Friday, May 10, 1996.

The cannery is quiet, empty. The 1996 Togiak Herring fishery is over, and everyone has gone home. Except for the four of us. We still have 3,000 fish to go. And they're getting old.

California thoughts, Big Sur coast, March 22 (Happy equinox!)

I pulled into the village of Cambria half an hour before sunset, and poked around the town. My father lived here for years, back in the 70s and early 80s. I stayed with him for spring of 5th grade and a couple of summers. I go to find the old house he lived in the first time. In between all the upscale coffee houses, art shops and bars, I find. . . an empty lot.

You've been working a stressful job for years. Perhaps you've been traveling for a while, and you feel like slowing down for a bit. Maybe you come from someplace that's always cold, or you just finished a strenuous bicycle or climbing trip. If so, watch out, because you may be susceptible to a dangerous, highly contagious virus, the greatly feared and poorly studied Island Laziness Disease (ILD).

Students, lawyers, doctors, professors, and long-term travelers are especially vulnerable. But it can strike anyone, given the right circumstances.

It starts innocently enough. You decide to visit a tropical island somewhere, to take a little vacation. Before you know it, you've lost all sense of time, and everything slips away. If you ever recover, you will wonder what happened to the intervening years, just like Rip Van Winkle.