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Giving Thanks for the Closing Year: Favorite Moments of 2012

Dec 31, ’12 8:33 PM

Opening to Receive by Giving Thanks

A friend told me recently that she believes the best way to prepare one self for receiving good is to reflect on all the good you’ve received before. What a lovely idea. Here are some of my grateful moments from 2012. There are so many more I could just keep posting.

In the early part of the year I was lucky enough to spend time with friends drinking utterly incredible wines, a lot of them favorites from older vintages. In Malibu a friend and I got to open this 1996 Bea. It was in the midst of a 1995 Chinon, a 1975 Pepe (both remarkable wines), Selosse Brut (so brilliant), and others, but the Bea took my heart and never gave it back. His wines are brilliant aged. What a treasure.

Fall 2011 became my last semester teaching philosophy in Arizona. I resigned in October 2011, but the last day of my contract was January 6, 2012. I stepped into the new year, then, finishing my teaching obligations, turning towards a whole new path. As grateful as I am for my time there, I am also grateful to be done. The biggest blessing came in my classes that final term being among the best I ever facilitated. The two sections of Intro to Ethics both had excellent students that helped me learn the material at a deeper level. What a gift. In Sci-Fi and Society (the other class I taught that term) we were all required to show up dressed as ourselves in alternate universe and then to remain in character through the entire class. I arrived as a Sci-Fi Writer’s Muse, a presence that helped inspire parts of the noble series Dr. Who.

Rachel, aka. Jr., asked for a hamster in 2011. I was resistant to the idea not wanting another live-thing to take care of. But Rachel was brilliant at helping Briland, her hamster, get comfortable so that he spent lots of time out of his cage playing, and eating treats beside both of us. He softened my heart in a way I didn’t realize it could. Dear Briland spawned a whole comic series, became the mascot of the local veterinary hospital, and made me appreciate the importance of life, no matter how small, in a way I never imagined until I met him. He died in the middle of 2012. I still miss him everyday.

April 2012 included an 8 day tour of Colli Orientali del Friuli. The Rapuzzi family had our COF2012 group for lunch, sharing an incredible selection of their older wines. Thanks to them the world still has Schioppettino–Dina and Paolo Rapuzzi had a big hand in helping to preserve many of the varieties indigenous to Friuli and are credited with rediscovering and then saving Schioppettino.

A vineyard in Friuli

Serena and Cristian of Ronco del Gnemiz had us for a vertical tasting of their Schioppettino, explaining it was the first time they’d done so. They’re best known for their white wines, but their Schioppettino is some of my favorite. I am so grateful for our time with them.

In June, I met Steven Morgan of Tribeca Grill during a visit to New York City. He toured me through the impressive cellars of the restaurant and then opened a Schioppettino for us to share while we talked. After conversation about education, comics, superheroes, wine, friendship, and travel, he suggested I reach out to Angela Osborne of A Tribute to Grace, saying he thought I’d like her and her wine. That very night I emailed her. A week later she had my friend Katherine and I over for dinner with Angela, her lovely husband Jason, and the first full vertical tasting of Grace they’d hosted. We stayed for hours. Steven was right. I loved her, and her wine.

At the end of June, after a decade away, I returned to the waters of Naknek, Alaska where I grew up commercial fishing with my family–the area of Bristol Bay hosts the largest wild salmon run in the world, and one of the most bio-diverse ecosystems in the world. As Rachel does every year, she spent her summer there visiting cousins, her Grammie and Bobba, and her Aunties and Uncles. This photo shows five cousins–Oliver, Mari, and Rachel on the shore, Ecola and Ceara, my Auntee’s daughters in the water.

A couple of years ago I discovered a shellfish allergy by having a bad reaction to prawns. I didn’t know what other seafood I was allergic to, however, and so dealt with it by avoiding shellfish entirely. The reaction was too uncomfortable to risk it. In July, I met with Stephane Vivier to taste his Pinot Noir wines. We had a lovely time visiting. I loved his rose’ and Pinot, and thoroughly enjoyed our time. When he asked if we should have lunch and start with oysters I decided to risk it. My thought was–this entire experience is so lovely, if I do die by shellfish, I’d be quite sorry for Stephane, but such a happy time would be the perfect way to go. And if I don’t, it couldn’t be a better time to find out I can still eat oysters. It turns out I can still eat oysters. Vivier wine, then, restored one of my favorite foods to me. The experience has inspired me to go on since and test other shellfish too–it turns out I can eat crab (thank god!), and also scallops (thank god again!).

