Pause for a minute or two and imagine that after a life lived near people, stores and highways, you find yourself in a small cabin on a remote island accessed only by water, a dense forest, and, yes, grizzly bears. Imagine that! That’s what Carole did 
when the expected money from salmon fishing didn’t pan out. Why would she do that? Carole’s memoir, FISHING FOR COURAGE, gives us clues to answers to that question.
Look closely, her skiff is pulled up on the beach; that’s her horse and buggy to take her to the 
nearest town, Pelican (aka. Port Bella in the book) with about 100 people and a wooden boardwalk for a street. For several reasons, Carole needs to zip up the coast in her skiff to Pelican and today is one of those days. However, “The night’s 
windstorm had dropped a big hemlock onto the beach. Its mess of branches -and a gnarly mess it was -had landed on the skiff’s outhaul.”
LETTER 4 - LEARNING ABOUT CHAINSAWS
Dear Mary,
A person rarely thinks of their femoral vein, let alone appreciates it, but today I’m filled with relief that mine’s still intact.
I had to use the chainsaw—it’s too complicated to explain why—and at first it didn’t go too badly. There was that part about starting it, which was awkward, and then, flustered, I couldn’t remember whether the chain should be spinning when it touched the tree branch (yes) or if you should wait and pull the trigger after you touch it to the thing you want to cut (very definitely no).
But I got the hang of it, and things went fairly well.
Except I had no idea how wobbly my arms were getting. 
I cut and cut and cut, and there was just one last branch to get. It was at shoulder level, so I heaved the chainsaw up to finish the job. The saw chewed through and the branch dropped down, as expected. But the saw dropped down as well, because my arms gave out. The bar swung down and grazed my leg before I could yank it back up.
It only cut through my jeans and etched a slight scratch. I’m looking at the scratch right now—the very place the teeth would have chewed into my thigh had I been a millisecond slower.
I could have ended up being an example of natural selection at work. What an embarrassing way to go.
I’ll sign off for now. More later.
xxoo
Once the outhaul (a line between the beach and the skiff making it possible to moor the boat away from the beach until needed for use) was cleared, Carole needed a reward – chocolate – and that meant a trip to Pelican. A town with a narrow one-mile-long boardwalk built on pilings that connected a fish-processing plant, a cafe, a marine-repair shop, a post office, a bar, a boat grid and
other businesses to meet the needs of the residents. In addition, Pelican had a few B&B’s, and a gift shop for tourists and guests.
People mostly walked and biked with an occasional ATV or golf cart.
Along with other necessities, buying chocolate to munch takes money and Carole needed money. She didn’t consider cooking her strong 
suit, but money is money, and she hesitantly took a job as a cook at Wilderness Lodge a half mile up the beach from Carole’s cabin.
LETTER 5 - MAKING A FIRST PIE
Dear Mary,
I found some work cooking at my neighbor’s wilderness lodge. Me—cooking! Shocker, I know.
Today I was assigned to make the pecan pie. As it was my first pie ever, I started well before dinner and followed the 
recipe closely. But the piecrust was giving me a bunch of trouble. I tried to roll it out but it kept tearing. I hid in the kitchen, mauling that poor dough, while everyone gathered in the main room for dinner.
“C’mon and eat,” my boss Flo urged me from where she sat at the table, assuming the pie was in the oven and I was just putting things away. “I’ll be just a sec,” I said in my cheeriest voice. “Go ahead and start!”
But they wanted to wait for me. So I went ahead and laid my fingerprinty crust into the bottom of the pie plate—it didn’t even come halfway up the sides. Feeling desperate, I globbed in the filling and with a wince, laid my little mutant crust on top. And that was when it dawned on me—pecan pie has no top crust!
Right at that moment, Flo popped into the kitchen. She looked at the pie and back at me, and we started laughing. Of course everybody jumped up from the table and crowded into the kitchen to see my pecan pie wearing that top crust like a dented beanie.
We went ahead and baked the pie like that and when it came time for dessert we all kept laughing at the sight. I guess if you count the glee factor, it was a highly successful pie.
Okay, sis, it’s past my bedtime, so I’ll say goodnight.
Carole
xxoo
Photo Credits: Hans Weinberg
To read and view Carole’s LETTERS FROM ALASKA 3 – click here
Great layout and images, yay!