when the cotton blows

We'd been asking for months when the fish would start running, and really the only answer we'd get was--"oh, when the cotton really starts blowing, then you know" or "they'll call us from down river."

Folks headed off to fish camp around what we would call the beginning of July. And soon stories of all-nighters cutting fish were floating around. People holding down jobs in town sent out fishcamp call-outs over the radio station, and women set up near the caches cutting, drying, smoking, jarring and freezing fish in fourteen and sixteen hour shifts.

A neighbor invited us over to see one of their first catches, a medium size (really big) King salmon they got in a fishwheel. The skin looked a little worse for the wear of swimming up 1000 miles of silty freshwater. But the fresh cut she gave us was gorgeous pink flesh. You just wanted to sink your teeth into it.

So we fired up the grill and Keith set about preparing our first fresh Yukon salmon meal. He cooked the thick steak through and lifted it off the grill with the spatula.

And then he threw it in the dirt. And then I think he must have stepped on it too, because despite flushing it with water to clean out the gravel, it was a very crunchy meal, and good sized pebbles flaked out of my piece.

Keith was quite dismayed to have dropped it in the dirt, but it was still very tasty and very fresh, and there was more where it came from. We've still got a handful of meals worth in our freezer for later.