Chinese Baseball Team Visits King Salmon
It looked like a refugee camp. Fifteen sleeping mats in various directions lined the floors of our house. It was great!
The Chinese baseball players ranged in age from around 10 to 15. There were three chaperones. They were going to camp out in the backyard, but seeing a bear walk right past the window on the first night emphasized the wisdom of sleeping inside.
It was an early morning. Once everyone had their cup of rice and piece of cranberry bread, the kids took me outside so I could jump for a frisbee. Then, everyone loaded up in the vehicles to go to Katmai Air for float plane flights to Brooks Camp. I had to stay behind, but I prefer staying away from bears. I looked forward to the return of my new big pack!
People tell stories with words; dogs tell stories with smells. The dog at King Salmon Lodge “writes me a note” each week by peeing on the tires. And I send one in return.
When the pack was back, I could smell most of what happened and piece together the rest, so here it is for you in words as best as I can translate.
The first float planes to land were greeted by three bears on the beach. One plane had to wait about fifteen minutes for the bears to move away before anyone could get out.
They skipped a few volcanic pumice rocks in the water of Brooks Lake. Pumice rocks are so light that they don’t sink; even ones the size of a basketball. And you can get a pumice rock to skip four, five, even six times across the water.
There was a bear safety orientation at the Visitor’s Center. It is good information about how much distance to give the bears and not to have any food at all, including gum, on your person at any time. Also, not to set anything down you don’t want to lose because bears are very curious. Curiosity is both a strength and a weakness that gets bears, and humans, into a lot of trouble sometimes.
There were bears right outside the Visitor’s Center, so they got to practice what they learned right away.
All through the day, they had to wait at platforms or move back on the trails because bears were everywhere. Some visitors even had to forge trails through the swamp in order to avoid the bears. A number of people fishing were too close and had to slowly move away.
They went to Brooks Falls twice. It’s about a mile walk right in the thick of where bears amble and nap, so making noise and keeping your senses heightened is a good idea.
The trail leads to some gated walkways and ends at the Brooks Falls viewing platforms. Green streaked water courses over the rocks and burbles into white foamy areas where the alpha bears like to hang out jacuzzi-style while fishing. Sometimes a bear will come across to the top of the falls and peer down to snag one of the fish popping up out of the water. Fish popcorn.
Let me tell you, and this I could smell, there were a lot of fish in the water. Everywhere. The waters were boiling with fish fins and streaked red. And there were about six to twelve sockeye salmon jumping the falls at a time. It was the most my parents had seen in ten years of going out to Brooks. It was a great year for fishing in Bristol Bay.
The bears weren’t even trying to catch them. Fat and woozy now with fish, they’d just sit in the water and wait for one to happen to land in their laps or mouths. And yes, there were so many fish that sometimes a fish would land in a bear’s mouth without any effort on the part of the bear.
There was a mom with some older cubs, maybe two years old, eating with them on the opposite shore. One of the cubs practiced fishing, perhaps on the education plan of its mother, chasing after fish to no avail. Not as easy as it looks.
With so many fish and so many full bears, there really wasn’t any aggression and silliness was rampant, even among the ducks and seagulls. Like two teenagers in the back of a car, there were two bears in a hugging embrace out in a field of grass. They saw a mother playing with her cubs, probably about a year old, affectionately nuzzling them at times. They watched as a sow held about fifty people captive on the other side of the bridge while she played all around it. She knew what she was doing. Every once in a while the bears have got to remind everyone who is really in charge of the area.
It’s a good thing my mom asked Aunt Liz to come over to let me out because there were delays for the planes and they didn’t all make it back until nine at night!
They had reservations at King Salmon Lodge for 7:30 and the lodge closed at 9:00, so mom called to cancel. King Salmon Lodge refused to accept the cancellation. They had already prepared the food and were willing to stay late to serve it. Their customer service was excellent and they worked with my parents well to get everything in place for three succulent dinners for seventeen people.
The next day, we went to one of my favorite places: Naknek Beach. This is a beach that follows along Kvichak (kwee-jack) Bay, which is an arm of Bristol Bay, and leads to Pederson Point Cannery.
It was windy, cold and gray, but we met a woman who was eager to show us her fishing cabin and share its story. So we climbed up crate-hewn steps and onto a tundra trail to her fishing cabin. The first little place was a steam house, like a sauna. Going steaming is very popular here, but I don’t think I would like it. Further along a wood-planked trail was her cabin. She shared akutaq, which is typically berries and crisco and some people call it Eskimo ice cream, and told the story of her family and fishing in Bristol Bay.
On the way back, one scientific-minded baseball player asked about different berries and their plants, so mom showed him the berry and plant for black, seedy crowberries, smelly salmonberries and an early-arriving blueberry. He photographed each one, plant and berry.
Next, we visited a cannery that had been around since the early 1900s. The buildings are old and weathered. My dad gave a tour, talking about the history of commercial salmon fishing for the area, and showing us one of the oldest boats in the now nearly empty boat storage room. He took us upstairs to the net hanging loft where we met a net hanger and got to watch her work. She gets the nets ready for use by the fisherman, even setting the size of the net openings for the size of the fish they want to catch. It’s tough work on the hands.
Out on the dock, dad talked with a boat captain and one of his crewmen. They were pleased after a good fishing year.
From the dock, we could see the mouth of the Naknek River as it meets Kvichak Bay. There were still a number of boats out there even though the busiest part of the season had passed. The large barge is a floating cannery.
Dad explained that the fishermen in the small boats catch the fish in the nets and bring it to the medium-sized boats called tenders. The tenders work for a specific cannery and take the fish from the fishermen and bring it in to the cannery for processing. The fishermen get tickets indicating the amount of fish they provided to the cannery so that they can turn them in and get paid at the end of the season. That’s drift net fishing.
There is also set net fishing. Nets lined with buoys are stretched out the distance of the low tide and anchored to the shore. At the turn of the tide, set net fishermen pick the fish out of the nets. There are trucks that come out from different canneries to pick up fish from people who are fishing for a cannery. Many of the set net fishermen are subsistence fishing for their families. And many are doing both.
We drove back to King Salmon for a salmon dinner at King Salmon Lodge and returned home to play Charades and a Chinese group game that they taught us.
There were two girls on the baseball team. One is the top student in China. She likes Shakespeare and acting and did a great job demonstrating getting a stubbed toe.
They went to the airport early the next morning. I was sad. I like being part of a big pack and these were the kind of pack members you want: kind, helpful, curious people who like to throw things.
