My college years were spent balancing eight months of school with four months of farming. The first years were spent outside my hometown but due to unforseen circumstances I had to change surroundings. I found myself in the shadow of the Wallowa Mountains in far eastern Oregon living with a young family farming alfalfa and tending to cattle. The work was hard and the days were long but the nights were filled with bars and reading and lightning strikes and dreams of what would come next. It was a fateful trip to the other side of the state, to the Oregon Coast, that would spark an urge to fish, a desire to be on a boat, and a need to follow in the Alaskan footsteps of my forebears.