Sunnyside Downtime

We treat our time at Sunnyside cabin as training for Lituya: shooting a Glock to make sure we'll be quick with it in case of bear attack, getting better with a casting rod, setting snares made of floral wire along the game trails. We're usually resourceful with food when we're up here, but now we take it further, boiling gutted fish whole in stock made from vegetable scraps and smashed chicken bones, eating all the head parts and sucking skin from fins.

Training alternates with substantial food and rest. We adjust to the change in daylight and shift in priorities. We sleep nine hours a night and also in the day. There's always something cooking on the woodstove: garbanzo beans soaking, green onion pancakes sizzling in oil, vegetable curries and stews, oatmeal, calrose rice. The kitchen here is a treat, complete with a gas oven for applesauce molasses muffins and peach pies.

This is my family's most familiar rhythm, and it's easy, reassuring, to be a part of the tacit dance of care: Rick loads the woodbox so I can tend the fire so it's hot enough to cook the food Ryan is preparing. We all know how to cook, how to gut a fish, how to forage, how to split wood.

The tides reach up around the outhaul and then back down to expose the mussels. A goose and a hummingbird visit every day, the goose poking along the beach and the hummingbird, digitgiyáa, flicking its tail in the spruce tree.

Early May, the mountains are covered with snow, the goosetongue and beach cabbage are just little starts, beach asparagus still dormant, but beach parsley can be harvested and so can chive. This is the way to tell time; it's hard to keep track of days.

Sometime soon, we’ll go into town and maybe hear from Charley: weather will hopefully be better, and we’ll try again — this time better rested and better prepared.

Previous: Night aboard the Tara Lee | Next: Ready