Chris and I were in a mid-summer funk.  Sentimental items were breaking (or being destroyed), precious fish had been stolen by bears, and things were generally not going our way.  This went on for several demoralizing weeks.  Then on a Tuesday we both independantly began to feel better and hoped our funk had passed.  On Friday, there was no longer any doubt.  Here's how I know.  I was just south of Point Arden on a calm sea heading to Snettisham with my dog when I saw a narrow black shape slowly disappear in the water ahead of me in the unmistakable way that male orca dorsal fins slip into the water as they dive.  Sure enough, he blew again, heading generally in the direction I was going, but straight for Grand Island.  I had no idea which direction he'd go from there, so I just headed toward him (I was still pretty far away) and hoped for another glimpse.  When I saw him again he was a little bit behind me, and then I spotted his companions close to shore, almost camoflaged against the dark rocks.  I knew it was going to be tricky to track them--from Point Arden they could go to the left of Grand Island, the right of Grand Island, turn into Doty Cove, or something inbetween, and I had nothing to go on.  So I turned toward Doty Cove, keeping an eye out all around me in the hopes that I'd see them again whichever decision they made.  Suddenly I was startled by the sound of a blow and turned back to see the big male alongside the boat!  RIGHT alongside the boat, as close as he could get to it and half way up the side.  It was very startling and I was shot through with adrenaline.  It was the first breath of his breathing cycle and it seemed quite unlikely that I just happened to be at the exact spot that he wanted to come up!  I was also moving pretty fast--not at speed, but faster than normal orca speed. 

I slowed down and he came up in front of me, moving toward Doty Cove, so that gave me a clue as to their movements.  I pulled up alongside him, but farther away, and snapped a few photos.  He had two nicks out of his dorsal fin that I thought would easily identify him.  When he dove I continued, slower now, toward Doty Cove, still uncertain where they'd go.  When I saw him again he was behind me and had turned south again; I shut down to let him pass and to listen, thinking that I might hear the others in the quiet.  Sure enough, some distance ahead of him, I saw the smaller group come up and sped in their direction.  Before I caught up, the adults dove, but the little calf sloshed around and did a couple of half breaches, enough that I could see he was still orange in his white patches (i.e., pretty young).  I continued south at orca pace; when I saw them again, they'd gone back to hugging the Admiralty shore (after crossing the wide mouth of Doty Cove) and were following the contour of Admiralty Island.  Having taken what I thought were good ID photos of the male already, I concentrated on the ladies (or lady and calves), which proved to be more difficult (there was one small calf, its mother, and an individual that could have been an adult female or a calf or either sex).  I did manage to match their pace pretty well, but my efforts to be polite and not move in too close didn't yield any great ID shots.  I could see that the mother had one nice nick in her dorsal fin and that her older companion appeared to have an unblemished fish of smaller size.  Once, the latter came up fast a couple of times out of the breathing cycle, almost porpoising and closer than usual.  I never saw a reason and hoped I wasn't bothering them. 

