If the sun ever set, the dust clouds could settle and the hordes could rest. But the sun doesn’t set. It might disappear from time to time, to blink perhaps, but soon enough it shimmers upon its glacial waters once more.
Darkness does not fall in the summer months on the Kenai Peninsula. Its residents grow weary.
***
Marlins @ Astros Series Preview
Projected Starters/Promotions
Friday, 7pm, MMPUS: Hand (1-2) vs Keuchel (9-6)
Beach Towel to 10,000; Fireworks
Saturday, 6pm, MMPUS: Koehler (6-7) vs Cosart (9-6)
Nolan Ryan Beef Sunglasses to 10,000; Jason Derulo (who?) Postgame Concert
Sunday, 1pm, MMPUS: Turner (3-6) vs TBD
Nothing. Like it.
***
You can’t swim in Skilak Lake. You can float, I guess, in the same way an ice cube floats near the top of unsweet tea, but then you’d be dead and, again, not swimming. The glacial runoff that feeds a large portion of the 15-mile mirror in the mountains supports little vegetation, cleansing the incoming streams into a milky turquoise that runs 500 feet to the rocky bottom. If you visit Alaska and want to see a clear blue sky, look down, not up.
This is the finish line. A big middle finger pointed straight at every bear, rock, twig, tree, net, hook, line and sinker that litters the defiant trek inland. 32 miles of twists and turns and bends and breaks – upstream. Eggs are laid here. Lives begin and end. It is survival of the fittest is stripped to its core.
But nature’s laws must be obeyed and these (cold) bloodlines are worth the fight. Truman Capote once wrote: “It’s the Circle of Life, and it moves us all. Through despair and hope, through faith and love, til we find our place on the path, unwinding. In the circle, the Circle of Life.”
***
Injuries
Miami
Capps: Scurvy
Dietrich: Motion Sickness
Fernandez: Mercury Poisoning
Furcal: Balantidiasis
Gregg: Hymenolepiasis
Astros
Albers: Right shoulder tendinitis; TBD
Cisnero: TJS; 2015
Crain: Biceps surgery; TBD
Fowler: Right intercostal strain; August
McHugh: Right middle fingernail avulsion (ew); late July
Presley: Strained right oblique; late July
Springer: Right quad strain; August
***
This is the start line. The Kenai River empties from the western shore of Cook Inlet, just south of Anchorage, and in July its banks swell as the salmon surge. Dip netters from Soldotna, Homer, Sterling and the like crowd the sandy beach; hundreds of power forwards competing for a loose rebound. They elbow, push and pull for position, each vying for the great carom of summer as the sockeye swim back home. It’s windy and it’s cold and it’s strewn with coolers and stoves and tents.
The nets, great contraptions of mangled metal and twine, extend twelve feet from the shoreline and pierce the water at (hopefully) just the right spot. If they’re lucky, they snag a fish and walk it up to camp. Small clubs the size of a child’s souvenir baseball bat strike just above the eyes with a dull thwack. Family members deftly filet each fish with broad strokes and intricate slices and, depending on how many you’ve caught so far, place the limp red meat either on a stove or in a Ziploc bag. Then it’s time to get your shore position back.
It’s a harried process. Take a family, outfit them with a net and a club, remove all sleep and promise them of weeks of food – if they’re lucky. Then place them next to hundreds of other families in the same situation and say “Go!” Crime is mostly limited to petty theft and game regulation violations, but the urgency to fill the freezer within a three-week window is real and tempers often flare.
Sand sifts salty, water blends bloody, light darkens spirits. Days run into weeks and coolers overflow. And Alaskans retire to a weary bed in the sun.