A Day in the Life of a Fisherwoman

Sitting on the polished oak floor perched on a pillow near the ceiling-high window in Brenda’s meditation area I watch her as she picks her way along the rocky path to the beach. She has a white drawstring plastic trash bag in her hand, which we have just spent the last 30-45 minutes loading with salmon chum. Brenda is wearing her orange hooded slicker as she descends the pathway from her yard to the remote, rocky, rain-soaked waterfront. I watch her from above—like the birds to which she offers food, their Eucharistic table set on stones that once might have satisfied a temptation of hunger. The ravens begin to caw and crows gather. She feeds eagles. Brenda says,

“People say you shouldn't feed eagles. But all the wild animals—eagles, bears—are so habituated around here that I have no remorse about feeding these birds. Especially in winter and spring when they’re hungry. Besides, I don’t want to lose our resident pair.”

She dumps the fish chum—renderings from our afternoon catch—on the rocks. Then she calls in a high shrill voice, an imitation of the eagle’s cry, to let them know she has left them a gift. In no time at all several kinds of midnight blue-black fowl descend on the fish renderings, but the only eagle to appear—a large beautiful one with a gorgeous white spread of tail feathers—flies over from the stretch of beach in front of the neighbor’s house. Brenda suspects Johnson has just put some halibut leftovers out, since there was a large gathering of birds there. The eagles do not seem interested, so the little folk get to feast instead.

Now we gather the fish and place most of the catch into recycled grocery bags so that I can take it home with me. I am amazed at how little repulsion I feel from the events of the day: from catching the Silver Salmon, to watching Brenda whack it on the head with a wooden club, to gutting it on the boat, to filleting the entire catch in her kitchen. Now that I've caught my first salmon and have eaten some of that very same fish, I believe I have come to understand Brenda more and more—both her passion for fishing and her life as solitary and scholar.

People in Alaska have a special relationship with the salmon. Today, I have born witness to the sacrifice of salmon, a sacrifice that in Brenda’s words “remind[s] us that the life of God permeates all creation, that we must be humble before it, serve and preserve it, because the principle that underlies the cosmos is one of sacrifice and sacrifice that is not annihilation but fulfillment.  The sacrifice to which we are called is to embrace our mortality, creating a density through which the spaciousness of salvation is brought into being.  Or, mortality becomes like the framework of a sonnet that causes our creativity to burgeon and flower into spaciousness beyond its narrow gate, a spaciousness that enhances lives that follow.”

Earlier that day, Brenda and I sailed out on The Sister Act heading out into the Bay slowly at first, then picking up speed once we’re out of the harbor. I watch her carefully trying to anticipate when she needs me to do something and when she simply needs me to move out of the way. Like centuries of people who have gone to visit hermits for advice and training, I wait and watch. When young monks went to the desert, they simply went into the cell of another monk, usually a cave, and imitated what the desert father did. One such monk was Saint Anthony of the Desert, who gave up a life of privilege to devote himself to God. Brenda has honed and focused her life, giving up prestige, family, a worldly career, and a position of power in the church—all of which could have been hers had she been willing to sell short her call to be alone in prayer.

On the boat, she asks me,

“So what have you learned about solitaries?”

“I suppose the most important thing I've learned is that there are no rules for this vocation. That there are as many kinds of solitary vocations as there are solitaries.”

“True but I’d add that a solitary is solitary first of all. One does not join groups. But, yes, each solitary vocation is unique; that’s why it’s solitary.”

And after a brief pause, she adds vehemently, “The solitary life is about giving up all crutches. Forgive me is I sound fed up; I am.”

Brenda tells me, “The psychoanalyst Gregory Zilborg very much got under Thomas Merton's skin when he told him that he wanted to be a hermit by an interstate highway with a neon sign saying ‘hermit’ over the door.”

The more we talk the more questions I seem to have, and I become convinced that when I leave Juneau and have talked with her on these several occasions that what I will most likely come away with the understanding is that the eremitical, solitary life really cannot be pinned down.

Brenda, as a solitary, is fulfilling the natural course that all of us must follow.

“The solitary life is worn both very lightly and deadly, deathly seriously. It's hidden; the reality of it is not talked about much. These days, everyone wants to be a spiritual celebrity.”

Perhaps, I have discovered that I've been asking the wrong question. In listening carefully to what she has to say about the vocation, I have come to sense that everyone is a solitary. Just as every salmon has at the heart of its life a passion to return to the place of its birth, so every person is a solitary experiencing the universal condition of solitude. Solitaries simply witness to that condition by embracing it and saying, “It's okay; don't be afraid; take your part in the spiritual struggle with principalities and powers.”

Yet somehow I just know that Brenda would say this idea is wrong, too. Like John the Solitary, a monk of the 4^th century, she would say,

How long shall I be in the world of the voice

and not in the world of the word?

For everything that is seen is voice

and is spoken with the voice

But in the invisible world there is no voice

For not even voice can utter its mystery

How long shall I be voice and not silence?

