29 days plus 100 days= eternity

Saturday morning, roaming around like a big grizz, trying to decide what to do with myself- fighting the urge to go attack a sow and kill the cubs, no reason, just because I can, and I'm crazy from a long hibernation.

Check the Bristol Bay google feed for any updates on the pebble mine disaster, end up reading the d
Dillingham news, seems the Angels (girls bball team) had a pretty good year.... leads me to the Alaska Dispatch, but only reports of last years run and a suspected murder in Eagle, knife stabbing,... ok. let's just go to the source- Alaska Fish and Game... just for kicks I read last years projection report- highest in 20 years, 35 million sockeye can't be wrong!  But its all quite on the western front for 2016- except a king report- not good for the Kenai, a little better for Bristol- let's hope and pray the big boys can make a come back (solemn bow).

So March 12, the count down to the countdown begins eh, only 29 days till they release the 2016 projections and then for a 100 days I can check the site and obsess over the data.  this is bad.... maybe I should take up fly tying, can't be any more miserable.

The dog days are over, run fast

It's 77 degrees on March 11th.  I bring stuff for a run in the woods, but the knee is tender, the desire is waning and there is a hatch coming off (not really, but it sounds good).  So at this temp waders stay home and the wet legs are a relief.  There is already a touch if humidity in the air, is it March or May?    I'm not very focused, but don't really care.  Stuffed a hammock in the new hip pack, just in case I lost all desire.  I didn't.  Not much happening till I hit Christians pool and take a big brookie and couple of others.  The lights dimming, cicadas buzzing as I bushwack back to the truck. 72 degrees as the dark trees shimmer in the headlights.  Is it just me, or did winter just get real short.

Elmstreet

I was standing in cold rushing water, in Alaska.  But as I took stock of my position, I realized I was not in a river, but on a beach with waves breaking around me.  We were all searching, then soft serve mike yelled, "we're too far out, they are closer to the beach!"  We turned and walked a picket line back toward shore and silvery silhiquets began to appear.  Realizing I didn't have the right gear, I trudged on and as I reached the shore I was standing in a make shift locker room in what I preceived to be a large fishing vessel.  What the?!?  No dry bags, everything was wet, I was just wearing a pair of jeans, which I now realized were soaking and I was shaking with cold... Where are my waders?!!  Then as I was pealing off the wet jeans, in walks Denise (awkward, reminiscent of tent drop 2014).   She doesn't seem to notice and in her typical cheery way asks how its going and wonders why we haven't booked the flights.  Seems Ricks on a drop right now, but the rest of the week is filling up.  Mike and Jb are now in the locker room, both in waders.  Denise questions Mike about some money he owes her for a flight last year and says they won't fly him again, or us, until he settles... WHAT THE!?!?!   Mike says no problem, we are planning on doing the carnival cruise this year anyway!

I am totally befuddled...   We're not doing a cruise, are you nuts!?!  Mikes nodding his head, up and down in the affirmative until I finally yell, "Not just no. Hell no Mike!!"  "Well" Mike responds, chuckling and nonchalant, "you don't have any of your gear up here and Rick is all booked, so it's either work this Commerical salmon boat or take the Carnival cruise up to Skagway."

The lights in the lockeroom flicker off and as my eyes adjust I can see long long fingers in the corner of the room moving rhythmically... But they aren't just fingers, they are blades, long sharp blades... I scream, "Freddie!!".

Back bacon sandwich, hold the bread

"Please keep your bags with you at all times, we will begin boarding Tikchik Air flight 01 to Civilization in twelve hours"... We throw our crap all over the gravel bar, pretending that if we aren't stowed and ready to go, the beaver won't come and the sun will never rise on the last day in country.  Hondo is tapped out, proclaimed a few hours before that he was sated, satisfied, fulfilled, ready to go home.  Pablo's thoughts wander to the next river, a new river he'll float with his wife and Soft Serve Mikey.  Two weeks of floating the Alaskan outback and his enthusiasm runs high for another go.  Leaving me alone to ponder the end, the inevitability, neither the spirit nor the flesh can accept reality.  So I dump out all my stuff and mill about taking inventory, pretending the sun's long shadows will stretch ever longer and never ending.  

We ate sand..... ya ate what?

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the swift river and the music in its roar, 
I love not man the less, but nature more.

There is a misery in the paved road,
There is depression in the concourse of masses
There is a longing where all abode
By the roaring freeway and the deafening din,
Wilderness alone is the balm, humanity wears me thin.

Must be the doldrums

Gal dang gum it all to heck!  What have we got to say for ourselves?!?  Have we lapsed into a veritable crevasse of work, responsibility, familial duties and shoveling snow so deep that we've forgotten our creed, we've forsaken our very nature, the irresponsibility, frivolity and immaturity that distinguishes us as THE UNGUIDED?  Heaven Forbid!

Why just a few short months ago there we ran, naked through the wilds of the mother land, in our tweaked out IK,s slurping down snickers bars and slogging our bagels with globs of Nutella to our hearts desire.  Surfing Mr Hankeys, carving the red tailed waking wounded, worshipping at the alter of the dolly llama and waiving our genitals at your aunties with abandon!  Good gosh man, snap out of it!  Awake and arise from the dust you pathetic domesticated welps of a whore I curse your eyes!!

As you lie in that hospital bed of your future with tubes up every orifice surrounded by your offspring  who's names you can't recall as the cataracts blur your vision and the smell of our own bodily fluids stings their dainty nostrils and the last breathes of your mortal body rattle from your bony concave chest.  With your big butted hospice nurse as my witness, you will crave with all your being to be standing in the (Unnamed River) sucking the marrow from its millennial flow and to scream at the top of your lungs with your last mortal breath, BLONDIE!

Radio Silence killed the Video Star

NOTHING. Nothing for MONTHS. What have we become?? the MULE?
I will at least post a pic from 2015's EPIC trip. Can it get any better?