Going To Tahiti

October. Cold, windy, leaves coming down.

Salmon in Trouble.

No?

Warm enough to wade and swim in the bay. Who needs to go to Tahiti? The Maori come to Neah Bay to make the babies dance happy. We call their weather The Pineapple Express. It's blowing snow-eater winds along the beaches and through the still-green alders.

More and more sunfishes, great whites and sperm whales showing up in the coastal waters and even in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. 

Salmon don't like warm water.

Salmon-fishing industry, recreational and sports - fighting over the last remaining salmon, either wild or hatchery - is just making buggy whips. And whining and crying about who's going to get to catch the last salmon. I did that cartoon just for them. Greedy, future-blind morons.

I know about buggy whips. I work in the newspaper industry. Sooner or later the Fun Paper that doesn't pay its writers is going to kill both the paper-industry papers, and then up its ad rates. It won't be able to resist. Why would it? It doesn't pay its writers. If it will treat them like a harvest, it will harvest you.

Meanwhile, the actual writers will go off to blogs - like this one - and make money off their own ads. No more invoicing! No more running asses off all over town for stories and photos that get bumped because newspapers only make their own towns' buggy-whips. No more "Be nice to the logging industry, that owns our editorial board." No more writing in the fucking Associated Press style that Hemingway hated so much. Whee!

Clallam County is ruffling with an argument over electronic or manual meter-reading machines, or whatever they're called. WTF? Solar mini-grids are coming, whether the PUD and the County want it or not. The meter machines are just more buggy whips. It's going to be another case of "There go my people! I must catch up and lead them!"

No arts or dance or music anything but industrial-lineworker production classes in the schools? No entertainment-industry preparation? Go ahead, take away the money from the schools, let the corporate test-companies eat up your curriculum, and send your kids to my comicon, where they can get what they need. Forks is about to have its own arts festival. The smartest loggers and fisherfolk are bringing their kids, because they've seen the future. 

Even the guy who cuts our firewood knows the 200-year-old "jobs" paradigm is about to run out of the steam of cheap resources. And "even?" I swear, lately, talking to the guys with the little firewood trucks, they're more on top of this than most of the people squabbling down at Port Angeles City Hall. Now that Mike Doherty's retiring, are we going to get a commissioner to replace him - the kind of professional politician who comes out here once a week because he knows where the votes are? Then again, we can always train the next one. We all have email. Or at least disposable cell-phones. They're called public "servants," people.

Forests and fisheries? Going to be harvesting a lot of palm trees, there? Or scrub oaks? Or whatever can thrive here when the weather changes - and it is. Planning to move your business north? Someplace else that will put up with a lifestyle based on grab-and-shit, when there's nothing left to shove into your industry's maw? There's a reason we've been warning you TreeHaters and Animal Players for decades - because it's been coming. Thanks a lot for being greedy AND deaf.

You can't have shark derbies - the soupfin industry saw to that. Sunfish grow too slowly and are too rare to become a halibut replacement. Rockfish are actually scorpion fish - which are tropical - so maybe they'll be happier. Good old lings and greenlings - can they be hatcheried? I dunno.

Better get to work converting those fishing boats for bird-watching. Other people have had to do it. Birder life lists are imaginary - but they pay just as much as a salmon left rotting in the hot sun in a sports boat as the owner went off to lunch. 

Hm. The First Nations will have to change their traditional fish ceremonies, because they won't have salmon any more. Then again, they're resilient people; they survived us, didn't they? 

Just don't decide to go after Monster Whale instead of grey whale. Those big southern people are hot-tempered and impatient of canoes. Ask Captain Ahab.

Just Pretty Pictures and Stuff

More photo essay than anything.

First, paper flying-eagle silhouettes in the local school. Very well done, no?

At least a little art in this school. One of the teachers yawped at me that I'd said bad things about the school, when they're a good school, and have lots of good programs.

Really? Is that why the kids can only get art classes from the local little old ladies' art club, who are volunteers, and nobody gets paid? Pull the other one. You don't have dance or music, either. Plenty of money for the football team, and the dying industries, but nothing for the actual future.

Hallowe'en skeleton with ripening tomatoes. Next year, I'm working out how to plant the tomatoes upside down, and then, when they're loaded with fruit and the frost is coming, I'll just cut 'em and hang 'em in the house to ripen and dry.

Here's a shot from last summer, when the calla lilies were in bloom. It's the newly painted empty room. That's right - we have an EMPTY ROOM. Yeah, the upper shelves are full of DVDs and the lower shelves full of stuff - but the room itself got nothing but space and Fearless; that's her curled up in the box down there.

