Dasha Kelly Hamilton - Fishtail of Two Cities

 

 

 

I met my husband at a Spoken Word Festival in San Francisco. He was living here in Anchorage, and I was living in Milwaukee. So, we dated long distance for a couple of years, and then finally decided to get married in Homer, Alaska. The plan was to live in Milwaukee for a few years, and then move to Anchorage. You know that feeling you get on Thursday about those Friday plans you made way, way, way back on Monday? [audience laughter]

 

I was starting to get that feeling inside when it was my turn to move to Anchorage. Not for any small feat, I was in the middle of my term as a Poet Laureate for the City of Milwaukee, and had just been named Laureate for the entire State of Wisconsin. [audience cheers and applause]

 

Now, I had every intention of keeping my word. The promise that I made to my husband when we made this wedding plan was that I would not do a bait-and-switch when it was my turn to move, and I'm not going to walk away from a laureateship in 20 years of really, really, really hard work. So, we agreed that we would live separately for my two-year term, and then corona showed up. So, with everything else in the world going virtual, I thought maybe this laureateship could do the same. So, I made this pitch to the Laureate Commissioner, and I just remember him blinking really, really hard. 

 

Look, I'm not the governor or anything, but I understand that nobody wants their state rep of any kind, not in the state. But I made the case for doing everything virtually and he ultimately agreed, but told me to keep my Alaska profile low. Cool. So, I moved to Anchorage under the cover of COVID.

 

Now, going from regular visitor to resident was different. I wanted to like this city that my husband loves so much. [sigh] [audience laughter] Especially, because he really went all in and embraced Milwaukee. Milwaukee statistically remains one of the five worst cities in America for black people to exist. I'm not kidding. Black men, especially. So, it was no small feat that he came and made a home and a life there, and he actually thrived there. But I don't know if I could thrive here. First of all, everything that anybody really wants to do happens outside. [audience laughter] Anything that happens inside is decorated like outside with wood panels, and bear paws and moose antlers everywhere. Everywhere. Really everywhere. [audience cheers and applause]

 

The summers, I firmly believe that summers are meant for sandals and sundresses. My first summer, it did not crack 70 degrees. My husband and his friends got us out here camping, and having cookouts, and going to the beach and carrying on, like they don't know these are hot water, hot air activities. Why do I have on a hoodie right now? So, picture me. I'm dressed like February in July, and I am just silently glaring out of the window. My husband comes to the room and sees this, and he says, “You know what? Let's go fishing.” [audience laughter]

 

Now, there's nobody else in the house. But I'm looking around anyway, because he can't be talking. He's is talking to me. Oh, this is a desperate man right now. Okay. What's one more Alaskan disappointment? If it will please my wonderful husband and give him one less day of worrying of whether I'm secretly planning to move back to Milwaukee. Now, he knows I wouldn't do that, but we both know I could be thinking about it a lot. 

 

My husband is the only important thing to me that's here. My work, and my friends, and my family, and my community, and my attention, and my summertime and everything is not here. But we're here together. So, I've got on fishing waders, Fuchsia lipstick, and a hot pink hoodie with Alaska across the front. So, my husband has experienced fishing, but he's not experienced. But he knows enough to get me started. 

 

So, we get down to ship's creek, which is this channel of waterways where the ocean touches downtown. I'm really surprised at how many people are down here after work. So, my husband gets me set up and he tells me to cast. And so, I cast once, tug twice, rear the back. Well, actually, the first time was a flop, because I was nervous, I was going to cut my finger and I realized, “No, Dasha, that's piano wire, not fishing wire. Get over yourself. Get it done.”

 

So, my second cast, tugged twice, reel it back. Now, my husband is behind me bending over getting his gear together. When I call his name, he assumed that I had gotten caught on a branch or something. But when he turned around, your girl's pulling in fish. [audience cheers and applause]

 

Salmon fish. So, we come in, we're excited, we lay it down, take our little fishy selfies and everything. There are these two women who had come down to [unintelligible [00:22:35] at the same time that we did. We had all walked down from the main road together, and one of them came over to me and said, “Hey, do you live here?” “Yes.” I look at my husband and he explained-- She's asking because you need to be an Alaskan resident to catch a king. “Did you know that there were different kinds of salmon?” I did not. [audience laughter]

 

