Summer is never long enough

May 2nd, the first day of breaking out the hammock. It was cold that day but I didn't want to miss the chance at relaxing outside.

It seems like every summer, there is always a struggle between finding time from work to live and finding time from living to relax. Summers last only a moments time, and this one was no different. We spent a lot of our time the same way that so many others do, cramming it all in. 

By the time that June rolled around, a friend of mine took up the opportunity to put his plane on floats and I told him that we would be happy to park it outside out house. It was a great opportunity to do a "test run" on what it would be like to have a plane at the house year round since the previous winter we had ours on the ice. It was wonderful and now I find myself browsing through classified ads looking for a set of floats for mine. We even found out later this summer that I am qualified to use my GI Bill to get my commercial and instructors licenses paid for. It would be a great opportunity that I want to take advantage of when life slows down a little bit this winter.

July is the month that I usually have the most going on, and this one was no exception. It was also the month that Steph's mom and dad and grandmas decided to visit. Between visiting guests, freezer cleaning (we can and smoke our previous year's left over salmon to make room for new), and fishing, and flying, this is our most active month. Struggling to find the balance between growing a buiness and finding time to live, we managed to get in a couple of fishing trips, including one fly out trip to the Polly Creek area. After our 2 hour flight with 3 planes, we were amazed to find that 2 boats full of eager fishermen and fisherwomen had the very same idea that we had had.

We did end up filling the freezer on the Kenai this year, which is a far departure from what we have done in the past. Usually, we will spend a day or two at the beginning of dip-netting season attempting to dip-net from the shore before we get worn out and decide to go from a boat on Kasilof. This year started no differently. After making the attempt to go from a inflatable with a hole in it on Kasilof for about 8 hours, I did manage to put about 20 salmon away. It was a difficult endeavor as we had to land the inflatable every other hour to drain the water out of it. It was good fun, but the goal was to stockpile delicious salmon and unfortunately we weren't getting enough at this pace to last the winter. We were, however, able to hitch a ride with another friend and do something that I had never done before, going by boat on the Kenai. This filled up our quota in only about 6 hours and had an added benefit in that the Kenai reds are much better (and fatter) than the Kasilof ones.

The cycle of life and the cool sunsets that come around with August always indicate that the end of midnight sun is on the way. The salmon begin to spawn and are easily found in the days after the close of dip-netting. When I was young, I always enjoyed watching them calmly swim up and down the streams and creeks in the spawning beds where they go to gently nest the next generation. Things have not changed much for me. I spent some time on a bridge over Fish Creek and watched them make their way home. Nothing in the world is quite as peaceful.

​August also marks the month where berry picking and jam and jelly making are the happening thing for winter preparations. This year we spent some time up in Hatcher Pass harvesting blue berries and fireweed on two separate trips. From these trips we were able to make 22 quarts of jam (blueberries) and jelly (fireweed). We have had to experiment in several different ways with the pectin because there were no recipes online that we could find to make fireweed jelly. It ended up very good though on most of the attempts. It is true that much of this preparation of food is a totally "unnecessary" in a modern world. It isn't even cost effective if one were to measure it out including time and gasoline spent. But it is necessary from a standpoint of spiritual things. The cycle of life and death, food and scarcity, winter and summer should serve as an annual reminder that no one is here forever and no season lasts more than it should. So, too, does the cycle of life go.

At the end of August, I spent a few days on the Denali Highway on a caribou hunt. I had over 20 caribou in my sights but none of the shots I could have taken really "felt" right. I have always thought that this was one of the most important aspects to hunting. Maybe I just didn't want my season to end so quickly, or maybe I was just to nervous about getting the animal off of the mountain by myself when I was out there. Either which way, I have taken several trips back up to close the deal and still have not as of today.

I am reminded every year of one of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite books when snow first starts to hit the ground and I am forced to slow down and reflect on how productive my summer was. This quote doesn't directly pertain to anything other than to stand as a reminder about how quickly our summers go by.

"Summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screened porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the treehouse; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape; but most of all, summer was Dill." - Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird