You will know what I am talking about when I tell you the roof from last night's rented shelter lies in black pieces on the parking lot. You will know what I say when I tell you of the smell of mold, sea slime, crushed barnacle, wet iron and rubber and steel wire and rotting cotton of a crab pot, line, and buoys. You will know what I am talking about when I say the minuscule cuts on my fingers will not heal in the constant wet of gear work. You will know what I say when I speak of the rough banter and competition of everyone's best, grossest, most outrageous stories tossed around the moldy cold damp air of any of dozens of gear sheds out here on the November coast.
Crab pots stand five high and skippers dart from boat to shed to Englund to Tacoma or Seattle or wherever buoys or lines or engine parts lie. Deckhands smoke one endless cigarette after another, ash dropping into pots, and live on borrowed cash. Crab scuttle on the ocean floor, feeding and unaware of their fate at the Christmas plate of a hundred heavily decorated Bellevue homes. Families miss their dads, girlfriends miss their men, a few lucky or think they are lucky boyfriends miss their ladies. The reality sinks in for these gals and guys: your commercial fishing lover or spouse is actually a fisherman, ergo is gone for several months at a time, and is gone now. Surfers lift crab pots and count fathoms of line with an eye to the surf and watch dark fall with their hopes of one good wave before the day's work is done. Skiers dream of Crystal's backcountry, chutes and endless pow. Ice climbers count fictitious dollars and dream of Canada.
I find myself on the winter coast once again. There is no desperation. I am not alone. I run in the dark over slick wet pavement puddles against thirty mile an hour winds and feel strong and solid. I might make money, I might not. I might surf, I might just crab and talk and drink and leave. My stories recall Denali, Red Rocks, Vegas, Valdez, Jackson Hole, the Winds, the hard rock of Index and the Cascades, weird hipsters in Seattle, strange parties on boats in Lake Union, unsuccessful fishing in Friday Harbor, La Push, successful hauls in stark green bays in Kodiak. My best friends hail from all corners of this world and fill my life with days and evenings and stories I could never in a thousand years make up. November on the coast is just as stormy as it always has been, but damn wonderful right now. Winds can howl and roofs can fall off, but I'm here, alive, a pocket of vibrant warmth against this early and long night. I love this life and the people in it. I love this forgotten coast and its moldy wet sadness. I fit here. It's so strange to find this. In a way I have never found amongst the brobra ski culture, the yuppie weekender Seattle crowd, (only, perhaps, amongst dirtbag climbers living in the rock places of the southwest) my strange private melancholy hardcore soul fits out here.
As in all things in my life: for now it fits, just for now.