I count myself deeply lucky. I have gotten to spend my time with some of the people I admire most in wine. Here from left: me, holding Ryan and Megan Glaab’s baby boy, Randall Grahm, George Vare, Abe Schoener

In July, I traveled to Willamette Valley, Oregon and was lucky enough to live for a month at the base of the oldest vines growing in the Willamette–Eyrie Vineyards South Block.

My sister traveled south to attend IPNC too and while there charmed Jacques Lardiere, the just-retired winemaker of Jadot. What a treat to meet him, and to concentrate hard enough to understand his talk on biodynamics.

With Melanie flying from Alaska to attend IPNC I did what I could to schedule time after for us to also meet two of her favorite winemakers. We were able to have time with Maggie Harrison, of Antica Terra, and also Jason Lett, of Eyrie. Melanie told me after those two are like rock stars for her. I agree.

Someone asked me to pick the single most important event I lived this last year. That sort of question is a kind of metaphysical quandry I find almost impossible to answer. That said, the most moving experience I had was meeting Fulgencio, a vineyard worker in Oregon and then to have him trust me enough to share part of his life story with me. The experience was overwhelming. Then, as if listening to him hadn’t been moving enough, at the end he thanked me it, explaining it healed him to be able to share his story. To share in that kind of intimacy with someone, and to have it marked as life changing by both people… I can only explain the importance of such an experience by saying plainly it’s why I believe any of us are here. Such connections, in my experience, are the meaning of human life.

One of the lucky projects of 2012 turned out to be following RIbolla Gialla from Friuli all the way back to California, its unlikely North American home. I love this grape. Following its story has also introduced me to a wealth of incredible people–George Vare, Dan Petroski, Steve Matthiasson, Ryan Glaab, Abe Schoener, Matthew Rorick, Robbie Meyers, Nathan Roberts, Chris Bowland, and others. Here the Vare Vineyard is being harvested by a crew directed by Steve Matthiasson.

Somehow this year included a wealth of visits with icons of wine, including a number of people that truly helped make American wine what it is today. Among them is Paul Draper. In September, Paul took the time to share several hours with me talking through his history and views of wine, as well as tasting the current wines for Ridge. I often joke that my parents are such intimidating people I am rarely intimidated. Paul Draper stands as such an important presence in the history of California wine, I have to admit I was utterly intimidated to go meet with him. That said, he is known for being down to earth, and quite generous in his willingness to share information and insight with people.

And he has an adorable dog.

My final wine interview of 2012 was with two people I hold deep respect for. Carole Meredith is a genuine legend of science. Thanks to her we know the parent grapes of Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Gamay, and many others. She helped find the origin and originary plant of Zinfandel and Primitivo, thus also helping to boost the local economy of Croatia due to their increase in tourism since (I kid you not–Zinfandel originates from Croatia). Stephen Lagier, her husband, is equally brilliant with a history of having researched chemical changes in vines due to vineyard practices, then going on to a long career in winemaking. Together they now live on Mt Veeder where they grow and make their Lagier-Meredith wines.

Jr and I closed the year in Alaska. We were able to spend the Christmas holiday in Anchorage, where my parents, and the families of all three of their girls were together at Christmas for the first time since 2006. Christmas Eve we spent with our closest family friends, the Meyers. Here from left: me, my sister Paula, my sister Melanie, and Robyn Meyer–she grew up with us like a sister. Jr and I now spend the New Year holiday in Juneau with Melanie’s family.

Lots of love to everyone! I am so grateful for all that 2012 brought (including all the stuff that felt like total bullshit–hardships hold sometimes the deepest blessings), and more grateful we can now turn in to 2013. May we all be blessed. Amen.

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Alaska Holiday 4: Family Photos

Dec 30, ’12 2:56 PM

Most of my family lives in Alaska. My daughter Rachel and I are the only two that live ‘outside,’ as Alaskans call the rest of the United States. My sister Melanie though resides now in Juneau, in Southeast Alaska, with her family. With Alaska being a fifth of the size of the continental U.S., or, the same size as the province of Quebec (where Jr and I also lived for a time), travel from Anchorage to Juneau is significant. Most of the state is inaccessible by car. The point is, having all of us together–Mom and Dad, plus all three of their girls and their girls’ families, isn’t necessarily common. As a result, my mom makes sure we get family photos each time it happens, though she likes the photos taken as family sets. Here are ours from this year.

