What We Notice · Sunday August 31, 2008 by Julie
We were heading north in Presidents’ Channel in the blue light of rain clouds. Around us, the modest fins of harbor porpoises slid above water and then back under. A few murrelets sat on the water. About halfway there, David pointed to one of the porpoises. “Where?” asked our passenger, but he never did see it. “Say,” he asked David, “You ever catch Lingcod around here?”
“People do,” said David, nodding in my direction (see the article “Deep” below). But the guy was facing David and all I saw was the back of his head.
“What kind of bait works? Do you know?”
“Aw, just about anything,” said David.
“But really. What, exactly?”
The question never did get answered, because they guy was asking the wrong person. It was reasonable of him to ask David and not me, since usually it’s the guys who are more in to fishing than the gals. But this guy was so locked in to a particular way of looking for information that he missed an outrider solution to his question.
Still on the boat, we discussed the kayaker whose skeleton was recently found on Jones. You would think, with all the campers and boaters who infest the island, that somebody would have come across the body, maybe even in time to save the guy. But there are only certain things that people ordinarily do when they are camping or boating. Outrider actions are too rare to be worth including in the mix.
Until, of course, they’re the ones that could save a life.
