When You Set Off on an Adventure...

…you know not what you will find. Places abandoned, but once lively like in this photo taken through the window of Iona Cafe in Butte, Montana. How long has it been since a waitress (it was always a waitress) poured a cup of coffee from a glass carafe and drew those drapes against the late afternoon western sun?

What tragedy closed its door? 

Recently, I returned from an adventure, circling from Washington state out to South Dakota, Iowa, Minnesota, and back across Canada. I had partitioned the trip into four episodes—the Going, the Purpose, the Returning, and the Welcoming back. The Purpose was to do some genealogy work, see old friends, and meet Swedish-descendant family members. Usually for longer trips, I forget the Welcoming home part, but it seems as essential as the journey itself, like the capstone on an arch. After all, if I have forgotten to insert the Welcoming back episode, I may forget to anticipate the adventure to be found on my home’s own stoop. Forget that leaving it didn’t mean I was tired of it or loath of it. The Welcoming back is an adventure in itself—the adventure of rifling through the trip’s experiences, images, and its tests while coming to a better understanding of what I didn’t know about myself before I set off. Back to Iona Cafe.

Butte, Montana was in the Going part of the journey. I stood across the street from Iona’s— derelict (even with an historic designation)—and considered what work the dear old cafe would need to be expertly renovated, coffee warming on the holding burners again. When I bought my cabin, it was in quite a derelict state—not as bad as Iona Cafe, but I was undaunted by the work it needed. I like that sort of thing. Throughout my journey as I walked city streets or drove through little towns sidestepped by highways both in the Going and the Returning, I saw lots of buildings, some of which like Iona’s set me again to speculating on how they might be rejuvenated, reimagined, or brought back to a condition conducive to the lively sound of footsteps.

Sometimes one element of a structure like this tile outside a building on the town square in Fairfield, Iowa would set me to thinking. My foot is reflected in a plate glass window, an unfortunate remodel to the front of an early 1900s building—currently empty. The wall with the plate glass window had been set on top of the older entrance tile, interrupting its inviting path. I could see the tile continuing inside on the other side of the plate glass window. 

 Even old commercial buildings with their advertising (fading but intact) appealed to my sense of possibilities. Ever optimistic, I considered options for their reinvention.

Butte, Montana

Bow Island, Alberta, Canada

Hot Springs, South Dakota

As I walked away from the Iona Cafe, I contemplated my limitations. I would never, never have the capacity to renovate her. By the third or fourth building I eyed with a contractor’s eye, I felt the sweep of impossibilities, followed by a small disappointment with my own financial or physical capacities, and then a chuckle. I am an optimist; an adventurer for whom some of the adventure is spotting old structures and speculating on their reconstruction into something useful. I saw buildings that needed work most days of my travels. Being a derelict-building spotter is as entertaining to me as birding or fishing or bar-hopping might be to others. This I know about myself. And for the first time, I considered that others, possibly many others, don’t engage in this form of entertainment. Their adventures—Going and Returning— will be different than mine.

The one project I know I could manage was this house in Fairfield, Iowa. As charmed as I was by the house’s dismantled expression, I could see the bricked-in doorway being cleared and a porch remounted. Then it would be a house which would be worthy of a Welcoming home after a long adventure.

Canned Curriculum, Underfunded Childcare

 

In the mid-1970s, I graduated with a degree in education and a minor in history from a university in Arizona and could have taught high schoolers, but when my partner and I moved to a neighborhood near his work in his family’s business in north St. Louis, Missouri, the only jobs open in my field were in inner city schools in neighborhoods where there had been race riots over the previous summer. I was leery of my immaturity and my limited knowledge of Black history, so improvising, I walked down our hill and applied for a job-opening advertised at a childcare center. In a neighborhood confused between being residential or commercial, the former doctor’s office in an old brick house was squeezed between a service station and a commercial building, but faced modest brick homes across a busy arterial road. The house, now a daycare center, had a front door and second entrance door off to the side into the doctor’s former waiting room. 

I was hired on Christmas Eve day as the fourth teacher in barely a four-months’ time for the same group of now wherried children, exhausted from being a recycled class thrice over.  Turnover of teachers in the field of childcare has often been bested only by that in the field of garbage collection. A fact I did not know at the time.