My dad is 71, and my mom 68. This year they will have been married 50 years. Over Christmas dinner my dad told us about how they spent their first Christmas dating apart and realized they missed each other. My parents had met at University in the center of the state, Fairbanks, but returned to their different family towns on the Western coast for the holidays. Fifty years ago remote Alaska didn’t easily celebrate phone technology. Most homes didn’t have one and villages might share one phone for all the residents. After the New Year they, as he put it, proposed to each other. My parents have been together since. It’s remarkable to think how much they’ve lived in those fifty years together. To talk to each other once during that first holiday apart my mom had to walk across the tundra to the one phone in her small town. Now they’ve raised a family that travels the world, returning regularly to all be together in the far North. Remarkable.

from left: Dad, Melanie’s girl Mari, Rachel (aka. Jr.), Paula’s girl Melissa, Melanie’s son Oliver, Mom, Paula’s girl Emily

from left: Melanie, Me, Dad, Mom, Paula

Paula is the oldest of three girls. Her family: Melissa, now a student at NYU, Emily, age 8, Paula, husband Kevin

Melanie is the middle of three girls. Her family: husband Tim, Oliver is 5, Mari is 11, Melanie

Rachel Marie and I. I am the youngest.

Happy New Year, everyone! Rachel and I have flown from Anchorage to Juneau now to spend the New Year with Melanie’s family on this mountainous island that hosts the state capitol. It’s all mountains and water here. There is a lot of rain today but I’ll try to get photos while we’re here. Like most of the state, it’s a region of vast and dramatic, gorgeous landscape.

Lots of love to all of you. I’m spending the day today reflecting on what I’m grateful for from this last year. There is so much.

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Alaska Holiday 3: Drive up the Inlet, A look at the Mountains

Dec 29, ’12 2:35 AM

I developed a yen for long drives from living so remotely here in Alaska, I believe. My best friend in high school lived in Girdwood, a town 30 miles South of Anchorage. The area was so tiny the high schoolers bussed in everyday to attend the same school I went to for 9-12 grade. It’s how she and I met. My senior year, when I had my own truck (real girls drive trucks growing up) I’d drive her home after running or ski practice and we’d hang out.

The year after I graduated, unfortunately, turned out hard as two different friends died in horrible ways–one from hypothermia after missing for 6 weeks, the other killed by the cops after a psychotic break. In the first case, I was away when told the news. In the second, I was at someone’s home for dinner and found out the tragedy by watching my friend get shot on the evening news. (Not my best friend, another friend.) It was unbearable. The long drive out of town towards Girdwood, with such massive mountains–so much bigger than me, so much older than me–turned into my respite when I needed the space to deal with grief. I’d set off in silence heading South and drive along the Turnagain Arm till my feelings had adjusted enough to turn around and head back home. Sometimes it was a long long drive before I hit that point.

Now, decades later, there is still a comfort for me in the shape of these mountains. They still look the same. I recognize the peaks, the saddle between two mountaintops, the slopes along the roadway. And the water, exactly how it looks when it is rushing in versus moving out. Whenever possible I make a point of driving out the Turnagain Arm at least once on a visit back to Anchorage.

These photos might show you why. Taken from multiple points on the drive towards Girdwood.

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Alaska Holiday 2: Family Photos, Visiting my Uncle and Auntee

Dec 28, ’12 3:02 PM

My father’s family is Inupiat from the Norton Sound area of Alaska on the Western Coast, just below where the nose of the state, the Seward Peninsula, stretches out towards Siberia. My Uncle and Auntee come down from Unalakleet in the winters now to spend the cold months with their granddaughter outside Wasilla. We were able to drive out this past week to visit, and left with beluga muktuk, and hard-smoke salmon. What a treat!

I’m the youngest of three girls. My father is the youngest of three boys. My birthday is the same as my cousins, but I was born the year after he died in an accident. As a result, my Uncle and Auntee have always called me “Baby girl” in honor of the day I share with their late son.

Here are photos of our family. My Auntee is Athabascan from Interior Alaska. She is about to turn 82!

two brothers–my dad is on the left

Auntee Mary and I

Auntee Mary and Jr

Jr and Uncle Leonard

Uncle Leonard and I

my Dad and Uncle Leonard

from left: Jr and I, Mom and Dad (in the back), Auntee Mary, Uncle Leonard, niece Mari, and sister Melanie

Happy Holidays!

