Treehab

by Bob Smith

  “You don’t notice beautiful wildflowers?”

  “Hot pansies always get my attention.”

  Later, we got in Brad’s truck to check his setnet, which was three miles down the beach. His truck reeked of salmon; I jokingly said the stink was like salmon ass. When I went to roll down the window, Brad warned me, “The mosquitoes are worse than the smell.” I rolled it back up. “You’ll get used to it,” he said and I soon did.

  There were two ways to catch sockeye salmon at Coffee Point: either from a boat or from a setnet on shore. Brad’s brother was out crewing on a boat, and every inch of beach was lined with setnets. The nets hung perpendicular to the shore, positioned to catch salmon swimming toward the Egegik River. Brad went out in a rubber raft and picked the fish from his net and threw them in his raft. He surrounded himself with two-foot salmon, getting coated with their slime and blood, which explained his truck’s aroma. Other people picked salmon from aluminum boats, but Brad took pride in fishing as cheaply as he could, often buying his equipment at garage sales in Anchorage or in his hometown of Homer.

  Brad knew I liked bird-watching and insisted on stopping at an airplane hangar to show me a nest of ravens. The baby ravens looked cartoonishly evil, like characters in an Edward Gorey drawing. As we drove down the beach, Brad stopped to show me a falcon that had built a nest in an abandoned construction crane on the beach, the tallest point for forty miles. I raised my binoculars and saw that it was too pale to be a peregrine. Looking it up later in a bird guide, I decided it was a merlin.

  The new birds that fascinated me were long-tailed jaegers, which are about the size of large seagulls, except they have a beautiful, long, streamlined art deco tail. The jaegers often hovered over the same spot, gliding in the constant wind along the beach, patiently waiting for a dead salmon to wash up on shore. The beach was wide and ended at a twenty-five-foot bluff. It was used as a highway by the setnetters. As Brad drove, he waved to every passing driver. There were only a few hundred fishermen at Coffee Point, and after a few summers you knew everyone by sight. We saw struggling salmon in Brad’s net as he parked his truck. Lacking a crew permit, I couldn’t legally help Brad, which was fine with me, since I was supposedly working as a reporter.

  On the bluff above every site, there was a sign with the setnet permit number of each fisherman. All the signs were white except for Brad’s, which was lime green. When I commented on his color choice, he laughed and said, “I thought I’d gay it up.”

  There was a notch where the bluff had collapsed, and I climbed up and sat near the edge while Brad paddled out along his net. My seat was dry as the bluff was sand, and rain quickly drained away. The tundra was a mix of plants, little evergreens, tiny white flowers, and miniature marvels in every shade of green and red. I stared in fascination at the most beautiful lawn on earth. A bald eagle landed twenty feet away from me, surveying the beach for a salmon dinner. Brad said there were brown bears at Coffee Point, but I never saw one. I walked inland for a short distance and spooked my first ptarmigan. The ptarmigan is Alaska’s grouse, and it scooted along the ground like it was embarrassed to be seen, being half-dressed with brown summer feathers interspersed with white winter plumage. The next day—poking around the shore while Brad picked sockeyes—I discovered a dead male spectacled eider, nestled in a clump of beach grass. A threatened species, it’s a beautiful sea duck with a pale green head and eyes that are surrounded by white feathers and black spectacles. I thought they only lived farther north and west in the Yukon Delta. It must have just died since it had showed no signs of decay. I felt sad and elated, which I didn’t realize then is the default setting for most of our emotional lives.

  After picking salmon, Brad had to empty his raft by throwing the fish into white plastic totes on the back of his truck. Then we drove his catch down to the cannery weigh station back at Coffee Point. That summer, it was run by three young guys from Boulder, Colorado, who sought out adventurous summer jobs in Alaska. They lived in a Quonset hut on-site and were jokingly friendly with Brad since he let them use his sauna. A visitor at Coffee Point was as rare as seventy-degree summer weather, and they welcomed me with genuine warmth and pride in their rugged life. Soon I was cracking jokes with them about Brad’s stinky truck.

