Tamara Ann Burgh

Blog address change

My new blog address is http://tburgh.wordpress.com

My Eskimo Family 77 (continued from May 4)

To start reading from the beginning, go to May 11, 2008.

M.O. and Donny were home for a couple of weeks from school. M.O. from Duluth and Donny from Fairbanks. It may have been spring break but frigid temperatures and a thick layer of ice and snow covered any evidence of spring on the Seward Peninsula.

M.O. who rarely had much to say or do with me surprised me by inviting me to accompany him on a charter to White Mountain. I had been to White Mountain twice before. My snowmobile trip with Jimmy had been aborted but I had gone with M.O. and Sister to dig bits of charred bone remains from Koke's July crash. Another time months previous, in the summer, Donny had taken me with him on a charter flight to White Mountain on the Niukluk and the Fish Rivers.* On that trip, somewhere over Golovin Bay, a spiral of smoke rose from the plane's cabin floor beneath Donny's feet. A thin red open-ended wire was burning. Donny quickly began stomping on it until he vanquished the small smoldering flame.

Somehow, as a child, I developed the ability to shut down when confronted with threatening situations.† That little bit of wire could have easily developed into a life threatening situation. My "ability" to shut down when threatened and knowing it would do no good for my pilot, Donny, to have me panic caused me to simply ask when the smoke dissipated, "Was that wire important?" He replied simply, "Naw." I don't know if he was lying but, as a pilot, he knew it would do no good to frighten his passenger.

Some weeks later, summer's end, I was standing outside the store when Maggie burst out of the house. We had a clear unobstructed view of Donny landing his plane the other side of the village. He had just returned from a trip to Nome with a load of gas and oil in 50 gallon drums. Maggie was waving a towel and yelling at Donny in the plane. There was no way he can hear you I thought. I figured he had a phone call and thought it strange for her to be so adamant about his taking it. Normally the inconvenience of one phone in the store servicing the entire village caused everyone to be nonchalant or very patient about receiving or making phone calls. (This is pre-cell phone era.) But then I saw what she had seen in the house moments earlier. In the house she could see him arrive but, from the house he had to still be in the air banking in preparation for landing several minutes from actually touching down. Now Donny had landed and was taxiing to a quicker than normal stop and we all saw what the problem was. Flames were spurting from the fuselage. By the time I had processed it all Donny had jumped out of the plane then, to Maggie's and my horror, he jumped back into the cabin and began flinging the 50 gallon drums of fuel out and onto the runway.

I wonder now if that thin red wire was the culprit.

(to be continued) copyright Tamara Ann Burgh, all rights reserved

*My ancestry is of the Fish River tribe: White Mountain is a city in Nome Census Area, Alaska, United States. At the 2000 census the population was 203. The city is an Iġaluiђmuit (Fish River tribe) Iñupiat village, with historical influences from and relationships with Kawerak and Yupiaq Eskimos. 86.2% of the population is Alaska Native or part Native. Subsistence activities are prevalent. White Mountain is the only village on the Seward Peninsula located inland, not on the ocean. Wickipedia

†My elderly mother does this when I'm angry and adamantly trying to resolve an issue. It drives me absolutely insane.

White Mountain  Picture taken from http://www.google.com/

NOTE: my blog will have a new address at http://tburgh.wordpress.com the end of May.

My Eskimo Family 76 (continued from April 26)

To start reading from the beginning, go to May 11, 2008.

Sundays were a day of rest and relaxation. One of my last Sundays in Golovin, Martin had planned an outing. We were going snow machining. (They called them snow machines over snow mobiles). We bundled in our warmest clothing. Maggie prepared a thermos of coffee and I grabbed my camera.

Martin determined the passenger/driver match-ups. He drove one machine, Maggie and Sister shared another and I was on my own. I was apprehensive about the day. Right away I sensed something amiss and felt like the odd man out. I was surprised Martin gave me charge over a machine as he knew I had never driven one before.

I had been living with the family more than eight months with no plans on my part to leave. I was hovering between an adventure and the place I needed to be as a college graduate (with honors) and independent adult. Martin had asked me to stay the winter but I suddenly crossed an ambiguous time line where I was beginning to sense my limited services (helping Maggie in the store) were no longer needed or wanted. I had become a hanger-oner. It is embarrassing to think and write about now and I can't say what I was thinking -- or not thinking -- feeling or not feeling -- knowing or not knowing what I wanted for my life. 

