But my color, grey, smells like wind heavy with the Pacific, tastes like a wall of mist, a curtain sweeping softly across the salt chuck to shroud the steep shoulders of the fjords. It is the iron and must of rain water plopping out of spruce needles in big, fat drops, plunking among bear bread, moss, and skunk cabbage. Grey is the coppery tang of not knowing which way to point the skiff when snow catches you far from home. And grey is always the fragrance of the ore that smelts itself into silver and chimes downstream, a ribbon of light through the forest, and smolted salmon ride it, the little swimmers borne out to take the smell of salt deep into their blood. These days the boats we charter tend to be run by Norwegian-Americans, meaning that they lust after high cholestorol foods.
Breakfast is relentlessly bacon and eggs.
Grease sizzles its way into every cranny of the galley, the mess, and the living quarters, its fumes penetrating the layers of stale farts in stuffy staterooms, last night's cigarette smoke, and this morning's first frantic puffs. Bacon tickles my nose and I jump right up to grind some coffee. I flip the skipper shit while he's still sleepy and dim-witted. In a few minutes I will roust my crew of biologists. For now, I sip my coffee, eager for the dawn, when we will send the trawl down into the dark.