Traditions

It was a lazy evening, just shy of 10pm. I was already in my PJ pants and a lounging on the couch settled in for the evening when I heard faint screaming. I ran to the window and then opened the front door to make sure it wasn't something to do with our Malamute terrorizing the local children. I determined it wasn't anything to do with the dog just as I heard gun fire. Ok, so lets recap, screaming and gunfire....hmm, but now the screaming is sounding like happy screaming? Does this fit? I turn to the water and notice 3 boats in the bay racing around and hear more gun fire. "They've caught something" I some how tell myself, because now I am some kind of expert on hunting and also seeing in the dark. I race back inside stop my husband from running out in his long johns, we both go back in and put on our pants, this is a much smarter idea. While putting on my pants I simultaneously call my girlfriend on the phone and tell her to put her shoes on and meet us outside. Once outside, more gunfire! We hop in the the truck and "Dukes of hazards" our way down to the beach. I can almost hear those banjos. Stop. Boats and crowds. What is it? What did they catch? I can hardly see anything in all this darkness and confusion. And finally a nice lady stops and tells us "but they haven't caught anything". WHA? She sees our confusion and enlightens us, "it's a tradition". Apparently a bunch of people from Coral Harbor boated over here today, they are moving here permanently. What does all this have to do with gun fire you ask? When someone comes to our community from another community, they announce their arrival by shooting many...many times into the water. I hear those banjos again. It was pretty nice to see so many people grouped on the beach waiting to happily greet the boaters. The children laughed and yelled out to the people on the boats, people on 4-wheelers were arriving to see the commotion and I also saw some friends. It was in a weird way at 10 o'clock on a dark wet beach, some kind of a social. I ask my friends how they could boat from such a distance, they said "with a lot of gas"! They told me that sometimes if they can't bring enough for a whole trip, someone from the destination community will boat out and meet them half way just to bring them more gas. How neighbourly! I returned home to my tradition of spending evenings in my lounge pants.