The zombie fish arrived about two weeks ago. These are salmon on their last legs, exhausted and physically deteriorating, with white leprous patches and milky eyes. They swim lazily near the surface, often with dorsal fins cutting above the water like sharks. Their resounding smack! as they catch a final snack in our silty water punctuates all hours, day and night. Occasionally, one will porpoise, leaping repeatedly for a hundred feet, as though the frantic spasms will propel them up an imaginary waterfall. Eventually some wash up on shore, an easy meal for the eagles, ravens, seagulls, and bears.
Us humans gleefully tucked into the spoils of a successful day in the kitchen for me, with buttermilk biscuits, super fudgy brownies, and frozen custard. We don't have electricity to spare for an ice cream machine, but a memory percolated through my brain of, I think, my 25th birthday, recreating at home the then-novelty of Shake Shack's "concrete" dessert. This batch was quite nice, and true to its name required slicing with a knife.
And to round out the week, I finally accomplished my solo bear-country backcountry camp out. Happily, nothing attacked me or went amiss, but I did writhe around, heart pounding, when coyotes called to each other and particularly loud fish-plops made me fear a curious moose was approaching my tent. Perched on a gravel bar where the glacial outwash meets the lake, I felt as vulnerable and resigned as when I had to pass the night in a rural Italian train station my first time alone in a foreign country. This time, my transport was ready early, and the toilet paper was free.
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