Outdoor writing contest runner up: Hooked on Adrenaline

My buzzer blared. The jarring noise jolted me out of my sleeping bag, the inside of the bag sticking to my skin as I sleepily stumbled about my tent. Throwing on clothes in record time, I slid out of the now-unzipped tent flap.

“Ugh, why do I have to go …” I beg my mom while crawling into the backseat of our rental car. The door slams shut behind me, my distaste for this trip growing tangibly.

“It’ll be a good learning experience. Who knows, you might even have fun,” my mother snapped, exasperated.

“It builds character,” mirrors my dad. “Not that I wanna be here either,” he mumbles, finishing the stereotypical exchange with a twist.

The Bang energy drink in the car door calls to me, tantalizingly beseeching me to guzzle it. I quickly down the cotton candy-flavored wake-up-call. The buzz hits and my vision sharpens, the sleep sliding out of my eyes and mind. My heart races to the beat of the music blasting in my ears.

After arriving at the dock, we met up with a cousin of mine whose family owns a fishing boat. I lethargically board the boat, praying to be struck dead rather than be forced on this day-long trip without internet. I want to scream. Something unintelligible sounds from the front of the boat.

“What,” I grumble, pulling the headphones off my head, “do you want?”

My temper flares as my mother answers with the all too famous “put your phone down. I don’t like your attitude.”

“Oh. My. God. Really?” I glared at her for a moment, “Fine.”

I acquiesced and put my phone in my pocket, headphones to the side, and hood up. I bought a couple of sodas from the off-the-water convenience store. We quickly boarded the fishing vessel and set off, and after boating out from the shore for over an hour, we finally reached a water depth of 250 feet. We cast our anchor and brought out the fishing poles. The line was cast into the water; however, over an hour passed with no action.

“Having fun yet?” I said from inside the cabin of the boat, doing my best to entertain myself without cell coverage, “Seems like a really active day to get up at 3:30 in the morning and go fishing, huh? I bet you feel so productive and entertained holding that pole for an hour out there.”

“You know what, Anders,” my mom snapped, “get off your phone and come out here and hold the fishing pole. I’m going to go inside and you have to deal with the consequences of your bad attitude.”

Rolling my eyes, I plug my phone into the portable battery bank I had brought for this exact purpose. Grumbling, mumbling, and wishing I had weaseled my way out of this trip.

“Don’t bother, we’re gonna pack up and move locations. Might as well try our luck at another spot because we’re clearly not catching anything here.”

“All right.” I went back into the cabin. “There isn’t even a good view; it’s all foggy out there.”

The boat moved and after another half hour of driving about, we finally reached another spot of desirable depth. I did not even bother to check outside because of how bored and angry I was.

“WOOOOOHOOOOOO!” my eardrums burst. “WE CAUGHT A BIG ONE!”

“What’s going on?” I say, stepping outside.

I was struck dumb.

A massive fish was flopping about on the deck, its googly eyes stared from one side of its head while it jumped almost a foot in the air. The captain pulled open a hatch in the floor and kicked the fish into the storage compartment held beneath the boat.

The fog had cleared and the crisp air hit my lungs like the first winter snow. The cool, crisp sensation of simply breathing rejuvenated me. The purple mountain in the background capped with a glowing crown of sharp snow peeked at me from over the lake; the piercing beauty of its silver halo showed such a sharp difference from the ugly Spokane slush that comes to mind when snow is mentioned. The still life portrait that was this moment stayed frozen for me, not shifting for what felt like hours, but likely only lasting seconds.

“You wanna try your luck?”

“Sure.” Having been handed a fishing pole, I quickly cast, and within minutes felt a tug; the fish was aggressive; I almost fell over the edge of the boat due to my distraction. Violently tugging back, the halibut was reeled in – which took several minutes due to the sheer size of the aquatic monstrosity - and pulled it over the edge; Luckily, the bug-eyed critter slid across the deck and right into the chamber where fish were held.

“Now remember, the law in Alaska only lets each person catch two halibut. All other fish are free game; however, there are invasive salmon sharks here which we should kill before releasing.”

I caught one final halibut, and then the area dried up. The boat started back up, and we took off. At the next three spots, we caught almost nothing but salmon sharks; I could tell a salmon shark from a halibut due to how easy it was to reel in a salmon shark. Eventually, we began wrapping up for the day as we had spent the entire day from 4:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. on the water. While we were pulling the last of the rods from the water, mine tugged one last time.

When I reeled in the fish – expecting a shark due to its ease of capture – I was surprised. I had pulled up a large flounder! Apparently, flounder is very delicious and mine was a very large 13-pound one! As we went back home, I realized just how fun activities could be despite my negative initial bias.

Maybe something new is nice sometimes.