featured Charlie Chaplin movies where we finally found a job.

I went climbing in the mountains behind Kodiak with my friend Mike. We climbed until the sun went down, waited for half an hour until the sun came back up, and continued to climb. The wildflowers were spectacular and the water tasted outstanding, even in a baggy.

Flowers and Mikey with our spectacular cup

There was a fisherman's strike going on, so other better-paying work was difficult to find. Someone had suggested Tony's, but on further inspection, it turned out to be a strip joint. Not our cup of milk, that. Tracy didn't want to go out to Uyak because the work was long, boring, grueling, and long. Did I mention long?

At that time Tracy's boyfriend kept calling her and begging her to come home. He even asked her to marry him. She didn't really want to go and leave me on my own, so I was greatly chagrined to find that she had decided to go after all. I didn't have enough money to go back with her. The wonderful boyfriend (who turned out to be a real piece of work) would only foot the bill for his Sweety. So I was left to fend for myself in the wilds of Alaska.

The main chunk of Kodiak from the mtns.

At first I was petrified. Guys wear beards and beanies and flannel and carry weapons up there (not that that's bad, but they're definitely a rougher bunch than I was used to). I was no shrinking princess, but this was BIG. We'd gotten to slightly know three girls from upstairs, who were going to the University I planned to attend in the fall. Slightly.

That speck is me--mtns behind Kodiak

About that time the girls told me they were moving out to the coastguard base to live with a church friend and offered me a place. I had to get myself back and forth to town and pay for my own food. It was a lucky thing that I worked in a place which allowed me free grazing of anything we sold. Ah buckets of shrimp!

I spent the Fourth of July watching fireworks blossom over the bay. Beautiful but lonely. The girls really kept to themselves and made unilateral decisions which didn't include me. I was definitely homesick.

Then I got a call from the company hiring for Uyak. I really had no ties to the "city", and Uyak offered room, board, and work, so I went.

The seaplane ride out was breathtaking. We flew over ranks and ranks of snow-capped mountains and great expanses of steely water dotted with tiny fishing boats. At one point we even spotted a pod of whales.

Uyak Cannery

After an hour of bouncing around in the capricious currents we skidded into the water and rode a wave into a black-pebbled beach. We were in Uyak. My luggage, unbeknown to me, carried Tracy's tag, so everybody was asking where she was and I couldn't get them to give me my bag. It took a whole afternoon to untangle the snafu.

Fishing boats in the mist

Uyak is a fish camp/cannery perched on the side of Uyak bay against a mountain backdrop. There is the cannery itself, a boys' bunkhouse and a girls' bunkhouse, the general store/post office, the mess hall, the cannery boss's house, the storehouse, and a few outbuildings, plus docks. There were no roads, no cars, no TVs, no other stores. We had a shopping cart and two forklifts.

Uyak Cannery from the mtn.

Across the bay there are some pretty big bear camps (hunting purposes) and a few islands we eventually explored with our fisherman friends. The climbing was spectacular; the water, delicious; the air, bracing; the views, peerless. We had whales, sharks, and fish in our front yard, bears in our backyard, and eagles above.

Where the cannery got its water

I'll finish the rest of this story in subsequent postings.

A Flight to the Nether Lands

I love this song. It never fails to inspire me. I sit here listening to it and find that every hair on the back of my neck is standing straight up.

Just before college I went up to Alaska to fish and work in the canneries to raise money for school. The first year, I went, we had lots of time off because the fishermen were on strike that season. So instead of spending it getting drunk or stoned like the most of my friends, I went climbing.

We climbed in the mountains in back of Kodiak (town) and also the ones in back of our cannery in Uyak Bay. It was so magnificent to see the sparkling bay spread out in front, to taste the bone-chillingly cold snow melt water, and to feel the breeze lift tendrils of sweat-plastered hair as the sun drenched us like warm chicken soup.

One day off as we hiked up behind the cannery, Mike (a friend) and I got between a mama bear and her two cubs. We'd never hiked so fast in our lives (so...no pictures).
By the time we got to the top, we were just blasted. We kicked back in the foot-deep reindeer moss and luxuriated in the fragrant sponginess. Mike had brought his tape deck and I'd given him my Netherlands tape to play.

Just as that song came on, up over the brow of the mountain rose a bald eagle, breathtakingly magnificent in it's majesty. It had almost a five foot wingspan. The breeze riffled its feathers, which were limned by the golden afternoon light. Its keen eye pierced me, as if it could see my thoughts.

Mike and I didn't even want to breathe, let alone move. I was worried that the music would send the bird diving away. On the contrary, the eagle seemed to be listening to the music as it hung suspended about a yard and a half above us on the thermal column.

Finally the song ended; and, too, the eagle seemed to be released from its spellbound state. It slipped over the crest of the mountain and glided spiraling downward into the misty distance.

The moment was one of those perfect moments caught as if in amber, sharp and brilliant. We couldn't speak for several minutes, just taking it all in. I stood up later and spread my arms and it felt almost as if I, too, could spiral down off that cliff top on a handy thermal. Joy radiated through out every sinew of my body. I felt as if I were made of light.

Netherlands distills, for me, a string of those kinds of moments. It was a free time in my life, in which I was at several kinds of crossroads. I had left home and family behind in Oregon and gone (unbeknown to them) up to Alaska to seek my fortune. I was embarking on my college career, exploring dating options, and most of all, examining what I truly believed about God and religion. It was no longer a time to rely on my parents' beliefs and testimonies.

So I really 'got' Dan's crossroads reference. I wanted to fly. I wanted to stretch my wings like that kingly raptor, and feel the sun on my face and the wind in my feathers. This song always makes me want to shut my eyes and raise my arms in flight, as I did so long ago on the peak of that mountain. In fact, I often do.

I offer these images as a morning gift to you.