Dad jokes that because it is almost September, it is winter. 

Okay, actually, Dad started making that joke in early August, but now it feels true. We alternate short trips and handfuls of hours in town. The fishing is lousy; the prices are good. 

I catch a shark day before last, first of the season: about six feet, mouth like a table saw. "There are no sharks in Alaska," Dad says, while he shakes it off. And yet, it's the six inch rockfish I try to shake that gets me: stabs me through the glove with its poisoned spine. 

Life lessons from the Alexa K: don't fuck around with rockfish.

The lesson doesn't translate fields very well.  But that's fishing.