As we approached the next point, I decided I should probably leave them and head on my way.  The fading light and still air (which allowed the blows to linger over the identifying parts of their bodies) prevented me from taking really good ID shots, but I hoped I had enough.  They came up much closer on their last breathing cycle and I got a much better look at their dorsal fins.  As I turned away from them toward Snettisham, I spotted the male on my He'd been traveling a few hundred yards from the others the whole time and I wondered if it was a hunting strategy of just a preference.  Since he was on my way, I decided to try for one more ID shot, so I passed behind him, then tried to match his direction on the opposite side (ID shots are always taken of the left side of an orca).  The next time he came up he was somewhat behind me and turned in my direction.  I shut down to be polite, as he was going to pass me if he continued on in that direction.  Then I saw his white belly underwater about 50 feet away, heading in my direction and I knew that somthing interesting was going to happen! When he got closer I could see something pink underwater and knew that his penis was extended; as he came alongside the boat, he exposed his belly and penis to the air, right next to me (see photo to right)!  You really just need to look at the photo.  When he rolled on his side before diving,  my fingertips were inches from his magnificent flukes!  I was in such shock and had so much adrenaline running through me I was breathing hard and my heart was pounding.  I'd just nearly touched a wild, male, transient orca!  What could his gesture possibly mean!?  I have no idea!  Was he curious, dominant, feeling his oats, annoyed that I'd hung out with his women for so long,?  I looked around for him to come up and, but a few moments later, saw his white body again underwater behind the engine and rushed back there, this time with my camera on video.  As soon as his great pectoral fin broke the surface as he rolled again, though, I scrapped the video idea, as I had a second chance to touch this amazing creature and I was not going to miss it!  I reached out with my left hand as the pectoral fin came by and I was sure it was going to happen!  Alas, just as it came close, the orca rolled slightly back and I missed the fin by about four inches.  I don't know whether the movement was intentional or not--I'm not sure if he could see me reaching for him or not (I hope he could).  Then he took a breath about 50 feet away heading back south, so I figured the encounter was over.  I just stood there trying to catch my breath for a while, totally floored at what had just happened.  A male transient is not the kind of orca I would expect to interact like that!  And then I heard a blow and turned around to find him facing me with his head above water right off the side of the boat, sneakily taking a peek inside  Wow!  I've had orcas spy hop before, or raise their heads above water to look at me, but always with only one eye.  This orca was facing me like I was a trainer in Sea World and, though it happened so fast that I didn't see his eyes, I am sure that he saw mine (check out the video).  His eyes are clearly visible in the still clips below that I took from the video!  He sank below the water and disappeared; Cailey rushed over and watched him go down, cocking her head dog-style as his white eye patches loomed beneath her.  Then he came up for a breath again back on the other side of the boat heading south.  This time he continued on his way, and so did I, exhilerated beyond description.  It made my summer--one of the two most incredible orca encounters I've ever had, the kind of thing you're very, very, very lucky to experience once in a lifetime.  I looked at the photo and the video several times on the way to Snettisham, that night, and all weekend.

When I got home on Sunday I immediately searched the latest transient orca catalog online, to no avail.  The only orca I found that matched the nicks I saw in the male's dorsal fin (the only one of the group I had a good enough image to identify) was a juvenile at the time the catalog was last updated, and the fellow I saw had a big fin.  I thought it was possible that that fin had just started to sprout, which might account for the boisterousness of the individual, but it seemed a long shot.  Plus, the young orca in the catalog was the same orca I'd seen (with a small fin) in 2009 in Icy Strait, so what were the chances that the transients I saw three years later would be the same ones out of hundreds of animals?  I sent the photos and a description of the encounter to Graeme Ellis, Canadian orca biologist and, to my delight, he (independantly) believed that I had, in fact, encountered the T137s again.  The mother was T137, the male was T137A, and the others probably T137B (born 2006) and, well, T137C, who isn't even in the catalog yet!  T137A is only ten years old and just beginning adolescence, so his behavior is less surprising.  Graeme suggested that his display was an example of "boys will be boys" (having no better idea than I did about what it might mean), and that his interest could also have involved predatory exploration in relation to Cailey.  Given the rest of the encounter, I suspect that's not the case, but we'll never know!

That night I ate bread, wine, and chocolate for dinner, then went to my cabin to read in bed. Cailey paced around the room and wouldn't settle down until I finally acquiesced and, against my better judgement, allowed her to snuggle up against me on top of the bed. 

T137A (the male)	T137 (the mother)	T137 and T137C? (mother and calf)
T137B? (the other orca)	T137B?	T137A approaches
That white spot in the middle is his belly!	You can see his eye so clearly in this still	Cailey watches with interest as T137A sinks below the surface

