(A note: On March 25, 1983, Michael Jack­son intro­duced what would become his sig­na­ture move — the moon­walk — dur­ing a tele­vi­sion per­for­mance of “Bil­lie Jean.”  Though many oth­er artists had per­formed the move over pri­or decades, it gained world­wide pop­u­lar­i­ty through MJ. This bit of triv­ia, total­ly unre­lat­ed to women in fish­ing, becomes rel­e­vant later.)

Many aspects of the fish­ing lifestyle give me great joy.  Liv­ing sea­son­al­ly, in part­ner­ship with the envi­ron­ment we’re depen­dent upon, devel­op­ing an entire­ly dif­fer­ent sen­so­ry sys­tem to under­stand and co-exist with the nat­ur­al world.  The inde­pen­dence of being our own boss, dri­ving our­selves hard and rel­ish­ing the sat­is­fy­ing exhaus­tion that comes from push­ing beyond per­ceived lim­its of phys­i­cal and men­tal endurance.  And of course, work­ing in an office that words — my words, at least — sim­ply can’t do jus­tice to.  Some­times I look up from the fish I’m clean­ing and take it all in — every make-your-heart-ache glac­i­er-laden moun­tain that super­vis­es our tack, all of the pris­tine forests rolling like car­pet across vast hill­sides and on down to crag­gy shore­lines, and an ever-chang­ing ocean as far as I can see.  Even after 22 years of call­ing this coast­line home, I some­times for­get to breathe in the face of the unfath­omable grand­ness of it all.

One of my favorite aspects about our life is the oppor­tu­ni­ty to enjoy the crea­tures around us.  Alaska’s waters are dense with life, an urban metrop­o­lis bustling around and beneath us.  It’s tough to avoid anthro­po­mor­phiz­ing: we may not spend time with oth­er human beings dur­ing our two weeks out, but we’ll inter­act with our ani­mal neigh­bors dai­ly.  As guests in their nat­ur­al habi­tat, we get an inti­mate look at their behav­ior, an idea of their likes and dis­likes.  They become more real, more rel­e­vant, than our human companions.

(Oh yes, I’m aware of the hypocrisy here, that I can write about cher­ish­ing wildlife inter­ac­tions even as we’re out there as pro­fes­sion­al killers, har­vest­ing life from the very ecosys­tem I’m exalt­ing.  But that, sweet­ies, is anoth­er post — or ten — for anoth­er day.)

Like us, each species has their own unique moves.  Dall por­pois­es, among the most joy­ful liv­ing crea­tures, seem delight­ed by our pres­ence.  They race our ves­sels, zip­ping in front, dart­ing beneath the bow so close you catch your breath, afraid that this time they’ll mis­cal­cu­late the boat’s speed and the water’s chop. They nev­er do.

Griz­zlies lum­ber along the beach, snuf­fling a spot of sea aspara­gus here, nudg­ing over a crus­tacean-con­ceal­ing rock there.  Though they can run up to 35 miles per hour, I’m con­tent to have only observed their mus­cle-bound, shoul­der-led saunter from the com­fort of a boat.

As a corvid fanat­ic, it’s no big shock­er that I think Alaska’s ravens have the ani­mal king­dom’s han­dle on cool.  The sky is their play­ground, where they coast on ther­mals and dive into bar­rel rolls, exul­tant in their atmos­pher­ic acro­bat­ics.  And it’s some­thing else entire­ly to walk down the side­walk behind a raven’s tail-shak­ing swagger.

I thought I had a pret­ty good idea of the local crea­tures’ char­ac­ter­is­tics, so it was a sur­prise to learn that the black-foot­ed alba­tross is a Michael Jack­son fan.  The fol­low­ing video was tak­en in June 2009.  I was crew­ing for our friends Ben and Bet­sy, longlin­ing for hal­ibut in Sit­ka Sound.   We had just fin­ished set­ting our gear, and were about to enjoy an eight-hour break  while the hooks soaked.   We drift­ed in the Sound, sur­round­ed by these friends clev­er­ly wait­ing for our haul, when they’d swarm over our bait scraps.  Keep your eye on the hand­some fel­low in the mid­dle left.