  The first thing one of the guys did when we pulled up was shovel chopped ice over Brad’s fish. Then another guy removed each tote from the back of the truck with a forklift, letting fountains of blood gush over the sand from four holes in the bottom of the container. For an instant, the tote looked like a dinner table for Dracula. Brad’s catch was then weighed and tallied. The cannery paid every fisherman at the end of the season.

  At the end of the day, we always took a sauna. No bathing in the morning, which surprisingly was kind of liberating. Since everyone was grubby at Coffee Point, we were all equally skanky. In the sauna house, there was an oil drum filled with clean warm water next to a rock pile heated by a wood-burning stove. We gathered our sauna wood from the beach and showered with a coffee-can ladle, but this still felt like the most luxurious bath on earth. Afterward, we sat our clean bodies on a built-in bench and looked out the window on the setting midnight sun and felt like the luckiest guys alive.

  On my second night, I took a can of beer into the sauna even though Brad had warned me that drinking in the sauna can make you pass out. I’m not sure why I ignored his advice, but I’m glad I did. We got up to leave and I fainted. I came to with Brad holding me up outside the sauna, our faces inches from each other.

  The same thought occurred to both of us, and we began kissing. We were both naked and broke off our long, passionate face-sucking when the mosquitoes biting our asses trumped the pleasure our lips and tongues were receiving. After we finished our smooch, Brad commented, “It’s about time!”

  We both acknowledged that we thought the other wasn’t interested. Evolution really should have evolved a pheromone that works like a fart: letting the room know you’re horny. Or even a phero-moan, a grunt that signals you’re in the mood. Brad insisted on latching on to me as we walked to the house, and I was more than happy to be steadied by a handsome muscular guy. Then we did what two stirred-up animals do— we had sex.

  The next morning was rainy, and Brad listened to his radio before heading out to pick salmon. Every day, he had to listen to an announcement from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game to learn whether fishing was closed. The department monitored the sockeyes returning to the Egegik River and sporadically closed fishing in order to keep the Bristol Bay fishery sustainable. This is the largest, most ecologically intact salmon fishery in the world. The fishermen supported being regulated since they wanted to preserve their livelihoods, and pauses in the fishing also gave everyone a needed break.

  Brad headed out while I kept drinking coffee and writing at the kitchen table in my black-and-white notebook. I ended up writing sixty pages of notes since I wasn’t sure what I would use in my magazine piece. After an hour, I decided to walk down the beach to meet Brad. My personal “Call of the Wild” is whatever makes my heart thump, and the Alaskan outdoors during the summer and a hunky fisherman were howling for me.

  I had barely started down the beach before a battered pickup stopped and a tough elderly woman rolled down the window and barked, “Get in!” She was Brad’s setnet neighbor, Mary Wickersham. She was teaching her granddaughter how to fish. Gruff is an inadequate word to describe Mary. She probably could have shouted, “Get in!” on the beach and hundreds of salmon would have headed into her net. Mary chain-smoked all the time but didn’t believe cigarettes caused her early symptoms of emphysema. During the ride, she asked, “Who do you know in Alaska?” I jokingly said, “I know Marge of Marge and the Polka Chips.”

  “I know Marge!” she shouted. “I’ve heard her on the radio!”

  This was funny, but it also made me feel Alaska was a magical place: not just due to the scenery and wildlife—but due to Alaskans themselves. I had found my middle-earth where connections were bei
ng made, but I didn’t understand where I was journeying. When we got to Brad’s site, he asked Mary if she would help him untangle his net. For the next hour, she repeatedly drove her truck into the surf and up and down the beach until the problem was solved.

  On the drive to the weigh station, I expressed my admiration for Mary’s thoughtfulness. Brad explained that people would always help you at Coffee Point. Of course, there was the kook with the no trespassing sign. But even he would lend a hand if you asked—as long as you didn’t step on his property. Houses were left unlocked; if you needed something from a neighbor, you could run in and borrow it. Brad always left his truck keys in the ignition since no one was going to steal a vehicle that couldn’t be driven farther than five miles.

  It dawned on me why I loved Coffee Point. It looked like a shanty-town, but the setting was beautiful and so were its uncombed, mildly stinky inhabitants. Coffee Point was a two-month utopia every year.

