Last fall on a hunting trip to Uyak, Pete tucked bulbs into a garden bed, planting with cold fingers in the waning October light. This May, tulips erupted in stripes and streaks and great manes of petals, a riot of color through the kitchen window. On the table, the floral choreography of blooms arching away from the vase on graceful stems. And my favorite—bouquets to share, big handfuls of color carried carefully across the bay in a windy skiff. When Barrett Willoughby traveled to Kodiak with her typewriter and a girlfriend in the early 1900s, she wrote that each day, unknown friends left fresh eggs, trout, vegetables, berries and lovely bouquets of wild and cultivated flowers on our front stoop. Fishermen brought herring, already cleaned for the pan and delicious king salmon steaks. That friends here still leave fresh eggs on your porch, speckled brown and aqua—makes it home. Friends who’ll walk kids in pajamas long past bedtime to search for your lost dog. Who send boxes of books and chocolate on tenders to setnet sites, and deliver salmonberry pies balanced on laps through bumpy floatplane flights. Neighbors who let your kids pick a first ripe strawberry from a tiny crop they’ve been tending all summer. Yesterday friends at another setnet site rushed up as we were leaving in the skiff, cheeks flushed with the exertion and joy of picking an enormous batch of raspberries to send with us. We ate raspberries by the handful all the way home.