The four of us on three machines took off across the flat frozen bay toward land. Martin was about to ask me, for the first time, to leave without having to ask me to leave. He led us across flat snow and ice straight to what seemed to me to be a nearly vertical incline. "Oh, shit," I thought. I quickly realized this wasn't a leisure scenic Sunday drive anymore. We weren't going to the Ice Cream Palace where my dad used to take me and my four siblings for a rare innocuous friendly Sunday treat of square scoops of sherbet in cones. 

I thought it strange that I wasn't afraid. I can't know but it seemed Maggie, with Sister as her passenger, were not expecting to challenge an obstacle course that calm snowy Sunday, but they plowed up the cliff behind Martin. I can't know, but I sensed they knew that if they didn't make it, my inevitable not making it would negate Martin's ulterior purpose. That is to say, asking me to leave without asking me to leave.

Eventually the three of them waited successfully at the top of the cliff looking down on me. All four of us knew I would not make it. I decided I would fail without apology or embarrassment I made it half way up before I stalled out. It took a fearless hand on the throttle to start up and another bite of courage to gun it even more to make the final push to the top and over onto horizontal ground. I let go of the throttle and felled the machine sideways into deep soft powder which kept me and the machine from sliding back down the hill. I grasped the camera in its case around my neck and traipsed up the hill while Sister, under Martin's order, trekked down to rescue my machine and valiantly ride it over the top of the cliff.

To show my deliberate nonchalance about my failure, I took pictures of Sister zooming past me.

For the next hour or so, we had a pleasant ride through willows, past ptarmigan and over frozen streams until we stopped for coffee. I feared Martin would lead us home down the cliff, which would be an ever greater challenge for me. I was prepared to tell him up front I could and would not try it. We fortunately skirted around the cliff and were back home before the late afternoon sunset.

A few more weeks passed before Martin, in his own way, would ask me again to leave. I would finally take him up on it. 

(to be continued) copyright Tamara Ann Burgh, all rights reserved

  Uncle Martin

Sister rescuing my snow machine
Laundry day -- the clothes are frozen but somehow they dry on the line.

My Eskimo Family 75 (continued from April 14)

To start reading from the beginning, go to May 11, 2008.

From what little I know, Alaska, during the nineteen century first missionary days was divided between the Catholics and Protestants. The Protestants specifically Covenant. During my Golovin days I was still a Born Again believer who did not know much about Catholic vs. Protestant, Protestant vs. Protestant . . . I didn't know church history or theology nor much about the Bible. Some years later I determined I would be a missionary and attended events and schools like The U.S. Center for World Missions (Pasadena, CA), Champaign Urbana spring missions conference (1979) and the Billy Graham Center graduate studies school (Wheaton, IL) where I studied mission history, church history, hermeneutics, theology, the Old Testament, New Testament and more. But back in Golovin and all my studies later, I had never heard of Covenant Protestantism. I imagined Covenant worshipers cloaked in black capes and hoods; figures in a dark stone room carrying candles and chanting. Of course, it was nothing like that.

Golovin villagers had, at some point, been proselytized by Covenant-ers over Catholics either by first come first served/converted, by lottery or geographic allotment. Maggie was raised covenant by a devout mother (who was really her step-grandmother). In Golovin Maggie was the primary keeper of the church. She opened the church door Sunday morning and during winter started the wood stove an hour before service in order for the building to be at least above freezing for the congregation of no more than a six or eight, maybe a dozen on some Sundays.

Maggie attended every Sunday and for those of us in her home, all were expected to attend and participate (except Martin who never went). We were, at times, asked to give a sermon when Old Man Siegfried was unavailable (see July 25, 2008). Maggie chose the hymns to be sung and would start them ac-capella. There was never an accompanying musical instrument. She would then announce the speaker. Around Christmas I had been asked by her to give the sermon. At first I balked but then became somewhat enthusiastic as I have a penchant for pedantic-ism. The results, however, did not match my unrealistic expectation of an enthusiastic response.

During my 13 some years as a born-again Christian and faithful church-goer, I always felt something of the odd-man out. I was among a culture of people who had all primarily been raised in the church. Looking back I see the church as more a culture than a monotheistic faith system. I was culturally a square peg in a round hole. I would ask questions in Sunday school like: during a serious lesson was on the Biblical principle that believers should obey their leaders, I innocently asked, "So, America was founded on dis-obediency and un-Christian behavior?" My Sunday School teacher scowled and ignored me from then on. Seems merely logical to me, but most often my skewed perception of things went unappreciated. It would take many years for my "artistic" nature to find a mature voice and appreciative audience.