  That day, the guys at the weigh station gave me a huge king salmon. Sockeyes were the normal catch, but kings were occasionally caught and usually eaten by the Coffee Point fisherman. Brad’s neighbor and friend was a woman fisherman named Stacey Clark. She was a tall, slim, attractive, long-haired, dangly-earring-wearing, cool fishing chick in her late thirties—with a hot, new semislacker boyfriend every summer. She offered to clean my salmon either for shipping in dry ice back to Los Angeles or for eating that night. Brad told me this was a major gift. During the rest of the year, Stacey cleaned salmon for a company that sold smoked salmon, and she was renowned for her expert deboning.

  We decided to organize a feast for that evening. The celebration was held at Stacey’s house, which had a large bright red kitchen. Above her sink was a window overlooking the bay. Somehow the image of washing dishes while enjoying a million-dollar view became emblematic of Coffee Point and of my vision of how to live. Work hard but enjoy your life.

  We invited Mary and her granddaughter. Brad and Stacey’s studly boyfriend grilled my steaks, and we had three kinds of salmon. One was pickled salmon made by the chain-smoking Mary. It appeared to be medical specimens floating in a jar but startled me with its savory deliciousness. We also had sockeye salmon fried with wild mushrooms picked by Stacey in the forests of Homer. That was my scrumptious favorite of our trio. In addition to those, there was my grilled king salmon. I had worked as a cater waiter for years in New York, but that meal was one of the best I’ve ever eaten. The steak, salad, baked potatoes, and homemade chocolate chip cookies for dessert all seemed as new to my tongue as the landscape was to my eyes.

  While the guys grilled our steaks and salmon, we also drank plenty of red wine and smoked pot. This was my introduction to smoking marijuana in Alaska, which I would learn was a recreational activity that Alaskans enjoy even more than fishing and hunting. In Alaska, bear attacks are just considered a bad case of the munchies.

  The next day was my last full day at Coffee Point, and fishing was closed for twelve hours. Brad made pancakes for breakfast with bits of dark chocolate sprinkled in them. Then we drove down the beach to pull in his net. It was sunny with clear skies. We climbed to the top of the bluff, where it was so warm we took off our jackets and sat down. Brad spotted two bald eagles sitting on a ridge, and then he told me that when he was a boy he liked walking barefoot on the tundra. “Take off your boots and socks,” he ordered.

  I did what he asked. Brad’s advice had brought me to Coffee Point, and by then I trusted him completely about what I should do in Alaska. He also removed his boots and socks. We walked barefoot across the tundra, which was delightfully spongy—but not wet or cold. There were no sharp sticks or rocks, and each step was blissful. The experience was comic and cosmic, which is the best life has to offer. I imagined Brad as a little boy discovering this and knew the past four days had been extraordinary.

  That afternoon, we went to get water for the sauna at a natural spring down on the Egegik River. The water slowly dripped out of the bluff, and it took about an hour to fill two totes. While waiting, we lay in a bower of dry brown grasses that was embroidered with the green shoots of one-inch-wide wild lavender geraniums. It was sunny, and our grass- and flower-lined nest shielded us from the wind. We felt warm and stripped off our shirts and sunbathed. (We got sunburned, and you haven’t lived until you’ve fried on the tundra.)

  Brad and I digressed about our families, failed romances, and dreams. He was studying journalism at the University of Alaska while also learning Japanese, since he had an office job at the Japanese consulate in Anchorage. I had a second collection of comic essays coming out that fall but was uncertain what to write next.

  The next morning was my departure, and after breakfast we went upstairs to enjoy the view and were just about to have sex when we heard my plane fly overhead. We laughed at our interruptus and packed up our packages. Brad and I kissed good-bye in his house, hopped on his four-wheeler, and raced to the plane. (There was a road to the runway strip that I hadn’t noticed when I arrived.) The pilot was standing next to his plane, and we hurriedly stowed my much-lighter luggage. A quick hug and I was soon in the air.

  At the airport at King Salmon, I had an hour wait for my flight to Anchorage. There was a tiny gift shop, and I was startled by another example of Alaskan serendipity. There was a copy for sale of the memoir This Is Coffee Point, Go Ahead: A Mother’s Story of Fishing & Survival at Alaska’s Bristol Bay, written by Brad’s mom, Wilma Williams. I bought it, a Newsweek, and a copy of the regional paper, the Bristol Bay Times.