I taught in three different classrooms at the center over a little more than a year. My first class of three-year-olds shared the living room/dining room with a group of four-year-olds. The first day I entered the classroom, I was confused to see the fours sitting in little wooden chairs backed against a wall facing their teacher who scowled at my interruption. I soon understood that the teacher had few materials and kept the children occupied and riveted with litanies of “Repeat after me.” The job site could have been the focus of a brilliant case study revealing the status of for-profit daycare in America of the time. After that first trial teaching the unhappy three-year-olds, but before my stint in the surgical suite, I was reassigned to teach the two-year olds in a former 10-foot-by-10-foot bedroom. 

On my very first sighting of that classroom, it reminded me of those sad advertisements for grim unfurnished rooms. Supposedly the furniture was stored every evening for ease of vacuuming, but it was difficult to tell if the dark brown wall-to-wall carpeting had been cleaned or not. I’d gingerly cross the rug and raise the blinds on the far windows to brighten the space, but even the industrial-smudged light of north St. Louis seemed reluctant to enter into that foreboding nook. The light lit upon the sills and ventured no further.

I’d slide one of the closet doors open and tussle a table out clanking and banging, followed by seven little chairs drug and bumped across the nubby carpeting. The classroom was ready. Two small shelves in the closet held a pitiable cache of toys for the seven twos who would shortly arrive, be unbundled by their mothers (always mothers), and left to toddle about upsetting the chairs and sometimes me.

Once, I skipped uncloseting the table and chairs and we roustabouted unhindered by any furnishings. It was better. One of the un-tabled days I recall quite fondly. We were doing some kind of physics lessons with Campbell soup cans and ramps. Canned curriculum. I don’t know what the parents thought we did all day in those empty rooms.

The former doctor’s surgery suite was the opposite of the two’s room. It was sterile with low hanging florescent lighting blinging off the high, white-tiled walls—perfect for operating. I’d set my tools on the table. The Crayola’s colors seemed extra riveting under the fluorescents, particularly the blood red and vein blue. Jumbled in an old and quite unsanitary cigar box, the crayons were mere nubs with their paper slipcovers mostly missing. Next to them I laid a pile of Xerox pages. These were the only tools provided me for the delicate operation of teaching ten three-year-olds every morning for many months.

My skill of delighting the two-year-olds, earned me the childcare center’s position of morning supervisor, a lovely title seeming to convey that I would be responsible for the sun rising over the city or the dawn breezes wafting off the nearby Mississippi River beyond the railyards. I was naïve to accept the position.

Every state has licensing regulations. Some in the 70s were so minimal that the only requirement to become a preschool-aged teacher was if you thought you might like to become one. The field is better regulated now and the licensors have more discretion to shut down centers providing inadequate care. That is if they can catch them.

The morning I became aware of the childcare center’s cheating and hence the morning my administrative duplicity began, I was teaching in surgery. The owner swished behind me hurrying through my classroom to the little hall just beyond where there was a doorway to an attic classroom of four-year-olds. Moments later children flowed down the stairs, their momentum momentarily frozen when the first child saw me, uncertain for a nano second if I was the one they were all to avoid. Their hastily donned coats were askew, flapping open as each in turn pivoted at the bottom of the stair while they glanced back at me with their silenced stiff faces. Their teacher hustled them through the former doctor’s waiting room—itself another classroom— and out into the chill air to walk aimlessly about until the unannounced visiting licensor had taken her authority elsewhere. Late for lunch, the children returned and jostled noisily back up the stairs to their unlicensed garret.  

A half a century on, there is more funding for early childhood programs, licensors, and tax credits for parents so they can afford to pay higher fees at better stocked centers. Still, the funds are often not enough. If you Google a former doctor’s office turned childcare center in an old brick house in north St. Louis, it is still a childcare center, looking forlorn between the now boarded-up service station and plywood-windowed commercial building. Fortunately the air is cleaner due to such things as the Clean Air Act, so possibly the back bedroom gets better light. Some things change. 

I wonder what the attic is used for. State filings indicate the center is now licensed for twenty-four children. (In my day there must have been closer to fifty-four children.) But the current tuition for a preschooler at the center is $500 per month. A modest amount. Luckily for the teachers, Campbell soup cans are still available and cheap. 

Postscript: I moved on to teach in a better-funded preschool the next year and then enrolled in a master’s degree in early childhood education. When I eventually became the director of newly-founded childcare facility on a college campus and stayed twenty-seven years, I leaned on what I had learned at that first center. Retaining staff, better funding, and having environments “dense with potential” were my goals. I had learned my lessons early on.  

Winter Breathing on Fall—Photos

I love the turning of seasons when fall lingers and winter breathes frozen fog on bright leaves.