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Alaska Holidays 1: Walking the Frozen Inlet

Dec 27, ’12 10:09 PM

My parents’ winter-house rests along the Turnagain Arm of Cook Inlet in Anchorage, Alaska. The water way hosts the second largest tidal range in the world at 38.9 feet, with tides rushing to cross the distance at 15 miles per hour. The water speeds in so quickly it creates a wall of water several feet high speeding up the Arm to bring in the tide. These walls of water are called “bore tides.” Anchorage, Alaska carries a record bore tide fifteen feet high.

My sister Melanie and I awoke this morning, bundled up for the frozen air and walked the grasslands along the Arm in front of my parents’ house as the sun came up slowly. Living this far north the sunrise lasts for an extended period of time in winter.The Turnagain Arm splits us from the mountains in these photos, with the tide carrying ice flow tens of miles as the water flows in and out twice daily. (The rough ground in the distance of these images is broken ice flow several feet tall resting on the mudflats at low tide.)

Here are photos. Melanie snapped the picture that includes me, the rest are mine.

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Going Italian: Two Random Tasting Notes, for Ms. Snout

Nov 23, ’12 10:43 PM

It’s holiday in the Americas. Or stateside, anyway. Here are notes on two wines I opened the day before Thanksgiving, and tasted again the day after, just for the heck of it.

The wines on Thanksgiving were nothing to write home, or you about. Poo.

Also just for the hell of it, here’s a photo from my toddler years. That’s me doing the toddling, my dad winning Movember, and my pretty Aunty being smart and reading things. Also, just to be clear, my family is so not Italian. Just awesome. My favorite parts of this photo include my belly, my dad’s shoes and smile, the weird portrait on the upside down newspaper, the obviously 70s decor, and the authentic Eskimo hanging in the hallway. Of course she’s wearing a fur collar–it gets fricking cold outside in Alaska.

Sottimano Maté 2010 100% dry still Brachetto

A bright pink, rose potpourri tinged aroma surrounded with spicy pungency. The spice, dried rose palate continues, wrapped in a juicy soft palate stimulation, and pleasing mouth grip. The finish is long here, stretching itself into a gentle squeeze sensation of a vibrant medium-light bodied red wine, leaving a late post-finish nuttiness I can’t help but enjoy. The vibrancy on this wine is stunning. It starts perhaps a little lighter than I feel like but each sip starts me with surprise, each swallow moves into a longer finish than I expect. Drink this wine and try not to wiggle.

Day 3: The wine is pert. There are ripe rose floral qualities on the nose and mouth blended through with canteloupe, now with a weighted belly of light leather and spicy pricks across the palate. If you want fresh, light, and zesty with a floral-fruit focus, this is your wine.

Poderi Elia Barbera d’ Asti 2009 100% Barbera

The focus of this wine seems to be ‘thickening up’ Barbera. The French oak spice here dominates much of what else the wine has to offer, though in a general sense the red fruit, oak spice, and alcohol heat do arrive together. Still, the ultra long finish form primarily in spice carry through. How will this wine age? The nose rushes a mixed floral potpourri that carries over into the palate, along with red fruit, and exotic spice. I appreciate the nuttiness of the initial finish, but it cascades into a predominance of spice that feels overdone. Too much new oak. My hope is that with a bit of age it will calm. That said, at $17 per bottle, I’ve got to keep things in perspective. You get a damn lot of wine and flavor for your money here. There is a generally smooth polish to the texture of this wine, upset to some degree by the spice pinprick of the oak. I just prefer a little less focus on spice.

Day 3: The spice has mellowed and moved alongside a nutty smoothness in both the midpalate and finish. The red fruit persists. There is a real top-note, soft palate focus on this wine balanced by heat in the throat and a long spice resonance.

Thank you to Michael Alberty, Storyteller Wine, Portland.

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Reflections on a Tasting with Abe Schoener: Dancing through Family, Nietzsche, and Tragedy

Jul 14, ’12 7:28 PM

Abe Schoener and I had a conversation about tragedy.

