Letters from Naknek Part 1
A Chronicle of a first processor season at Leader Creek Fisheries
Friday, June 19th, 2020 (9:55 AM AK time)
Hello ladies, gentlemen, those neither gentle nor lady-like, and everyone else that doesn't fit into the aforementioned groups,
I'm sure anyone reading this wants to know how I'm doing. Currently, I'm not. As I write this on June 18th, I've managed to sit around here at Leader Creek and accomplish nothing. The season hasn't started yet and so I've spent my time reading two books (about a day and a half each, which has left me many more days to dwell on how little I have to do) and wishing I could leave the grounds to go for a walk. Or see the beach. Or get lost and mauled by a bear. At this point I'm not particular about how my day gets spiced up, only that it does.
This is due to COVID, and this short paragraph is where I deleted a great long rant about that entire ordeal. Needless to say, if I could shoot germs with shotguns I would.
Of course, I should address the issue of how I've been sitting around doing nothing and yet had little to no correspondence with the majority of people who might receive this. My only excuse is that the WiFi was not available in the building I'm holed up in until recently (at least today is when I checked and had it, so I began writing this in anticipation of sending it) but now it is here! And terrible! At first it held promise and warned me a megabyte limit. I feared this limit, sure I would exceed it quickly. The WiFi kindly corrected me by being so terribly slow that the only worthwhile use of it is to have a single pressing need (such as sending a letter) and doing only that for the next fifteen minutes (that doesn't include the writing bit).
Rumor has it, however, that in no time at all the fish shall arrive and I'll be out working in my department, packing. Shoving hundreds of pounds of metal and fish on wheels into giant freezers and then pulling them out again. I'm excited! It's nearly as thrilling in my mind as the bear mauling. Granted, the adjustment to night shift may hurt, though not as badly as it might elsewhere. On the one hand, I'm inside a building anyways, so where the sun is of little concern to me. On the other, my roommates and I have never turned on the lights in our room despite staying up as late as 1. We don't need them.
I don't anticipate any of my other letters being this long. Most will come later when I have something to report, which means I'll probably be working, which means I'll be scrambling to catch what sleep I can. In time, however, I'm sure something of a report will flutter its way towards the masses.
Alas, I end my writing here to go bathe. Waking up at 4 in the morning for breakfast makes me already regret the fact that the clock reads 8:54. Once I return from my shower, perhaps I shall have finished sending this to interested parties and uninterested parties who shall have to deal with receiving it all the same, as my WiFi is unlikely to reliably transfer any complaints about my long-windedness back to me.
Sincerely,
Jason Snow