In the past week, I have been walking a dirt lane on a hillside near my cabin seeking late afternoon sun. Pockets of deciduous trees between the evergreens have left piles of bright leaves. As the temperatures dipped at night, the frost left lovely laced skirts of ice on the ones lying in the deeper shade. 

Sometimes it is foggy in town and sunny up here, but this week the fog moved in and didn't leave. All night long over a few nights it brushed frost on stairs, on car windows, and rough rocks.

By the third night of below freezing weather, I knew that if I turned off the dirt lane and hiked a small trail to a stream there might be icicles or if I walked along the river, I'd find something of interest. In the river I spotted a leaf holding its fall color entirely encased in ice. If I could have broken it off the rock where it was frozen tight, I would have had a leafcicle with which to enchant a child. 

The stream held its own enchantment and unexpected humor. My macro lens caught the beauty of ice forming. 

But it was the long icicles that made me laugh. What would their scientific name be? 

Peniscicles?

A Precision Tool: Contentment

 

When I remove the cork sheath from my Exacto knife’s blade, I always feel a small rush of pleasure. The ease with which the blade slices through paper—even if the cut produces an error—pleases me. Not long ago, I cut a backing for a photo and my dog Chester Muggins, PhD. (his actual name) seemed to share in my pleasure of the work. He was curious of course, a trait which earned him his degree, but likewise I think he intuitively felt my contentment and wished to participate in its benefit.

    

Contentment as a tool—as an instrument with which to engage in life's work—carves precise slices of joy even through repetitive, challenging, or lonely times and tasks. Recently I officiated at a wedding where a gentleman told me he loved traveling alone or how he could spend hours working in his gardens by himself. Some people I know are frightened of such solitude, but cultivating contentment with one's own company has its usefulness. 

I took the photo above while sitting on a bridge—momentarily no one around—tucking my camera under and against the bridge edge. Most photos taken of Silver Falls on the Ohanapecosh River are of the falls, not the channel downstream. Ohanapecosh, which translates from the Yakima and Cowlitz languages as “Standing on the Edge,” is a place I have wandered both with and without company. My dear husband Gary loved Mt. Rainier and especially the western area of Ohanapecosh. Walking its paths and exploring its edges alone, I intentionally put contentment in my pack. I was content I once shared this place with Gary and content that now I have the bounty of being footloose, snapping photos without regard to time or inconvenience to a companion. At the falls I found contentment by exploring ways to take a self-portrait in the pools of water caught in the crevices of the rocks along the river. I might not have captured this image (which I am very happy with) if I had not been alone.   

At the wedding I mentioned, the couple acknowledged the role of intentional contentment in their wedding vows. Sadie said this: "There are countless big life milestones that I look forward to doing together – but I’m just as excited to continue grocery shopping together, going on evening walks, and having coffee before we go to work. I look forward to every mundane day-to-day thing if it gets me to be by your side." Andy echoed her attention to being content together, making these observations: “I love every second I spend with you… I love how when we see an older couple who seem so in love we look at each other and telepathically say “I want that.”

These two dear souls have sharpened their tools of contentment ever since they first met. When I asked their former boss when she first noticed their relationship might be something special, she said, “At the Christmas party on the night they met.” Their connection was palpable to everyone who saw them together over the next few years. They already look like that older couple who seem so in love. Its lovely when two people bring the skill of contentment, the skill of loving the "mundane" to their marriage. 

Photo Credit: www.katemiller.photography 

May their tools of contentment be ever sharp.

Eagle Cap Wilderness, Lakes Basin Region

 

Connor the Wrangler.
Photo by Art McBreen

Connor the wrangler wrapped our totes with canvas in precisely-executed folds and then tied them with knotted ropes looped in exquisite designs. With this skill he could have secured a job in the gift-wrapping department at Neiman Marcus’s flagship store in Texas. Instead, we met him at the Two Pan Trailhead into the Eagle Cap Wilderness in northwest Oregon. His calm demeanor settled the horses and the dogs and us. 

For more than thirty years I have camped by the Lostine River. The clear water with its rocky bottoms pleased my sensibilities. On occasion I hiked up the tributaries of this river, but never far enough to reach any of the lakes that are its origin. Friends hinted at their glory, but I was aware of my limitations. I never felt I would be strong enough to carry my shelter, my sustenance, and my weight all on my small frame. When my friend Art suggested hiring a company named Del Sol Wilderness Adventures to haul our food and equipment and ensconce us in waiting tents high in the mountains above Wallowa Lake, I was hopeful that with some small effort, I could do it. Art’s daughter Al accompanied us, but she hiked in and out.

