Blog Entry for November 2, 2007
The wild winds on Halloween knocked down the last autumn leaves and now they are splattered across the wet pavement. I miss them like a friend who left town without warning. Sitting up at the radio station this morning, I read the local forecast on the air and it sounds like the Weather Service’s version of water-boarding. It has rained over an inch a day all week.
Cabin fever is setting in much too early. We haven’t even fallen back from Daylight Savings time and people are already getting owly in town. I got a call yesterday from a man who wanted to leave a “Muskeg Message”. I told him we read those messages on the air for people without phones and since he clearly had a phone, as did the message recipient, I was puzzled. “Well, I want to shame him into fixing my boat. He has had it for three months and I missed the whole season, and I thought this might get a reaction..”
I had to tell the man that the radio station was not in the business of public humiliation and taking sides in arguments or we could be busy all winter. I was not expecting phone calls like that until the sun started going down at 3 pm.
Why do I live here? People ask me all the time. I can’t always tell you..But I notice quirky things every day that make me laugh and that counts for something.
Yesterday I saw someone drive by with a fish decal on their truck. Not the Christian Fish, but a halibut design. This is the only place I know where people consider the halibut a work of art. You can see halibut in earring form and as necklaces and on dresses and t-shirts and even baby clothes. They are featured in quilts and wall hangings, on potholders and dishes. There are halibut pewter serving trays, and ceramic halibut mugs, and these are prized items not joke presents.
Now the halibut is an unlovely fish that lives at the ocean bottom, and only through close association over the years have I developed an admiration for it. I love their fat white lips and gold eyes and they way they change color like a chameleon when they hit the deck.
The halibut fetish in town comes from an appreciation for this odd-looking bottom feeder that has fed our town for generations. I like the way that people feel so closely connected to the way they make a living that the women wear jackets embroidered with the outline of their family fishing boat on the back and the name of the boat is painted on the side of trucks.
I love this place for its peculiarities and the connections between who we are and what we do, and the beautiful backdrop of this town. The sun just came out for the first time in two weeks, revealing fresh snow on the mountains. Got to go and get reacquainted with my shadow.