But the Holiday sermon I gave in Golovin landed on confused ears. My sermon appropriately enough was about Jesus' mother, Mary. I identified with her because she was also in a socially awkward place. She must have been the village weirdo having claimed to be impregnated by God and to still be a virgin! "What the hell?" "Are you kidding me?" "Who does she think she is!?"  I spoke (minus the expletives) of how lonely she must have been. How she must have had to dig deep within to manage a degree of self-respect and faith.

I could not tell if my congregation of eight was with me or dumbfounded or bored. I believed one man, Pungak, was mesmerized with my train of thought as he had one unblinking eye beamed in on me. Then I realized it was his fake eye. His good eye was sound asleep. Jimmy watched and listened with rapt attention. Afterwords I asked what he thought but it was clear he had no idea what I was talking about. Maggie, walking home wanted to know why I chose such a strange subject. I wasn't asked nor did I offer to give another sermon. I wasn't surprised.

note: I am no longer a Born-Again-er, nor do I believe in the literal Bible. The Virgin Mary is, to me, an archetypal mythological reference to the birth of oneself; belief in oneself and giving birth to one's authenticity. Choosing to live an authentic life may be a perilous decision risking possible rejection by one's family or community.

(to be continued) copyright Tamara Ann Burgh, all rights reserved

During my missionary days, I volunteered for six months (1980) as an illustrator/graphic artist with the Summer Institute of Linguistics, Wycliffe Bible Translators (SIL), in Darwin Australia. Here children color in a coloring book I created of an aboriginal text Bible story. 

A good book on the de-conversion of an SIL translator to the Piraha Amazon people is DON'T SLEEP, THERE ARE SNAKES by Daniel Everett. Fascinating.

My Eskimo Family 74 (continued from April 10)

To start reading from the beginning, go to May 11, 2008.

Jimmy was back at the store pacing around with his over-sized parky and toothless grin. He was in his early twenties and whether to decay or a fight he was missing his two front teeth. The missing teeth or the last several weeks of incarceration had no affect on his positive personality. He was telling me about a movie playing in White Mountain that night at the community center.

Last summer someone had ordered in a movie for the village of Golovin. Several villagers crammed into school chairs and benches in the school house to watch THE WAY WE WERE with Robert Redford (one of my favorites) and Barbara Streisand. I had kids sitting on my lap, hugging me, placing their cheek to mine. The following day Donny and I were leaving on our trip "outside" (Minnesota and Chicago). That movie night I contracted impetigo on my face from one of the kids. I spent the trip outside treating the highly contagious unsightly virus. 

Jimmy invited me to join him and others to travel that night by snow machine 18 miles across the lagoon to White Mountain. The majority of my days in Golovin consisted of work, cleaning up after dinner and spending time alone in my room. A trip with a group of people, including Unsky and Gooksy, was appealing -- not logical -- but a way to break the monotony.

The trip would be in the dark: the sun half heartedly rose around 9:00 am and hovered above the horizon before leaving again late afternoon. The temperature would be around 0 degrees that night. I trusted the so-called group I'd be with as I figured a trip to White Mountain on snow machine in the dark was like my high school friends and I driving from Ottawa, IL to Streator for a movie. No big deal if it's familiar territory. If you'd been there all your life. 

Three snow machines pulled up outside the house shortly after dinner. Maggie and Martin watched me leave without a word but, in hindsight, the must have been concerned -- more than concerned. I couldn't tell who the figures were under helmet and bundled in snowsuits. They were mounted on black new sleek machines. Jimmy's machine had to be twenty years old. Perhaps the prototype for the first machine to run on snow. One could see its dull yellow squared off body in the moonlight. The single headlight had a dull glow that Jimmy said wouldn't stay on, but "That's okay, we'll follow the others."

We were no sooner out of Golovin and on the ice when the others took off like a rocket. We puttered along convincing myself we would never get to White Mountain before the movie ended. I should have asked what movie we were perilously traveling so far to see. I doubt that Jimmy knew. Whenever we hit a bump the light went out. Another bump the light came back on until we either ran out of bumps or the light just stopped working. I finally told Jimmy we need to go back. I was surprised when persistent Jimmy complied.

Fortunately we had a full moon and clear skies. Unfortunately Jimmy had no idea which way was "back". On the ice and snow a degree to the left or right of one's destination could easily leave one still in the middle of nowhere. Suddenly, in the far distance, the other two machines were racing on a joy ride. They seemed to have no intention of going to the movie -- nor making sure we were okay.

Jimmy pointed right indicating the direction we should go. Some time ago, M.O. had taken me on a machine out on the ice North of Golovin for the sole purpose of showing me, if I were ever lost, how to get home by the stars. Donny and Koke were more my friends than M.O. so it was unusual for him to show concern. Maybe he was under Martin's orders. It was even more unusual to me to think I'd ever be out so far from Golovin by myself on the ice at night. And there I was, north of Golovin with a lifetime villager and Eskimo who, to me should know how to get home. I should have known better than to trust Jimmy for anything.

