You get really good at names

In Southeast Alaska it rains non-stop. When entering Ketchikan by cruise ship one of the first landmarks to snap a grinning picture beside is a massive rain gauge. The gauge is marked with a red arrow at 13ft, the average annual rainfall. So when you are going to be spending 4 hours outside it's a good idea to prepare for even the slightest possibility of rain. As I was finishing up my spiel on safety around wildlife, cold water, and the importance of disclosing if grandpa had a pacemaker, an assistant guide (high schooler, $7.25 hourly) would quietly distribute rainproof kayaking jackets and splash-proof pants to those who had already decided that, "hell I'm already here what is he going to say to make me forfeit my six hundred dollar excursion". I became extremely good at fitting people with the boxy, bright blue jackets and comically baggy pants. It became so instinctual that I would find myself sizing people sitting across from me on the bus. I'd get everyone dressed, tighten neoprene sleeves and tuck in shirts and then hand out plastic roll-top drybags for wallets, phones, and gum. You should be at 4 minutes at this point. If all goes well you should be marching out of the back of the boat while people choose what to pocket and what to stow. Waiting in the water beside the houseboat office was the puttering, oily, taxi boat that would take the guests out to where their kayaks were floating next to a dilapidated wooden trawler named the sea spree. Eight minutes or less and the office boat would be primed for the next group who was already heading down to the dock led by their guide holding the yellow paddle out in front of them.

The boat ride is a great time to start your performance as a guide. Over the course of the tour I told stories, recited facts, and answered some of the most bizarre questions I've ever heard."Where's Alaska?", "What keeps the islands from floating away?","How far is the Pacific Ocean from here" That one was asked so often my response became automatic, "About three feet below you". It was better to consider these as questions asked by someone who had gotten wasted the night before on cruise ship liquor and who was still adjusting mentally and physically to the fact they would be paddling for the next 3 hours.
After a 20 minute ride well out of town we would approach the small white boat sitting in a flotsam of neon kayaks. Chris, the so-cal taxi captain would maneuver the two boats together and quickly help everyone onto the sea spree. The guests were greeted by a gravelly Australian voice booming from the cabin "Good morning everyone". Greg, an Australian who moved to Alaska 30 years ago to work at a paper mill but ended up giving tours out of two kayaks he kept in a live-aboard van preferred to stay on the sea spree and watch the tours come in and out with the hum of the water taxi. I'd quickly hand out paddles and spray skirts, the final pieces of their rented gear.
Greg and I would help the family into wide two person kayaks. There was an old zodiac raft that bobbed next to the boat and kayaks were guided by bow-lines to the loader. This was extremely efficient and there was an art to guessing who would power each boat, and who had never held a paddle in their lives. "What better place to learn than the Pacific Ocean", Greg lamented only half kidding. Greg had an acidic sense of, humor, that rubbed many guests the wrong way but it made me look even friendlier and downright polite. When everyone was loaded I would hop into my swift red boat. It was a Sirocco, a British style touring kayak that was narrow, with a retractable tail fin called a skeg to help tracking in high winds. Locking my spray skirt I was melded into the boat and would lean it far on its side to turn and b line it to the group of guests who were bobbing around the lagoon where the sea spree was parked.

No two tours were ever the same. Group size, age, height, no measurable factor could predict what would happen once the boats were pushed off. Orca flukes could emerge behind a floating cloud of breath. Bears could stand and cock their head sizing up the neon flotilla interrupting their salmon fishing. Seals, especially one baby harbor seal I had named Wilbur, could emerge silently behind my kayak. His wide black eyes and mustache disappearing only to reappear near the guests. Then again some tours had none of this, but the scenery became all the more breathtaking and subtle. Most tours followed a route that weaved between tidal islands and coves. There was always plenty to talk about. For every tour I could lean against a rock face and pull up a bright purple sea star, or kelp crab, or sea cucumber. On especially low tides I could simply point to the rainbow of life clinging to the black cliffs. People loved seeing, and especially holding, any living thing. After pictures were taken I'd make sure to stick the starfish back to the walls I'd pulled them from and deposit urchins on the prickly rocks covered by their fellow kelp eaters. Of course some tours were still eventful despite the advertised attractions. Bathroom breaks and kayak beachings on small islands were not unheard of. Aunt Kathy would run into the trees clutching a roll of toilet paper and a hand spade I kept in my guide bag. There were quiet moments, the click of pictures being taken, the silent craning of necks to see an eagle's nest perched at the top of a tree. There were also loud moments, the crash of a humpback after breaching, the steady puttering of a purse seiner heading back into town, or wind driven waves shattering against the cliffs.
A good tour had some loud, some quiet, some wildlife, and a number of stories about Alaska past and present. Some groups were just happy to spend time with someone they considered to be a local Alaskan. I would never offer the fact that I was a Wisconsin implant here on summer break. Alaska still holds the aura of a wild and remote frontier, nevermind the constant stream of cruise ships arriving on the hour. Because so many people wanted to talk just about Alaska I incorporated a number of cultural oddities to point out to groups.
At the back of the first cove, a mile in, a row boat would become visible at low tide. It's barnacle covered hull barely identifiable among the large rocks it sat in pieces on but still holding a shattered windshield and outboard. A creative guide is a good guide and the wilder the imagination the better. We liked to say this boat was lost during the filming of an episode of Alaskan Bush People. One of the myriad discovery channel shows seen on hotel lobby TV afternoons. The story was that the bush people, who were actually a normal family who lived in Ketchikan, had been filming a scene out here. The wind picked up but the producers insisted on filming and foolishly ignored the weather. A fishing boat saw them a day later and saved them, but not their boat. This was merely the scaffolding, guides could stretch this shipwreck into a 20 minute story encompassing the foolishness of man, the power of the sea, and definitive proof that discovery channel shows are fake. Merely a stretched untruth, we learned the show had been filmed just on the other side of the island connected to town by a logging road.
As a guide it was fun to embellish stories with extravagant hypotheses and explanations. Said convincingly enough they might as well have been facts. "The one with the flat needles is a Sitka Spruce, the one thats dark green is a western hemlock" Little did the guests know those traits were not exclusive to either species. But you had to keep on your toes and I quickly learned that part of what is expected of an Alaskan are hyperbolic stories or 50 foot beavers and raincoast sasquatchs. For as many of these stories that we concocted as guides to make for interesting trip our boss was guilty of his own creative world building.
At the beginning of the summer each guide had been issued a thick plastic binder packed with facts, stories, and landmarks that could help us design an exciting tour. One of the landmarks was a "native rock painting", A Tlingit hieroglyph was what the book said. "The images painted in crushed salmon eggs are thought to be over 100 years old. They show a salmon, a bear, and a sun meant to mark a Chum salmon stream just around the corner". Sure enough there on a high cliff you could just make out the thin rust colored lines of a rudimentary sun and salmon. Many of us used this as a stop on our tours, it was a good tie in to talking about Alaska from a indigenous perspective. It was towards the end of the summer when Chris and I were sitting eating lunch with our friend who worked as a charter fisherman that we found out the truth. We brought up the hieroglyphs and he shook his head. "Greg made those ten years ago when he scaled the cliff at high tide with a bucket of red paint." This story alone seemed like something an Alaskan Bush Person would do. But the story could just as well have been a nudging joke, after all raincoats inhabitants love to tell those stories as much as they like to live them.