home in homer

gillnetter boat, originally uploaded by pinprick.

we're getting about 12 hours in homer before we head up to larsen bay to do some seine tendering. larsen bay is by kodiak, and i hear seine tendering is a lot more fun than tendering for gillnetters.

being away from the phone and internet for a month was hard. having no contact with the people i love sucked. it was harder than living in colorado in some ways; at least in colorado i could call home every day if i felt like it and send emails to friends. i felt pretty isolated. talking to my mom and sister last night on the phone cheered me up some, but at the same time it makes my homesickness sharper. i have these crazy vivid dreams about my people that make me not want to get out of bed some mornings.

i am most definitely tired of life on the boat. i quit once, even, i hated it so much, but the logistics of getting back to land and home were dizzying and so i sucked it up. i will never work on this boat again, i know that much for sure. i'm not sure if i'll ever work on any boat again, but i can say that once i get off this boat i'm never getting back on. to be frank, the captain and i don't quite get along. he doesn't get along with most people, true, but i have never been one to put up with petty bullshit for any length of time, and if this were a job i had in the real world i would have walked out ages ago. i think he might have some anger management issues. all i know is i think he's a dick and i want to be home.

on bad days i feel like i wasted this summer. on good days i think about all the amazing shit i've seen, including tiny little squid-lets swimming up toward our lights at night; they were no bigger than my pinky but flashing fierocious red and white, snatching up even tinier fish that were also attracted to the light. phosphorescent plankton is eerie and lovely, and when you drive through it in the boat it flashes like static electricity. puffins are both adorable and ridiculous. bristol bay is sort of a shit hole; everything is the same steely grey color and i'm glad to be out of there. shelikof straight is positively prehistoric with tall towers of striated rocks nestled between rolling hills of green. i've seen bears and seals and otters and huge schools of jellyfish. i've also gotten crazy seasick and spent a lot of time in my bunk wishing for death.

at the beginning i wondered if i would feel at home here right away, but i still find myself talking about my "real life" back home. parts of alaska are comfortable to me, like a certain fisherman and his family, but i think after this experience i'm going to need a few months to digest and decide if this is someplace i could live. i think on my terms i could do it, but not this way. love is a grand and stupid thing, but even i'm not that dumb. i'm not a fisherman, or fisherwoman, or even a very good deckhand. i could be good at waiting patiently at home and pining while going about my life, but as much as i love being on the ocean and waking up to the salty smell and falling asleep to the rocking, this is not my true vocation. i'm okay with that. my fisherman is okay with that. i have a beter understanding of what he does and why, and i think knowing exactly what he's going through when he's out here will help us in the long run (should there be one).

all i want right this second, though, is to get my check, go home, count my funds and make a plan for the future. i t urn 30 very soon and i know i had a list of things i wanted to do before that happened! i'd like to take a silversmithing class when i get home, i'd like to make plans to visit friends down south when it isn't crazy hot, i would even like to go back to colorado and see my friends there. i want to curl up on the couch with tiernan and comic books and see how huge henry is and goof around with jude. maggie is talking more and more, and even though pop is bald and grumpy i miss him too. i want to have a drink with my mom and sister and look at photos together and fall asleep knowing if i want to sleep in no one will yell at me. i feel burnt out and don't want to end up regarding this trip negatively when so many great things have happened out here. like george costanza i'm going to try to end it on a high note.