Memorial Day-Rhubarb Pie and Remembrance

Hubris- which I think means arrogance and misplaced optimism- could describe me this morning. I got away with it, though, so hah! I'm smug now here on the couch, but was not so while trying to weave between the large, belligerent piles of water bullying me on the way back into the harbor.

The forecast was for unmanageable conditions; not good for hauling or setting traps. We got going for the day with the sun shining and a gentle breeze, and decided setting one boatload of gear should be no problem.

After moving two truckloads of traps and a third with rope, buoys and bait bags to the wharf, the sun and gentle breeze gave in to a raw easterly wind and overcast. After the boat was freighted, my clever plan was to run downwind until we got to Southern Point and a lee in which to work. Getting across the harbor was more intimidating than it should have been and required tacking and then a quick turn to encourage the now baited but untethered traps not to dump themselves in the harbor.

'It's pretty roly-poly.'
'Yep. I have a plan.'
'Good.'

Running ahead of the easterly and setting gear off the west side of the island went according to plan, with the only downside being me having ignored Megan's query as to whether I was adequately dressed.

With the last pair sinking by Black Rocks, the voltage indicator started its well-timed erratic behavior; not enough of a deviation to be alarming, but still disconcerting. Leaving the shelter of the west side, the sea got gradually rowdier. Rambunctious chop or erratic voltage are ok separately. I have a vivid memory of the last time I smoked an alternator, tripped the main engine breaker and needed a tow in. That was a serene and tranquil day.

Looking through the sheets of spray on the wheelhouse windows, the word hubris popped into my head.  'I have a plan.' Great, but what about all the things not in your plan? That's dumbass hubris.

I throttled back in the escalating chop and perplexingly, the voltage returned to normal.

Once moored, I looked at, yanked and prodded the alternator and belt and found no suggestion of the problem.
***
Rhubarb pie is a genuine treat. Rhubarb itself, the electric celery or puckering string-fruit, is an improbable thing to put in one's mouth. A bite of the end of a stalk dipped in sugar, though, makes me 8 years old and almost done school for the year instantly. To then bake it into a pie is sublime. Rhubarb is genuine.

Chicken McNuggets, by contrast, are imposters of the very food from whence they came. In order to have them taste the same in Boston or Anchorage, they first have to extract out all the genuine chicken essence, destroy the structure of the meat and replace those components with artificial something or other.

The saddest thing to me about the Codfather story and turning wild fish into an investment product through catch shares and fleet consolidation is that they also ended up McNuggetizing the fish! This the industry did by shipping it to factories where they could process out all the genuineness.

When you only have to pay the people who do the work to make the food and do not need to pressure the resource and overprocess the food in order to 'generate shareholder value,' I think it is a genuinely good thing.

Which leads to the first haulback of the year of my lobster gear. The catch was decent, by which I mean I was not in the hole for bait and fuel at the end of the day. I was, however, a little crestfallen at all the work leading up to that day producing $35.80 in my pocket. Well, $35.80, plus a bucket of lobsters than when cooked on the stove let out the most marvelous aroma of genuineness; a salty, fishy smell of a still independent and decorporatized fishery. Two people, one boat, a lot of work and real food. It could have been on a woodstove 150 years ago or a fire on a beach a thousand years ago. It's that kind of basic comforting aroma and immediate reminder of our connection to our environment.There's no McFaking that.

As we remember sacrifices made for our way of life, let us also remember what makes it rich and special. To me, it is about touching and being touched by the earth and sea from which we all arise and to which we return, and all of the infinite variety and authenticity out there.