It has been a very long time since I blogged and I don't really know why. It is easy to not blog - the vast majority of the world does it. I could say it is because late winter is not particularly good for photography with the bad weather and the flat light coating everything with a gritty greyish tint, turning even the best composed photo into a something best deleted and forgotten. I could say I've been busy, 85 days and counting without a day off, with a coworker who was missing in action with a sore shoulder for 350 hours of those 85 days, leaving me shorthanded during the busiest time of the year.
When I think about it though, what really has kept me from writing anything is the waiting. Waiting for winter to begin - sure, we've had some wind, gusts to 150 mph last week that had shed and roofs tumbling all over the island, blowing three containers into the Bering Sea and breaking moorings in the Small Boat Harbor. When I think of all the things blowing around that day, it was the caribou antlers blowing like tumbleweed down the middle of the road that was the most strange. We've also had snow, in small amounts, that has melted away before amounting to anything. I got out my snowblower one time all winter, just to see if it ran, and that was it. With April around the corner, this will go down in the books as the winter that wasn't . . .
We've also been waiting to see what will happen at work. The company I work for was sold and has been consolidated with our sister company, Westward Seafoods. Pretty much every single thing about the sale have been positive - I have friends that work at Westward, they offer a benefit package that is equal or better in some ways, yet the whole process will involve an incredible amount of change, and we really don't even know for sure if we will have jobs when it is all over, and we definitely don't know what our family income will be. So we're waiting. Since the place we are employed was the company sold, it is disconcerting to be faced with changes we will have very little control over, no matter how positive the experience has been so far. Since Goldfish and I both work there, our eggs are in the same basket. We hope for the best while we are waiting . . .
The island, meanwhile, does not wait and does not wonder. It moves through time as it always has, and winter is giving way to spring. I saw the first bird at the feeder the other day, eating seed that has been sitting untouched for months. We have just a couple more days left in the season, and our first plane loads of processors fly beginning Monday, heading home for a two month break.
This shows a tumbleweed shed, hundreds of feet from the nearest house, still in good shape with the doors closed. I wonder every day when I drive by what the contents of the shed look like after being tossed by the wind . . . . I'm not sure who the owner is, the big blow was over a week ago, and the shed sitting waiting . . .
