The gatherers

I’ve been ill of late – hence the paucity of sharing here - and today was my first day out and about. It was a really cool day with Mary, Daughter Two, the Brother-in-Chief and his esposa.  Since I’m still in recovery mode, we had to do things that didn’t require a great deal of exertion so we went to Chittenden Locks and then down to check out the fishing fleet on Salmon Bay.

The fleet includes many of the boats and mariners you see on shows such as Deadliest Catch, so we’re talking about serious fishermen. When you get within twenty feet of these boats, you realize how small they are in the context of some of the storms they run into in the Bering Sea.

I don’t know where they find these guys who risk their lives and livelihoods bringing seafood to my table. What they do is part of a long and proud tradition shared by the dorymen of the North Atlantic, the men who sail dhows and sampans, the lobstermen who break their backs working their strings of pots in every kind of weather and the indigenous Americans who balance precariously on flimsy platforms to wrest steelhead from the Columbia.

And of course, there are the farmers who bet their futures that the rain will come this year, but not too much. And the folks who grind the grains, load the gondolas, top-load the bales and drive the trucks. I’ve worked hard to get where I am but I’ve never had the kind of daily grind some of these folks face up to every day of a working lifetime.

In this world of modern convenience and specialization, in which most of us haven’t a clear idea where our next meal will really come from, perhaps in this time of thankful reflection we can spare a thought or two for those who labor and bear the risks of our collective food gathering.