The trip to the Lakes Basin Region of the Eagle Cap Wilderness was originally planned for September of 2022 until Art got a call two nights before informing us that a forest fire had shut down our route along the Lostine River. In rescheduling for 2023, Art considered the likelihood of more mosquitos in July, but a lower chance of fires. He was right about the fires and the mosquitos. (We carried multiple bottles of insect repellant, but by the time we returned to civilization, I even had a Big Dipper-like constellation of mosquito bites on my right calf. Still, the trip was worth the bites.)  

Both years Art and I had scheduled horse-riding lessons to get us comfortable in the saddle. In addition, I ordered a pair of horseback riding underwear in a classic black shade... well-padded in the rear. I justified the expense by deciding the underwear would be perfect should I ever be relegated to sitting all day in a wheelchair. If I have developed dementia by then and can’t dress myself correctly, these underpants are so beautiful and expensively made that I should be able to mistakenly wear them on the outside of my slacks and still look stylish.  

Before Art and I mounted our horses, Conor checked every rope, saddle, and stirrup twice. We were off.  

Lottie and I.
Photo by Art McBreen

I rode the seven-and-a-half miles to camp on a horse named Lottie. On the way out I rode Belotti. Although Art rode these same horses, when he rode them they kept their noses near the horse in front of them. When I rode them they would lollygag slightly behind and then on any straight and soft patch of trail jogged to catch up—putting the underwear to the test. The bouncing would set me to laughing until around mile six-and-a-half, I finally figured out I should stand in the stirrups during the jogs. I was tickled with my newfound skill and then laughed in delight.  

Al in the Cook Tent
Photo by Kathy McConnell

Del Sol’s campsite was off the trail on a rise overlooking the valley’s meandering stream. Al reached the camp ahead of us and welcomed us to camp at lunchtime. The canvas cook tent was kitted out with everything we needed to cook and the horses had carried in our food. 

Art Cooking
Photo by Kathy McConnell

Al had planned most of the meals, but she had consulted with us about the menu. Having the horses pack in made it possible to splurge on ingredients. Below are a couple of photos of meals. (You would hire Al to plan your meals if you could.)

Savory oatmeal with mushrooms, adocado, sesame seeds, an egg and soy sauce. My Favorite Breakfast!

Shakshuka with eggs.

We each chose our sleeping tent (already set up) and put the coolers into a small snowbank. We ate lunch, read, rested, and ate again before we made a fire from scavenged wood, watched the sun set on Eagle Cap Mountain to the east, and waited for the first stars before retiring to our respective tent cots.

Kathy and Art Reconnoitering
Photo by Al McBreen

On the second day of camping we prepared to hike a loop around four lakes, crossing four ridgelines to accomplish this. We examined maps, packed a lunch and swimsuits, and set out around 11:15 in the morning.

Mirror Lake
Photo by Kathy McConnell

The first lake, Mirror Lake, was a stunner. A large group of teenage boys were camped on a ledge above the lake. We moved on to Moccasin Lake where we ate lunch while watching a large dog retrieve sticks on one side of us and someone fishing on the other.

Al, Kathy, and Art
Photo by Al McBreen

Afterwards we walked the length of Moccasin Lake and left Eagle Cap Mountain behind us. This is when I found myself pleased that I could walk the length of a mountain. It felt as if I had moved the mountain from in front of me to behind me. As if I had lifted it up and repositioned it. This sensation happened again after crossing a ridgeline, descending to Douglas Lake with its blooming lily pads, and walking along a good portion of Craig Mountain. Just before arriving at Sunshine Lake over another ridgeline and through heather-lined paths, we looked back and were surprised with a view of both Craig Mountain to our right and a huge mountain, the Matterhorn, on its left. 

Matterhorn Mtn. (left) and Craig Mtn. (right)
Photo by Art McBreen

By this time we had passed a handful of backpackers. We noticed that no one was anywhere as old as Art and me. In fact, no one seemed older than in their mid-forties. As we approached Mirror Lake again and stopped to soak our feet in the cold lake water, we checked how far we had to go to get back to the camp. 

Kathy and Art at Mirror Lake Soaking Our Feet
Photo by Al McBreen

All of us were flagging as we crested the last ridgeline about 7:15 in early evening. My step count for the day totaled 28,424 steps. We had walked 9.2 miles on the loop and I had walked a total of 11.58 miles for the day. I am not sure that I could repeat this feat (seven hours of walking and moving two mountains) when I am in my eighties.  