Karin Ashton told me about the "bed sculpture" up by the mouth of a the Sekiu river. Dan and I went up and actually found it. It made for a misty, spooky, warm beach walk. Thanks, Karin! Dunno who built it - forgot to ask her last time I saw her. She's threatening to do comic books and bring them to the Clallam Bay Comicon, so I look forward to that. I wonder if she knows about Fumetti?  The American version. I love well-done Fumetti.

Somebody went to a lot of work on the campsite and bed area. The winter tides will sweep it away, but it must have been a lot of fun for parties this summer. 

There's always something like this on the local beaches. They're temporary and don't hurt anything, but they're always fun to find.

Kind of like local art installations. Could be artists, or surfers, or just bored people. Who knows?

Salmon carcasses in the Clallam River, visible this autumn off the bridge. People throw 'em in there for the otters - an to attract the silver salmon run up the river. Yes, there might be one yet, as the river continues to recover. 

Now if we can only convince the traditional ignoramus fishermen to not catch the last ones in the run, so they can breed. I sometimes think these guys believe that fish and trees just get abracadaba's back into place, just for them. 

We call those guys BWS - Born With Servants. There's always somebody there to pick up after them, starting with their moms. And godlets help you if you have to clean up after them when they move. Finally. Late. They're the same ones telling us "alders aren't native" because it gets in the way of them logging off the land so it can be sold to developers. And don't tell the game warden about any fish they caught, especially if they gave you one.

The neighbor got many cranberries from the Folly Bog up the Hoko river road. It was started a long time ago by a guy just to see if he could do it, and not only went through three generations, but continues today under new owners. really wonderful cranberries. Good with everything, and enough to last until January.

The salmon carcasses remind me of a party I went to recently. Lovely silver salmon, baked with herbs. But finding out who caught it, I said that maybe they didn't want to be telling the game warden about it. I've seen these guys brag about catching eleven fish on a two-fish limit, and then not eating them - it's all about the fish torture. And the salmon was taken in the river that was recovering. In other words, he'd taken a fish that had actually made its head cells up to go up the river to breed.

It's hard living with children who think the planet and everything on it is their playtoy. And then have to clean up and repair after them. I wish they'd learn to wipe their own butts. But not with the toilet paper they make from the lungs of the planet.

Smoking Salmon

Right on Highway 112 in Clallam Bay. Admittedly, they're the pinks they gotta move -- but they're probably still fresher and nicer than any pinks you can find.

Nice, clean fish.

Split, dry-rubbed with my homemade sea salt, lemon juice and cracked pepper.

Heads and a few inches of the tails shanks microwaved for the cats.  Gotta cool!

Salmon wrapped in towels, placed in refrigerator for a couple days, to cure and seep out the excess liquid.

Rinsed of excess rubbing, allowed to dry in the sun a couple hours, and ready to grill.

Grilling over grass, harvested from a gasoline-and-chemical-free yard, dried and soaked in salty rinse water.  Yes, that's a stop sign and a washing-machine tub.

Skin browned, flipped to smoke meat on first piece.

Smoke rousing up on the last two pieces, meat-side-down.

All smoked, finishing the skin brown.  SMOKEEEDDDD SALMONNNNNN.

Smokin' Dem Salmons
Ah, smoked salmon.  The neighbor gave us a big frozen Silver salmon. Because they don't like Silvers.  Yes, we live where people get to have preferences for salmon.  I, for instance, prefer to smoke pinks.  I find them less greasy once smoked.  Most people don't prefer them.  I don't smoke the big White Salmon: extremely fat Kings.  Once smoked, they only taste like smoked pork.  Delicious, yes, but why pay salmon prices for the same taste?  White Salmon is best just barely grilled. I don't much care for trout or steelhead except for the crispy fried skin; the meat is actually rather thin and sour. Oh, have I gotten spoiled.

Here's the salmon itself.  I tried a Gravlax recipe, but found it too sweet and rather insipid.  I'm sticking to simple salt brine, the meat then well-rinsed and dried, from now on.  Or no salt, Indian Style.  Are we getting gourmet up here or what?

Here's the smoker.  These folks have asked for a photo of it.  It's just some cedar shakes from the Hoko River sawmill and some old grills and broken concrete bricks. That thing in the background is the greenhouse, another scrap building project.  Not pretty, but works great!  Especially now the arctic winds for the melting cap ice are turning our summers into cold, windy horrors for gardening. Guess I just have to wait for all the cap ice to melt and then enjoy hot weather gardening for a little while before we all choke on the carbon dioxide.  Trade-off.


I've made the text larger for this blog. As much for my eyesight -- near all my life, now wandering farther out -- as for yours.  Odd that we get far-sighted but the focus remains as clear.  Are the elder apes supposed to sit on the home hill and watch for lions?