So, this woman wants to say so much, but she can see that my husband and I are clearly winging this thing 1000%. So, instead, she just takes a breath and says, “You really want to bleed that now? Otherwise, the meat might be affected.” “I'm sorry, ma'am. What?” [audience laughter] She takes out a baton and a knife out of her waiter belt. She bends down, clunks a fish on her head, slices the gill, reaches in, snatches out this blood sac and leaves me to sit with this draining fish for the rest of the afternoon. Because the law says, “When you catch a king salmon, you're done for the day.” [audience laughter and applause]

 

So, I'm sitting back and I'm making a point not to be camped out on my phone, you know, everybody else is fishing. So, I'm just sitting, watching, taking in all of this scenery, all of this active quiet. On the drive home, my husband and I are just cracking up at how silent the river got when I caught my fish. All that cheering for everybody else, crickets for me. He said, “Yeah, babe, I think it was a sweatshirt.” I was like, “The sweatshirt?” He goes, “Yeah, we can spot tourists a mile away. No one who lives here would ever wear one of those airport sweatshirts.” “Excuse me, sir, you bought this from me.” [audience laughter] 

 

He said, “Yeah. When you were out there living like a tourist in Milwaukee. Never here.” Whatever. So, for the next few days, I got a kick out of listening to my husband retell my fishing story. So, I felt like a little kid though. Had made the grown-ups laugh, but wasn't really sure about how that happened. I just knew that I had caught a fish. So, I decided to take those pictures and post them on the internet anyway. I was just banking on the fact that Wisconsin eyes would just see that and see that I was living the dream, catching salmon in Alaska, like a vacation. 

 

But of course, I wasn't on vacation. I was at my new home. Corona was releasing her chokehold on the world, and now, I had to plan in person events back in Wisconsin. So, I'd been living in this double loophole, one for my laureate ship and now one for my marriage. I'd figured out how I would be in Wisconsin for the busy seasons in the fall and the spring to be available for appearances and such, and be here in Alaska in the winter and the summer. 

 

So, it wasn't exactly a bait and switch, but it also wasn't our deal. So, my husband suggested that to get our mind off of all of these sliding plans, that we take a road trip down to Seward. It is a beautiful drive. It's about two hours with the mountains one side and the bay on the other. We're going down to go snagging. The weather was still horrible. I'm still in a hoodie. I was just down for the road trip. So, for snagging, for the uninitiated, is imprecise fishing. [audience laughter]

 

Imagine a one-inch lead ball with three or four hooks welded into it. And instead of hooking the fish in the mouth, you cast out this ball and you snag the fish anywhere in its body. So, I'm now in chest waders for this trip, and I'm standing waist deep at the edge of the ocean. There's mountains on this way, so I cast this way a little bit. There are eagles on this side, and I cast away for a little bit. Seals are popping up here and there. Beautiful. Quiet. And then, a salmon yanks your line and this sucker's trying to make a run for it. So, now you have to reel faster and pull back harder, so you can make sure that you're trying to keep the fish a little bit above water level, so it doesn't swim and get away.

 

I am doing all of this walking backwards about 50 yards. Why? Because I didn't know about tides. I didn't notice that the ocean had crept in on me and land was much further away than when I had started. I lost a couple of fish with this method, but I snatched four salmon out of the water that day. [audience cheers and applause]

 

I probably caught 12 salmon over the course of that summer. And next summer, I'd caught maybe two dozen salmon. The woman that had come to approach me that day took my number, maybe to keep an eye on me or maybe she saw herself in me. It turns out that she is a former Salmon Derby winner here, and it turns out that she's a pretty solid human being. We've actually become pretty good friends. So, we both count down the months to salmon season and we both fish with lipstick.

 

Now, ironically, we don't fish together very often, mostly just checking in on each other on our progress. I will grab a pole and go down to the creek couple of times a week. Most times, I come back without a fish. But every time, I come back with a different clearing. You couldn't have told me that I would have enjoyed fishing, but I found it to be this active meditation. I'm moving, but I'm not. When I'm in Wisconsin, I realize I'm on the go all the time, 24/7. I got to. When I'm here, I'm at rest and I need that too. So, I still am not a fan of all of the ubiquitous moose decor. [audience laughter] bMy sandals and sundresses are still in storage back in Milwaukee, but I promise you, I have two Alaskan traditions down pat, fishing and love. Thank you. [audience cheers and applause]