  In Newsweek, I read a short notice about how Mark Wahlberg had prepared for his role as a fisherman in the film The Perfect Storm by going fishing for a month. I immediately imagined a hunky actor getting into character by coming to Coffee Point with Brad and me. Then I read an article in the Bristol Bay Times about how Alaska had the highest rate of botulism in the country.

  This was due to Native communities using Tupperware to store traditional foods, such as stinkheads, which are fermented salmon heads that traditionally had been safely stored in grass-lined pits. The two stories clanged in my imagination as I pictured an actor getting botulism due to his playing a Native Alaskan fisherman. I admired the comic novels of Evelyn Waugh, who used his travels as the basis for many of his books. Perhaps I could write a comic novel about Alaska.

  On the flight back to Los Angeles, I felt dreamily romantic and thought I’d fallen in love with Brad, when it turned out I’d fallen in love with Alaska.

  Nature Boys

  My four best friends and I identify as gay, but we’re probably bisexual since we’ve each had a longer relationship with Mother Nature than with any guy. My closest pals are Michael Hart, Eddie Sarfaty, John Arnold, and my partner, Michael Zam. (I have close women friends too, but they can’t even agree on how to spell womyn.)

  Claiming to have four best friends sounds like I’m bragging. It’s true though: they are my best friends, and they also share my love of nature. They’re Nature Boys. They love to hike and canoe and they love animals. John and Eddie have adopted rescued cats, and the two Michaels have adopted rescued dogs. They’d adopt rescued whales and eagles if they could.

  The adjective “rescued” is important as it’s also an indicator of a moral quality they all share. These guys would never litter a forest, drill for petroleum in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or not help a blind woman cross a street. They’re irreverent and kind, and they all have great senses of humor. Being friends with someone unfunny is like having a lover who doesn’t enjoy sex. What’s the point?

  John is an architect, Michael Hart is in the furniture business—both building and selling—Eddie is a fellow stand-up comic and writer, and Michael Zam is a writer of screenplays and plays and my reason for living. Of course, they’re all handsome. (It could be that I’m shallow, but I prefer to think of it as liking scenery.)

  Fortunately, our friendship hasn’t changed since I had to be the first of my buddies to get a you’re-gonna-die-agnosis. I have ALS. (That ab
breviation stands for Asinine Life-threatening Sickness, according to me.)

  My Nature Boys have been flippant and humane about my predicament. Navigating a treacherous disease requires the same skills as a hiker. With a life-threatening illness, you have to treat the Angel of Death like he’s a skunk. Avoid getting too close, or you’ll be stinking like a rotting corpse. Your life has changed direction, and you could easily get lost dealing only with your health, which would be like strolling through a redwood forest dwelling on filing your taxes. You need to be present in your life—not contemplating your afterlife.

  It took a life-threatening illness to make me see that the reason most of us love the natural world is because it’s a visual and vocal echo that we’re alive. Every mosquito bite is a painful pat on the back that we’re still fresh enough to be lunch. We focus on the green in a forest, while gently ignoring that every fallen leaf is a brown Post-it note from Mother Nature that someday we’ll all be dead.

  Years before my first symptoms, I was climbing Mount Cardigan in New Hampshire with John and Eddie, and we moved steadily upward until I reached a spot where I couldn’t figure out my next hand and foothold. I looked down for the first time on our hike and was astonished to see I was hanging on a cliff with a hundred-foot drop.

  “I’m stuck.”

  John and Eddie were higher up the mountain.

  “Bob,” said John. “We don’t hike with slackers.”

  “I’m a wallflower.”

  There was no way to backtrack and, for a moment, I imagined plummeting to my death. My heavy Leica binoculars were swinging unsteadily, hitting the cliff, my neck, and even my face. John worried they were hindering me. He descended a few feet, but I was too far down the mountain. I insisted that the binoculars weren’t a problem, thinking that I didn’t want John to plunge to his death helping me. Eddie jokingly asked if he should use his cell to call for a rescue helicopter. “Could you request their hunkiest rescue team?” I replied. It took about half an hour, but with John and Eddie’s encouragement—and derisive comments—I was able to clamber up the mountain instead of ascending to heaven.