The next day we “rested.” I walked a short distance in the cold mountain stream near the camp, taking photos of rocks on the stream bottom.

My Cold Foot in the Streambed
Photo by Kathy McConnell

I had taken off my outer pants to keep dry. (I was in a secluded spot after all.) By the time I was thigh deep in the chilly water, I was gasping. The experience was exhilerating. (More stream photos were taken the next morning.)

A Curve of Water over Rocks
Photo by Kathy McConnell 

I dried my legs with my camp towel and walked the banks looking for photo-ops of flowers. Even if I thought it was summer, the high valleys were in the middle of their spring season. Snowbanks were still in evidence. Larkspur, elephant’s ears, heather, buttercups, penstemon, pearly everlasting, and so many other unknown flowers carpeted the valleys.    

Heather and Larkspur
Macro Photo by Kathy McConnell  

Us in camp with Eagle Cap Mtn. in the background
Photo by Al McBreen

We took a photo from camp of us the last evening with the sun setting on Eagle Cap. Later, when I woke in the middle of the night, I slipped on my coat and shoes before going out to see the stars. Across the sky lay the Milky Way. I had almost forgotten of its existence.

The trip to the Eagle Cap Wilderness Lake District will be on my top-ten weekend trips of my entire life. Art, Al, and the Del Sol horses with their capable wrangler, Connor, made it all possible. Thanks, everyone. Lovely trip. Gorgeous place.

Sky Above My Tent on the Last Morning
Kathy McConnell

Waiting for the Results of a Biopsy

For Bryan

Like discovering a small tear in the fabric of your favorite sweatshirt, a cancer diagnosis induces reflection. Could you not have been more careful? Eaten better, slathered on more sunscreen, refinished furniture with less toxic components, or donned a mask on those smoke-filled summer wanderings? Or be born to a different family, in a different place, or at a different time? Started a relationship sooner?

Everything has a lifetime: in the photo above my father’s sweatshirt with that little tear had its lifetime, my first Volkswagen (which already had rusty floors when I bought it) had it, my childhood cat had his, and then there is you—you have a lifetime. Were you surprised about yours maybe coming sooner than you expected? I was. When my friend Missy died of pancreatic cancer in her early 60s, I regretted that her lifetime hadn’t extended into her 90s. I had always assumed we would run stairs together with our senior knees creaking out a rhythm. It is frustrating when longevity doesn’t match up with an individual’s capacity for living—particularly living with bright intentions, intellectual acuity, and beloved.

Waiting for the result of a biopsy is like waiting for an icicle to melt. It will melt in time, just as you will know the results of the pathology report in time; and yet, the result comes too slow and at the same time too fast. Too slow to ease the anxiety of what will be possible and too fast to entirely comprehend what might come next.

How much longer will your life last? Where have you not seen yet, who have you not loved enough, or what stories have you neglected to tell? Even those, who have faith they will somehow exist in another world beyond, surely have regrets in leaving this gorgeous plane of existence. They may dither about whether their spirit has garnered sufficient substance to even exist in the next world. (Don’t worry on this count, you tote gobs of good karma should there be an afterlife.) Prior to knowing the results of a biopsy, the tear in the fabric of your life is small, but it has become a slit through which worries and regrets slip.

I have often tried to photograph the very moment when a drop of water shapeshifts and falls earthward. Hence, my pleasure when I discovered a drop of sap dangling from the loose threads of a rope. Here was a drop for whom I didn’t need to wait. By the bounty of physics, it would test my capacity to hold a camera long enough. Its life as a drop would be extended. For you—waiting for the biopsy—your journey onward will not be precisely like you imagine. The scientific world, that incredible, innovative medical community in whose times we live, may help you hold your shape longer than might seem possible. And maybe not. Your days ahead, all of them, will be different. Mostly intense in a lovely sort of way. Celebrated for what was and what is. Shared by family and friends and acquaintances. There will be difficult moments though. Breath deep, gather your atoms, and stay with the rushing current of this life as long as you can. You are loved by many and we hold you with care. The biopsy will be what it is.