The next morning I didn't have much more than puttering in me.  I was feeling a bit down about the summer's progress; there was the shed, framed in May, without windows or walls or floor.  But before I tackled that, I tried to fix the sink.  Although it had worked well for several years, I could not get the drain below the sink to stay together and had finally determined that I needed to bring the outlet pipe up a little—perhaps the building had settled.  I crawled into the bear proof box with cordless drill, and (after several trips), hammer and chisel, and widened the hole.  My hole saws would make too big a hole, so I drilled small holes close to each other that I could chisel out.  Long story short, after enlarging the hole a couple of times and studying the situation inside, I finally realized that I was just going to have to extend the pipe down from the sink instead of raising the pipe that drained outside.  Having failed that task, I went back to the shed.  I'd put off trying to install the windows all this time, thinking that I'd need help, and it finally occurred to me that I should put the siding up first so the window frame overlays the plywood.  I hoped to use some of the plywood from the murrelet camp which was stacked nearby (separate from the rest of the lumber), but in the meantime I figured I could at least see if the windows fit!  I selected a handy window and slid it into every opening without a problem; I'd left a little gap in the top of each window to make sure they fit, so when I put the window through the opening in the back wall, I badly pinched the tip of one finger on my left hand against the sill as the window leaned precariously back.  When I managed to pull it upright again, the tip of my finger had been squashed and was numb.  Then the pain exploded and I had to stop working until it subsided.  I feared I might have damaged something, but the finger was back to normal by that night.

So the next step was plywood, which was stacked behind a hodgepodge pile of lumber thrown aside two years ago.  I wasn't sure what I'd find when I uncovered the stack and was disappointed that the plywood was wet; and not just wet, they were also all thick floorboards, maybe 3/4"and not appropriate for siding. I would have to buy new siding and bring it down, which will make the shed more attractive anyway.  The boards, however, looking in good enough shape for the floor, so I picked through and selected two of the better ones close to the front and laborously drug and flopped them a few feet away onto the path.  This plywood was heavy!  Thick and waterlogged, I could barely maneuver them at all.  I finally gave up and just toppled them end over end until they were off the wood pile.  Cailey immediately started gnawing on a corner and scratching in the middle, but I shut that down before any serious damage was done.  After that arduous and unsatisfying task, I didn't have any will or energy for continuing that project; instead, I decided to start dealing with the mess of wood on the ground that I'd just stumbled over. When Chris, my cousins, and I sorted through all the old lumber two years ago, burning all the unsalvagable pieces on the beach, we threw the rest aside to make into firewood.  More than half of the pile were 1x4s.  Chris had managed to break a few of them into wood stove sized pieces two years ago by stomping on them, and I thought maybe they'd be softer now and I could manage some as well.  I was motived to work on that pile of wood for three reasons: 1) easier access to the plywood; 2) finally cleaning up the unsightly mess of random scraps of lumber poorly covered in an ugly, battered blue tarp; and 3) putting up firewood is deeply satisfying work, almost on par with putting up fish for the winter.  There are lots of good, hearty homestead tasks, but I love to put up firewood!  So I uncovered part of the mess and began pulling out old 1x4s, of which I had a bundle.  As expected, they'd been nicely seasoning (okay, rotting) under that tarp and were easy to break by stepping on them and pulling up.  I soon had a nice stack of firewood going!  As I got deeper into the pile, I started to come across the other boards which were much bigger and impossible to break.  Thinking there wasn't too much of it, I started to put those pieces in a stack on the deck, with the idea of cutting them up with a skilsaw later when I made joists for the shed floor (also on the agenda).  When I'd broken all the 1x4s, I had a huge stack, and dumped half a dozen or more wheel barrow loads onto the deck.  I moved all the rest of the dry firewood to the back porch and created an enormous stack of firewood in its place under the porch, about three feet wide and all the way to the porch above. 

Then I decided I'd better work on the floor joists.  I measured the width of the shed floor and pulled out nine 2x4s left over from the murrlet camp and placed them on saw horses on the deck.  After I cut them I set to work cutting the scrap lumber along with the discarded boards from the shed construction which I hadn't put back with the rest of the protected lumber.  Some had been put aside because they were more rotten than the others, so I figured they'd make good firewood too.  Cutting firewood with a skillsaw is easy, since I don't have to measure or mark cuts, nor even cut them at a 90 degree angle (though that does make things easier).  I cut about half the lumber then, and the other half later, which made another large stack of firewood under the front porch.  While I was working I was pleased to see a whale feeding in the inlet, a phenomenon more typical (but largely absent this year) in the spring.  I enjoyed lunch on the porch watching the whale and enjoying the day.

