I’ve been married to a fisherman for nearly 12 years now and there’s one thing I’ve noticed about this time of year in fishing families: it’s the excitement.

The Fishermen’s Wharf is electric with the excitement of the start of a new fishing season.  Fork lifts are whizzing everywhere in a wharf that was dormant for much of the winter.   Nets and traps are piled up, boats are being pulled from the water and are spruced up with fresh paint, fishermen greet one another full of questions about who is going to start in which license area this year and what the predictions are.  They get this giddy gleam in their eyes like kids on Christmas Eve.  They are not yet exhausted, calloused (literally and figuratively), embittered by politics.  They are fresh with the limitless possibilities of a new fishing season.

My husband, Shaun, left for fishing in Barkley Sound on Saturday and the kids are excited to hear where daddy is each night as he travels around the southern tip of Vancouver Island and up the west coast.

My father-in-law, Otto called just now to update me on his work on the boat: how the boat will be pulled from the water tomorrow for a bit of paint, how the cupboards and fuel tanks are full, how he still needs to get that darn new cell phone figured out before he leaves.  And it’s all peppered with that note of enthusiasm and excitement which is so delightful and refreshing in what is increasingly a society of disconnection and ambivalence.  Otto will be leaving on Wednesday for the 4.5 day trip up the coast to fish the Nass river sockeye salmon openings.

Shaun started fishing at the crack of dawn today on the first Barkley sound sockeye opening.  All is quiet in our house right now — the calm before the proverbial storm when the first salmon of the season arrive.  And I’m learning at this time of year, amid the end of school and the clean-out of the freezers, to savor the moments of peace in the fading sun from the lengthening late spring days.