HOME?

I love Port Alexander. I was born here, yes here... in my home... no hospital... no doctor. This town will always be a part of me; I will always be drawn here. I don't know exactly how to describe it, but I get drawn here. After I'm away for so long, I have an urge to return; a severe homesickness; a need so deep to return HOME.

I have many homes. Sitka is my home because that is where my family is; Washington is my home because that is where a big portion of my life took place and my dear friends and my boy friend are there, but Port Alexander is my home because that is where I was born and raised, and spent every summer that I can remember fishing with my dad. Most of my childhood memories are centered around PA: the lake, the red can, board walk races, the play court, the point, the bridge, the dock, the golf tournaments, pot lucks... the list goes on and on.

It is hard for me to sit here and watch my home slowly disappear, vanish before my very eyes. PA used to triple in size every summer once the fishing season started. The dock would have so many boats tied to it that you would think it was going to rip right off the pier. This year, though, the day before the king salmon season opened (July 1) there were only 10 boats at the dock. That is nothing compared to the 40+ that used to show up. And now, since it opened, the dock is COMPLETELY empty... no fishing boats in sight. The difference from back in the day to now is that there is no longer a place for fisherman to do their laundry and shower. I never realized how vital those two things were until they were taken away. If fisherman don't have a way to do laundry, get food and take showers, than they can't very well fish in that area. They then migrate other places that do have those facilities.

Enough about the logistics... there is a whole mess of reasons why it is horrible that there is no more barge in PA that buys fish and offers laundry facilities and what not to the fisherman, but I will not bother you with those details now. BUT... I will include a copy of an essay I wrote for my English class a couple years ago... writing about all this made me think of it, so i dug through my old folders and and found it!!!...

So here it is...and it is even more true now than it was when I wrote it on Jan 17, 2008.

Port Alexander, Alaska

I'm home, but nothing is here. Not a boat, not a buoy, or even the smell of fish.
In Port Alexander, we used to say, you don't find the fish, the fish find you. Maybe that's what happened - the fish found someone else, bringing an end to my way of life, my home.

On June 12, 1987, 20 years ago, I was born into a small community on the tip of Baranoff Island, in Southeast Alaska. When I was younger, the town seemed to be full of adventures and family and friends. A mooring station for the Southeast Alaska trolling fleet, Port Alexander was home to 40 year round residents, but in the summer that number tripled with fisherman. I remember a dock with more boats tied to it than anyone could have though possible, a one room grocery store, a cannery, the house my sister's grandma used to live in, smoke coming from every house's chimney and the boardwalks full of kids playing. Port Alexander was my home. Not perfect, but more preferable to being on the water. No fish to clean here. No father telling me to go run through the lines.

Maybe once every four days, the boats would return to port, where we would sell our fish and re-ice for the next trip. There were hot showers and telephones, land to walk on, and people to talk to besides our captains. With a lot of weed and a lot of beer we would spend our evening on dry land in flat out celebration. We could relax here. We could stand without swaying to the movement of the ocean. Before dark we'd gather drift wood and make a bon fire on the beach, roasting marshmallows, and making s'mores, we would talk about what we were doing once summer was over. As it got late we would stumble our way through the woods back to our boats in wonderment of whether we would be fishing in the morning.

So much to remember. The time we built a zip-line going across the lake; the sounds of laughter, and fires crackling; the slow dread that we would feel when our captains told us we were headed back out. Larch Bay Maybe. Cape Ommaney. Nasty, horrible place where the waves themselves could kill you.

Now I stand at the top of the ramp, looking down at the empty dock, and what used to be the small grocery store. Depressing really, what time can do. You'd think there would be someone left, some boat still tied to the dock, but Port Alexander has been erased from captain's logs. There are no fish here, and therefore no reason for anyone to come, it is a ghost town, where the only thing left is the sound of waves crashing on the beach.