Broken firewood	This area is so much cleaner now	Lumber firewood
Double stack of firewood	Floor joists	Nigel cottonwood

All day long I'd been anxious for 4:00 to arrive when I was slated to zip over to Sweetheart Creek in the hopes of late sockeye.  I was anxious on two counts--both because fishing there is an intense experience and because I would be leaving Cailey alone at the homestead for the first time.  I can't leave her unsupervised in the lodge (too many things to get into or damage if she tried to follow me), but it finally occurred to me that she might be comfortable in Hermit Thrush.  I could easily remove most of what she might destroy, it was as far from the sound of the boat leaving as possible, and the noise might be overshadowed by the nearby creek anyway.  I'd done a trial run earlier in the day, leaving her in there with lunch while I ate lunch myself (having removed the pillows, the garbage, and a few other things).  After 45 minutes I snuck up and found her perfectly at ease (or so it seemed), curled up on the bed.  Around 3:00 I finally decided to start the venture.  I brought Cailey some food, a hoof, and a new stuffed toy and brought her into the cabin, but I didn't close the door soon enough and Cailey zoomed out the door with her new toy and disappeared down the hill.  I followed her down to Harbor Seal, where she reappeared, but zoomed away again as we neared Hermit Thrush.  She finally came back, sans toy, and was unceremoniously shut inside.  By that time I knew she was exhausted from a day of playing outside and carousing with her favorite big burl log (I'd even left her outside when I was in the lodge to prevent her from napping), so I wasn't really worried about damage unless she was anxious about me leaving her at the homestead (which seems to be more serious than leaving her at home).

And then I grabbed my backback, loaded with a stringer and a bonker that I'd cut from a 2x2 cedar strip that morning, and took off for Sweetheart at 3:35 with the kayak resting across the rails behind me.  I was surprised to find quite a few boats an anchor when I arrived--surprised becuase it was a little later than the standard season and also the weekend of the Golden North Salmon Derby.  I knew there was a chance I wouldn't have a good place to fish, but I had no expectations; if every normal spot was taken, I'd just hike up to the top pool and see what happened.  I gave myself two hours on the creek, then I would head back to the dog.