My senior year of high school, my uncle Jay died of pneumonia. It was September. I had a cross country running race and we had to dress up for such days. I was up earlier than usual to put on an outfit I was uncomfortable wearing when my mom knocked on the door. She said my uncle was in the hospital. His friends had rushed him to the emergency room, then knocked on her window in the middle of the night. As a result, she was with him when he died. It took a while, but weeks later she told me the receptionist had brought her directly back to my uncle’s curtained room in the E.R. He couldn’t speak with his lungs too full of fluid but when she entered the room he turned towards her and cried. Within a few minutes he entered cardiac arrest, and in twenty minutes he had died.

In his book, Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche builds on his ideas already explored in his earlier text, The Birth of Tragedy. There Nietzsche considers the painful revelry he sees as peculiar to the phenomenon. In Nietzsche’s view, the pain of tragedy reveals to us our own limits. It is in losing someone we feel attachment to we come to recognize the finite nature of our power and our lives. We cannot save them. In the same moment, we are forced too to see we cannot save ourselves. We will die. For other philosophers, the reality of our mortality brings with it a burdensome pessimism. Schoepenhauer treated the negative as defining human life. Earlier in the history of philosophy, Aristotle took tragedy in art to be a kind of therapeutic for our countenance. In experiencing second hand feelings of grief, fear, and terror by watching the tragic hero (like, Oedipus or Agamemnon, as in the case of Ancient Greek tragedy), we are cleansed of some tumult associated with such feelings, and thus find ourselves more stable, and stronger after. For Nietzsche, such a view is naive, perhaps even damaging. Instead, the all consuming pain of loss, and fear of our own mortality found in tragedy reveals to us a strange duality. It is in facing the stirred up feelings experienced in the death of another that we discover reason cannot provide all answers. Some things are simply unexplainable. The sensuous pain of loss dominates us and we must face an inexplicable edge that defines the limits of human existence. At the point of death we have no knowledge. What is interesting in all of this, is that, for Nietzsche, it is precisely when we allow ourselves to go into these feelings that we come to recognize our own brilliance. Tragedy, for Nietzsche, carries in it a two-fold experience. We are thrust into a horrible pain, and find through it a defiant pleasure. Tragedy forces us to recognize the limits of our own powers, and yet in entering that feeling we come to see our own power of persistence. We will die. Surely. Yet, here we live our human lives, demanding they be more than our own mortality simply by persisting. This two-fold experience is the source of Dionysian revelry, for Nietzsche. It is only in our facing the realities of decay, and decomposition that are the death cycle, that we see then too how life is a perpetual process of defiant transformation.

The family I was born into was four generations strong into my early 20′s. My great grandparents raised us through their simple constancy. We were lucky enough too to have grandparents, my parents, my sisters and I. My senior year in high school, when my uncle died, began a five year period of dismantling what my family had been. He died, unexpectedly, followed by my grandmother, my great grandparents, my other uncle, and finally my grandfather–more than half those deaths sudden. Two generations gone from us, and half of a third also lost. In that same time period, my father’s brother, other more distant extended family, and two of my own friends all also died. Those five years marked what my mother calls a stripping to the bone. Any pretense, or room for drama was lost. In the midst of so much grief there is room for little else. In the same time period, my oldest sister was diagnosed with what was supposed to be a lethal brain tumor, given eighteen months to live. By god’s grace she is still alive, so beautiful. It’s been eighteen years. In the same time period my oldest niece, Melissa, was also born, my great grandparents, then, witness to the wonder of five generations–a family they put into bloom. One of the gifts of simply persisting.

Abe Schoener and I had a conversation about tragedy. It started over a barrel of botrytis infected petite sirah. The year had been suddenly wet, in the end, and the clusters were covered in mildew when harvest time came. It was a situation many faced by throwing out fruit, but the berries revealed there was still juice in their meat. So, Schoener and his team foot stomped them. The vats after were slicked by a film of off-white growth on top–the mildew pushed off the skin. The wine now carries the smoothly tannic balance possible with a petite sirah, alongside concentrated fruit and spice notes associated with a late harvest wine, both without sweetness. It was a wine I’d heard Schoener was working on and I couldn’t wait to taste it. Then, there we were meeting in person for the first time (both of us careful in selecting our outfits for the occasion hoping to impress the other), tasting from barrel a wine that was strange in its brilliance. It’s been two weeks since and from a set of around twenty wines, the petite sirah is the one I crave. It drinks like its been touched by the edge of spoilage and come back to tell its story. Like its structure is more than the damage it could have endured. The acidity knows what its capable of being, so it just goes ahead turning in the barrel. The fruit dances through stages of vibrant and concentrated, dusty and fresh somehow all there together. The wine is not sweet like sometimes associated with late harvest grapes, but it is deepened, darker, and more raisined than it would be otherwise.