When shall I depart from the voice

No longer remaining in things which the voice proclaims

When shall I become word

In an awareness of hidden things

When shall I be raised up to silence
To something which neither voice nor word can bring?

When I push Brenda to explain her understanding of this idea, she says,

“The category we make of ‘solitary’ is an artificial one, and, I think, inapplicable. In fact, it is contradictory because the solitary life points away from itself; it is kenotic. It is the same mistake we make when we say ‘spirituality’ is the same as the search for God.”

Brenda reminds me of Simone Weil who is perhaps the greatest 20^th Century writer on this subject. Such a person won't even ask herself what her ‘spirituality’ is, or use God-language and maybe won't even think of it as a search for God. There are a lot of novelists who understand this far better than church people.”

Brenda and I have reached Paradise Island by now where she intends to troll for salmon. She caught three this morning and they are on the boat in a burlap sack under a bag of ice. She sets the kicker, the smaller engine, in the water, and turns off the large Suzuki outboard. She tells me to take the wheel and keep the depth at around 117. She is determined to make a boatwoman out of me yet.

She baits the hook and sets it to the downrigger. Then we sit and wait. There’s a sense of anticipation and on more than one occasion one or the other of us says, “Here fishy, fishy…”—as if the Silvers or Kings will listen and take the bait.

Soon the waves pick up and the current roughens, but on the monitor, we both notice large bait balls. Brenda tells me to point the boat toward the shore until I reach a depth of 100 feet. We continue to troll, and she takes the wheel. Several minutes later, a thump followed by a “swoosh,” and the scream of the reel, rouses us from our reverie. “A fish!” Brenda proclaims.

She detaches the reel from the downrigger, and I say, “Are you sure you don’t want me to watch you pull the first one in?”

Her adamant reply is, “No, you’re going to catch this fish!”

I put the end of the reel in my belly for balance, and then begin to reel in the fish. We don’t know if it’s a King or a Coho, but I reel steadily as the salmon struggles to free itself of the hook. Finally, I pull it close to the surface, and Brenda says,

“Now bring it over to this side of the boat so we can get it into the net.”

I pull the reel around and guide the fish into the net that Brenda is holding. I think to myself, “How in the world does she do this alone…especially when she’s pulling in a King?” But the thought quickly evaporates as I pull the reel and fish up over the boat along with the net. Brenda takes the hook out of the fish, and I move the reel to one side while she reaches for a small wooden club. “Now, I’ve got to subdue this fish.” I watch, nonplussed, to say the least, but noting that I’m not queasy and in fact, rather accept the fate of the fish as something that just has to be done.

Brenda tells me to go back to the wheel and make sure we’re not getting in too shallow water, and I do. I correct our course, and prepare to turn the boat since we are getting a little closer to the shore than I like. She comes in the cabin, takes a look at things, then tells me to aim for the tip of the island and keep it steady while she cleans the fish.

My first catch is a female, and she weighs about ten pounds—not huge by most standards, but certainly larger than anything I've caught so far in my life. Brenda adds the fish to the burlap sack and places the ice back on top. Our excitement subsides, but the wind and tides do not.

Brenda proclaims, “We had better go in now. The tide is getting unmanageable, and I don’t want to get stuck out here.”

“No, I think, let’s not get stuck on Auke Bay.”

We begin our return trip, and I continue to steer as she changes engines. “There’s going to be a little kick as I change the engines over. Just be aware of that. This helps clean out the carburetor.”

When she finally takes the wheel, I’m more than ready to give it to her. I stand in the middle of the boat and we are silent on the way in. When we get to the harbor, we chat about other boats that are there, and then she starts giving me instructions about what to do as she puts the boat into the slip. She has a perfect landing—something she always is apologetic about when we begin—and I tell her, “I’m impressed!”

Once we’re tied down, I go up the ramp and bring a wheelbarrow down to haul our catch and the trash up to the car and dumpster. We have about seventy pounds of fish in the burlap sack. When I get back, Brenda gives me the reel to wash, and I take it like I've been doing this chore for years. I bring it back to her clean of any debris, and then lift the wheelbarrow to take back up the ramp and she follows along shortly.

Now we go to her house to fillet the salmon. I am getting weary, and I know she must be also since our trip together was the second one out for her today. We quickly set up the space in her kitchen with newspapers and knives and before long, she is cutting the fish while I hold the trash bag and then switch to freezer bags when the fillets are cut into steaks. I observe more of the process than I participate in, but I know I am witness to something sacred: I have plunged into mystery, my hands slick with “fishness.”

We finish our chore and she goes out to feed the eagles. The day with Brenda ends as abruptly as it began. She helps me gather bags of fish which I take home to put in Sandy and Renee’s large refrigerator. The three of us take out several pieces of salmon and cook them on the stove top and sit at the table enjoying the fresh fish. We celebrate our friendship with each other, Brenda’s generosity, and the life of the salmon.