Breathing in the gift of abundance

As I write we've just passed through the Swan Lake burn — a wildfire on the Kenai Peninsula that was raging three summers ago when Terry and I were last in Alaska. Now the Kenai River — the stuff of legend — and towering green, green mountains fill the passenger window. And lots of pink. The stalks of tall, colorful fireweed are thick everywhere this year.

Something else in abundance is sockeye salmon — or reds. Commercial fishing in Bristol Bay — where our 16-year-old grandson is working — is so extravagant they've already brought in ten million more reds than the previous record. Processing plants have been so deluged they've run out of shipping containers.

I witnessed such salmon overflow last night at the mouth of the Kenai River. Our daughter and fifteen year grandson had joined a couple of others on a boat to dip net — also called subsistence fishing. They brought in 62 salmon in three and a half hours.

The Kenai River is constantly being monitored by Alaska's Fish and Game. All commercial and sport fishing is regulated by the number of salmon that have swum upstream — known as escapement. When the count is high enough there's an emergency public announcement that notifies commercial fishermen they can go out, and sport fishermen they can increase their daily limit. Subsistence dip netting in the river is a specific window — open for two weeks depending on escapement levels. We were here at the perfect time.

Terry and I had taken a drive to Homer to surprise yet another grandson's wife at the Mexican restaurant her uncle owns. We got a call on the return trip to swing by the fish camp where family members were filleting the dip net haul. What a sight — outdoor tables piled high with glistening red meat. The sun lit a faint rainbow. Mt. Redoubt — an active volcano across Cook Inlet — poked its top from the pearly clouds. July in Alaska.

We found our daughter in her friends' private processing trailer vacuum packing the fillets. Our eighteen year granddaughter who'd gone to Homer with us carried buckets of salmon scraps to the edge of the water and upended them. Dozens of graceful seagulls — almost like mythical creatures appearing on the wings of the evening — careened and cried and descended for the feast.

Sarah raised her face to the sky — wind lifting her hair. Her slender form — andthe gulls swirling above and around her — seemed temporarily not of this earth. It was a mesmerizing picture.

The gift of abundance. Do we pass it by? Or stop and notice, and breathe it in.

Sarah's favorite quote from Tarzan — her younger sister's community theater performance we 'd watched — is when Jane's father declares, “To focus is to ignore the extraordinary.” It happens more than I'd like — focusing on life's responsibilities and missing the “abundance of extraordinary.”

I caught it this time. One for the dip net.