Schoener’s wines are seen as strange for the American palate. Even if his wine making techniques have their analogues abroad–with the oxidative elements purposefully done in Jura, or traditional Rioja, as examples–still, Schoener’s wines work against what’s more common for the mainstream–fresh fruit, or fruit jam presentation–of a still young U.S. wine industry. I ask him to talk to me about his wine making choices, so he explains. He wants his wines to be a pleasure to drink, he says, but he also wants them to make you think. He’s unclear how to accomplish this purposefully, yet, sometimes by intention alone the motivation succeeds. He wants his wines to go ahead and get right to the edge of what it is to be wine–a way to prove they are no longer fruit–then, to find their way back from it. What he’s learned from wine making, he says, is that if you start with a healthy vineyard, and then give the wine its own time in the barrel, it will self regulate. It will have moments when you think it is undrinkable, and, from the perspective of a more traditional wine making style, when you think it may be flawed. But if you let it persist, on the other side you’ll find a wine ready to bottle that is still marked by that edge, yet full of pleasure. I ask him about that idea of the edge again. That edge, he tells me, that’s the analogue to tragedy–where the wines have come right up to the border of something, and shown they are more than it. In this way, he wants his wines to cause pleasure, to be fun to drink, and at the same time, he wants them to make you think, to make you think of tragedy.

***

Thank you to Burt Coffin, Paul Sutton, and Aaron Pinnix.

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Last day in Alaska

Jul 13, ’12 6:21 PM

The drift fisherman were busy on the water through my time in Bristol Bay. So, no visits, and no pictures with them. Fishing works that way.

My uncle Smile and I hadn’t seen in other in at least eight years so on my last morning he docked the boat, raced to the airport and visited for five minutes before I had to board the plane. He brought with him a bag of Native style smoke fish, right from the smoke house. It takes about a month to make, and is so rich I fall asleep from just a few pieces. The bag I carried it in still smells of it.

Driving through California now trying to adjust to so much plant life after ten days in Arctic desert. Tonight I arrive in Sonoma for ten days in the extended area meeting with people in wine. Next Friday I also have a special media event to attend–hee hee. Can’t wait.

Love you, Smiley.

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Turning Home 9: The Vehicles of Bristol Bay, for Cathy

Jul 8, ’12 11:39 PM

Cathy asked me to do a series on the crazy vehicles of Bristol Bay.

Getting any cars, trucks, or work equipment to the area depends on the machinery being brought across the ocean by enormous barge. As a result, people put a lot of effort into keeping cars and trucks running for extended periods. The unique work of the area also demands a big range of equipment so that between the older cars, and the enormous cranes, you end up encountering a huge range of vehicles.

For Cathy, here’s a selection. They give an interesting picture of the place.

Some of these cars start with a push button rather than a standard key ignition. Many are held together in places by rope, wires, or clamps.

the truck I learned to drive on. A 1976 F-250 converted into flatbed.

cork toothed stationwagon, sometimes also wears moose antlers

the fishing crew calls this the chicken wagon

the local fire truck, sourced from the old Air Force base

they honestly still drive this thing

this volvo is attached to a massive trailer for towing boats

this stationwagon has the back door torn off and the backseat plexiglassed in so that it sits like a car but can be loaded in back like a truck.

this is the only vehicle in this series not still actively running and driven

these dump trucks are used to pick up salmon from the set net sites

Melissa, Cathy, and I had a great time looking for vehicles together one day. Melanie and I the day before. Thanks!

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Turning Home 8: Family Photos

Jul 7, ’12 5:54 PM

Life Long Friends

Cathy, Melanie, and I have been lucky enough to grow up together, and grow up together fishing too. Commercial fishing is such a peculiar way of life, there is a kind of relief in being close to others that have shared in it while also experiencing life else where. Cathy went to high school in Anchorage, and started fishing with our family around her sophomore year. We all grew up cross country running and ski racing together too.

little man, Oliver, took these two pics of Cathy, Melanie, and I

Family Photos

We haven’t had all the grandkids with each of the three sisters together out in Naknek ever–two of the grandkids are younger than the time since my last visit out here. So, we made a point of getting family photos. Hopefully some with my mom and dad later too.

The Grandkids