The sea cowboy
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- Опубликовано: 2018-08-18
- How long have you lived in Alaska and why are you still here?
- I was actually born in Everett, Washington, but I first moved to Alaska in 1981 as a teenager to the town of Pelican and started commercial fishing. And I finally moved here in 1984 when I graduated from high school. So now I live in Pelican, Alaska, which is on the outside coast from Juneau in the Gulf of Alaska. I am what is called the 'bush technician' so I travel all over Southeast Alaska from Yakutat down to the Prince of Wales island. I also have some time for fishing and my base is in Pelican which is on the outside coast where all the beautiful things are. It is on the ocean – and the ocean brings it to you. And the ocean to me has always been a song: 'Mother, mother ocean'. So the oceans has always been my mother. I always come back to it: it is where the food is from. It is where I am comfortable. So in school I was spending my summers up and down the coast of Alaska fishing. You go fishing on the holidays for 12 days and then you bring your catch back to town and sell it. Most kids have social life with friends in the summer but my summer life was fishing in the Gulf of Alaska. And it changed me: that environment made me who I was. I had to be more reliant on myself. I had to help other people. It makes you very, very independent person: you have to solve problems, you can't rely on anybody else. Maybe… but don't count on it.
Why I am still here? You couldn't go, it would like going backwards. If you are an adventurist and somebody says: jump on your sailing ship, go across the ocean! Or stay where you're at and do what everybody else is doing. I get on the ship and I go. I've been here in Alaska, done that. I want to be more adventurist. The thing about the Southeast Alaska is that you can live your whole life in this one area and