When I got to the first big point overlooking the first waterfall, I could see that every fishing spot was occupied.  I peered down into the crevasse overlooking the top of the lower pool and startled the party fishing in there; they confirmed that there were sockeye in.  Looking up to my favored point, I could see a lot of gear by the water, but the only person I saw was heading upcreek, so I thought I'd go up there and sniff around.  I found no one on the point, but three people at the falls, one casting into the edge of the pool above and the other dipnetting below the falls with a short net; the creek was too loud for words, but through gestures and mouthing I managed to ask if the point was theirs, which it was, but they indicated that I was welcome to fish there.  And so I set up shop--a bonker and my leatherman and the stringer handy, backback secure, net out.  It was 4:05.  Within the first few minutes I caught a jack sockeye and, once I confirmed that it wasn't a little pink, I make a quick decision to keep it.  I don't normally keep jacks, but my freezer was low on fish and I was desperate!  I figured he'd be delicous in a pasta.  Several casts later I caught another jack and, somewhat ashamedly, kept it too.  Because I had no one to guard my fish, I kept them close in the "bleeding crevass" behind me; unfortunately, there is nothing to tie the stringer to right there so I had to tie it around a small stump around the corner, leaving the stringer rather short.  I was surprised to find that there were no pinks at all where I was fishing, seeing as how it was so late in the season!  Usually at that time of year we are neck high in pinks, spending more time releasing them from the net than actually fishing.  But the conditions were quite pleasant and the only fish I caught were sockeyes.  After a while I felt a pretty good tug when the net spilled over the falls and into the current below and pulled in two sockeyes at once!  A little while later I brought in a single, all normal size.  The overcast day turned to rain breifly, but I was unconcerned.  I wasn't doing nearly as well as the dig netter across the creek, but I was feeling much better about it and the trip had definitely been worth it.  I remember when I first started going to Sweetheart Creek that my casting was rather poor and many times the net hit the water like a taco; and yet, those casts seemed to yield just as many fish as when the net fell on the water in a perfect circle.  That was definitely not the case here.  It was my well executed and well placed casts that yielded sockeye--in the green pool at the edge of my range, or at the edge of the white water just to the left.  After one particularly good cast, the tug that followed when the net entered the current below the falls pulled me off my feet and it took considerable effort to steady myself and haul it in.  Inside were FOUR sockeye!!  I was thrilled.  I felt like I was playing whack-a-mole when I bonked them, going from one to the next and back again until they were all quiet.  Unfortunately, they were so tangled and twisted in the net that it took a really long time to release them.  When I finally got the first two out I bled them and strung them before going back to the others.  At that point I had seven older fish and two jacks and I'd used up so much of my stringer that my fish were half out of the water!  To keep them cool I'd have to move the stringer around the corner where I couldn't adequately guard them and fish at the same time, and I was not willing to give my fish up to a wandering brown bear!  That was one of several reasons I considered quitting at that point.  I also did not want to be greedy and considered myself pretty blessed to get four fish in one cast; plus Cailey was back at the homestead and I was anxious to make sure she was alright.  Also, fish are heavy and I wasn't sure how many I could carry out!  When one of the several brown bears in the area was chased off by the group in the crevasse downstream and disappeared, my decision was made; he may well have been heading upriver and, by the time I realized he was around, I'd be powerless to keep him off my fish if they were around the corner.  So, after chatting a few minutes with the guy who relinquished the point to me, I rather awkwardly slid my catch into the yellow dry bag I'd packed along in the bucket, put everything else hastily away, and headed out.  I really should have taken more time to set up my gear better.  As it was, the dry bag backpack, which is quite large, drooped so low that the fish bumped against my rear end; I wore my regular backpack over that, but the straps were too tight over the dry bag straps and cut into my shoulders uncomfortably.  I was so heavy and off balance that I couldn't stand up one of the logs I wanted to walk on and instead had to slide over the top of it. 

So it was an uncomfortable (though triumphant) walk back.  Normally I'd stop at the creek below the lower pool where the water moves fast in order to clean the fish before hauling them over the peninsula to the kayak, but the idea of putting everything down, getting the fish out of the bag (and then back in) only to walk for two minutes to the other side was unappealing, so I decided to just cut through the woods and go straight out.  This turned out to be a poor idea.  The trails through the woods were rough, tangly and muddy and awkward, and they felt a lot longer than the trail along the creek.  It would have taken less time and effort, I think, to follow the normal, well-trodden and familiar route.  By the time I reached the trail across the peninsula, I was tired and aching and moving very, very slowly and was feeling better about the number of fish I'd caught (I surely didn't want to carry any more at that point).  The tide had not come in very far, either, so I when I reached the beach I had a very long haul down the beach to the water; I wasn't sure it was any easier putting the fish in the kayak and pulling them!  Then followed the unpleasant task of cleaning all my fish in the shallow water, bending down uncomfortably among the noseeums.  I was realizing that my tactic was flawed--not only had the "shortcut" I'd taken been worse than the normal path, and probably not any shorter, but I'd wound up with uncleaned fish at a very awkward and innappropriate place for cleaning.  The reason we're supposed to clean fish in fast moving water is to get the guts flowing away rather than sticking around shore to attract bears.  So here I was on a very gradual intertidal beach cleaning my fish.  I didn't want to leave scraps around, so I took the net out of the bucket and put all the fish guts in it.  When I was done I gratefully kayaked out to the boat, absolutely thrilled at the catch I had.  I loaded everything onto the boat, dumped the guts, and started icing.  Not wanting to tempt fate, I'd only brought one bag of ice along, which turned out to be somewhat inadequate for seven plus two fish.  I wound up with two larger fish and the two jacks without significant ice in or around them and started considering options.  By that time most of the boats had left, leaving only one skiff with an occupant.  I cruised over there and asked if he had any extra ice.  He said he didn't know, as he hadn't been in charge of ice in his group, but that I could ask the others who were at that point hauling gear down to the beach.  I puttered around a little in order to pull up when they were at the shoreline and repeated my request.  It turns out that I'd met the two at the Easter campout in Sunshine Cove, and they happily offered to give me some ice. I used more than half the bag they gave me, thanked them, and headed on my way.  I sure hope I left them with enough ice!  They said they had more than they thought they had room for, so hopefully that's the case.  They'd been spear fishing sockeye in the lower pool and cast netting I think; dressed in wet suits, they could cross the creek with impunity.