Privy to the Secrets of Fish, Ode to My Dad

My dad was already legally blind when he stepped down into the small boat that squeaked and banged as it nudged a dock in Nanaimo, Canada. In his peripheral vision—the only vision remaining after the most recent stroke—the horizon must have bobbled, tilting disconcertingly into the slate sky before dipping like a roller coaster into the choppy water. Cocking his head to the side, my father found his footing on a cross bench before stepping down to the fish-slick, water-splashed hull floor. Being more experienced than either the kid or me, my father took the stern seat and rested his hand on the motor’s control lever to steady himself as the boat rocked when the kid and I boarded behind him. From under the brim of his fishing hat, he smiled at his small accomplishment or maybe for the adventure to come.

Across the dock four guys (among them the kid’s dad and the kid’s uncle along with a couple of his uncle’s friends) carelessly jostled each other as they boarded their manly bulks into a similar small skiff. Exuding confidence and casting superior and pitying glances our way, they were already blustering strategies to each other on how to catch their limit of salmon. As they pulled away in a hurry to use every minute of their boat rental time, one of them shouted a flippant encouragement our way as if doubting a blind man, a boy, and a woman would manage to even steer clear of the dock.

Among my earliest and dearest memories of my dad, I faced him in a rowboat on a lake on Grand Mesa, Colorado—near where his ashes now nurture a grove of pines. Rain dappled the surface of the lake and sent ever-expanding ringlets off to kiss the shoreline, a smack smack of gentle kisses. My dad said, "Fishing in the rain is best. Fish think the raindrops are insects hitting the surface. They jump to catch them." I watched with my child-eyes-a-wonder as shimmery mermaid-like trout leapt from the water around us, gently slapping the surface with a farewell wave upon each re-entry. I felt like my dad had imparted to me a trout’s secret, fish lore of the most basic and useful kind. 

Me Shore Fishing on Grand Mesa

My family never owned a boat. Rarely boated. Knew no friends with boats. My dad usually shore fished. In fact after he died, his fishing buddy mentioned that there was a package of recently shore-caught fish from a lake on Grand Mesa in dad’s freezer. At the lawyer’s office, where my sister and I went to hear the will read, we were inspired by a Japanese fish print hanging on the wall and were excited about having dad’s trout ink-printed on elegant paper and then water colored as a memorial to his love of fishing. Back home I yanked open the freezer door, pulled out the package of trout, and laid it in its wrapper on the counter. But—so like my dad, thorough as always—he had cleaned the trout and cut off their heads before freezing them. Printed, their image would be too macabre to grace a dining room wall, so my sister and I decided to forego the effort.

Back on the waters of the Strait of Georgia, I don’t recall how many hours our little crew of the disabled, the young, and the woman fished, but it wasn’t long before we caught the first salmon. With a large net the kid lifted it into the boat and we were all elated. The second salmon snared a hook shortly afterwards. 

The three of us hadn’t planned this trip. The guys had. They had reserved the ferry crossings, the overnight accommodations, and the boats with their accompanying fishing equipment. There had been no prior discussion about who would ride in what boat. Not to my knowledge. The next salmon my dad, the kid, and I caught evened the tally–one each.

In the turning of our boat, we sometimes caught sight of the guys, the serious fishermen, off some distance from us, sitting solidly in their little rocking boat, too far away to ask about the salmon they were catching.

Our catch box filled nicely, salmon being so much larger than trout. The top fishes would look up at us with their round and lidless eyes, gracing us with puzzled stares and gaping mouths. Their silent protests were slightly unnerving, but not enough to dampen our delight. As the salmon piled up, our grins widened. 

We docked a few minutes before the guys. I jumped out and wrapped the ropes around the cleats. As carefully as he had entered the boat, my dad shut off the motor and climbed out to the safety of the dock. The guys approached, averting their eyes, busy as they gathered their gear. Finally one of them, reading our faces, queried, “Salmon?”

In back of me I heard a familiar little whistle and the snap of fingers before my dad said, “Caught a load! Eight!” His cheer and excitement floated in the breeze across the dock and infected the guys who smiled at his joy. 

“And you, guys?” my dad said.

After a pause of sideways glances, one of them said, “Ummm, none. Yeah, none.”

Graciously, the men helped us unload our catch and laid it out by the fishing hut for photos. The fishery would process the salmon and can it in jam-sized jars to be retrieved the next morning. Later, when my dad and I boarded a train in Pendleton heading to where my dad now lived, Grand Junction, Colorado, his suitcase was filled with t-shirt-buffered jars, each pasted with a label we had designed for him. The illustration on the label was a neatly drawn salmon and was printed with “Caught by Ed Templeton.” Actually, the labels should have read, “Caught by One Blind Man, One Boy, and One Woman Privy to the Secrets of Fish.”