Very pleased with the day now that I'd caught fish, I returned to the homestead to find Cailey resting comfortably on the bed.  We had supper, I read the rest of a portion of manuscript a friend had given me, and called Chris in Washington to tell him about how thoroughly I'd broken out of the funk, all the while watching a whale lunge feeding in the inlet amonst circling gulls.  The days were still pretty light, so I moved the double camp chair under the picture window and read there instead of turning on the propane before going to bed.  It took me a long time to fall asleep that night (perhaps the Russian tea I rewarded myself with when I returned from Sweetheart Creek, the excitement of the catch, or lingering guilt over slaughtering fish?) and I didn't sleep particularly well, but got up with enough energy to do a couple of small tasks before heading out.

The next morning I returned to the shed, thinking I could at least get the joists nailed in and the floorboards down.  My dad had mentioned that when he got tired of a shed with a dirt floor he put joists between the studs and put a floor on top.  After the shed went up, I could see that the ground there was too moist and soft to be a good shed floor.  I first wanted to tack the joists in to make sure the 2x4s would support a floor (spanning eight feet), so I set about putting a nail in the end of each one.  This turned out to be a ridiculously hard task, partly because the angle was awkward on some of them (not much room to swing), but also because the wood was puzzlingly hard.  By the time I got them secure enough to test, I was sweaty and irritated.  I did manage to scoot end-over-end the two pieces of plywood to the shed, but discovered that they were too long for the floor.  I’d forgotten that the outside of the shed is eight feet wide (same as the plywood), but the inside was seven inches less.  I decided to wait to cut them until I had help lifting them off the ground (they were MUCH heavier than your normal piece of plywood).  Instead, I laid down a scrap piece of plywood and decided the joists would support it just fine. 

And that was the end of work for the day.  I wanted to head out early to halibut fish on the way home and still get back with enough time to process all the fish and welcome Chris back from his week in Washington.  At about 11:00, Cailey and I paddled out to the boat and took off for another area of Snettisham.  I’d heard that there was halibut around the entrance to Mallard Cove and Fanny Island and the underwater topography looked good.  I fished up Mallard Cove at a couple of depths from 120 feet to 50 feet with barely a nibble, then drifted out again and moved over to the rocky islet between Fanny Island and the shore and anchored up again, also to no avail.  At about 12:30 I finally gave up and headed out.  It had been raining steadily since before dawn and I had put Cailey’s rain jacket on her to help keep her warm.  The whole time we fished she bopped around on the boat, often sitting toward the stern and watching the seals around us.  There were, as usual, quite a few seals swimming around Mallard Cove, which made more sense when I anchored up off the nearby rocky reef; unbeknownst to me, that rock is a haulout for scores of seals, many of whom cruised by to visit us as we fished.

 Thankfully, the weather outside in Stephen’s Passage was pleasant and we made it back to the harbor around 3:15.  I headed home, showered, and began processing my catch, noticing that this batch of sockeyes was quite beaten up.  I cut out two fresh wounds, one of which looked like a slash caused by a bear claw (as opposed to a seal bite); one of the wounded fish also had scars that had long-healed.  Another fish had an old scar on its side in the shape of a shark’s mouth—a perfect oval!  I can’t think of anything else that could have made it.  Chris’s flight (which was delayed) arrived in time for him to help me vacuum pack.