As per M.O.'s instructions I found the twinkling star on Orion's belt and told Jimmy we need to go that way. He again complied like a little boy and we were home within the hour. I quietly entered the house and up to my room where I removed my reindeer mukluks (mukluks courtesy of Maggie), down mittens, down parky with wolf ruff (ruff courtesy of Maggie), down cap, snow pants, long underwear and crawled into bed where I stared at the moon just outside my bedroom window. 

After I left Golovin and was living in Nome, I saw Jimmy a time or two. I later learned he was traveling one night on a snow machine, ran out of gas and froze to death. 

(to be continued) copyright Tamara Ann Burgh, all rights reserved

Jimmy in Nome.

Golovin in winter: Martin and Maggie's buildings, the old house and the shed

My Eskimo Family 73 (continued from April 6)

To start reading from the beginning, go to May 11, 2008.

Jimmy was back and Captain K (Kiyukuk), the reindeer herder, was scheduled to leave. For days the Captain sat on the living room varnished plywood floor scraping reindeer leggings. Leggings are, naturally, fur skinned from the legs of reindeer. Kiyukuk placed the 14"-ish X 8"-ish piece of hide fur side down on the floor. With the hide between his outstretched legs he thumped and stroked his handmade scraper -- rounded steel blade and bone handle -- against the raw side of the leggings removing dried membrane and tissue. Maggie was happy to finally have her stash of leggings clean, white , soft and supple for making mukluks. I was the happy recipient of a pair reindeer mukluks with seal hide sole and land otter trim.

Kiyukuk was an expert at scraping reindeer hide. He worked for hours happy to have work to do in a warm living area keeping an eye on the comings and goings. He didn't say much but would occasionally converse with Maggie in Eskimo. He spoke English but when I said a word or two, he pretended not to hear me.

Maggie and Martin brought him to the house nearly starved to death with pneumonia. Maggie had taken good care of him and after a few weeks of recuperation in Golovin, he was to be taken to live with his sister in the midst of civilization (Anchorage?). Most of his adult life he had lived alone surviving in the arctic wilderness. I wondered how he would survive his last years in the city. It didn't seem right or fair to me. But it was inevitable. My suburban mind believed if we worked hard through to retirement and old age, we would be and should be awarded approaching death with dignity and peace. It didn't appear to be a dignified end for Captain K. I imagined him feeling displaced and caged. I can't know, but I am now aware, having watched my elderly parents and others, that if I live to be an old woman, those last years may offer the biggest of life's challenges.  

(to be continued) copyright Tamara Ann Burgh, all rights reserved

Boys learning to dance (Nome Elementary School)

The Iditarod recently finished in Nome. My first experience with Iditarod, I took this picture of the last sled to arrive in Nome some seven days after the winner. A ptarmigan is attached to the stick.

My Eskimo Family 72 (continued from March 29)

To start reading from the beginning, go to May 11, 2008.

Jimmy was back. He entered the store as his old positive self. The last I'd seen him, months ago, he was strapped in a strait jacket while state troopers loaded him into a plane for Nome or Anchorage. He was back again and stood before me without apologies, explanations, embarrassment or shame; as if the wild blip months before never happened. 

I told him that while he was away I'd finally met his elusive brothers, Unksy and Gooksy (see MY ESKIMO FAMILY 66). He didn't respond in a familial way -- as if I'd met an extension of himself. I didn't recognize a trace in his demeanor as to connectedness one might expect or exude when talking about family. Maybe because he was the polar opposite of his brothers. While he was gregarious and always out and about the village, his brothers were hermit like and seemingly introverted. I suspect, in hindsight, the ALL the people of Golovin, because of their isolation and dependence, were one big family.

As for me, I wanted nothing more than to feel and believe I was intimately unquestioningly a part of a familial group. My immediate family and I were not close or very much involved with each other's lives. One of my two brothers died when we were all teenagers. My remaining brother and two sisters did not cry together or console one another. The event steeled our emotional disconnectedness into adulthood. I wrote letters home over the many months in Golovin but had yet to receive a letter from the family. My mother sent a large gift box for my birthday to the astonishment of Maggie. "What does she do for Christmas?" she asked.

Where mother made extraordinary efforts to send me gift boxes for birthday and Christmas, news and information from home barely existed. I received two or three letters consisting of newspaper articles on menstrual cramps or frostbite with a short sentence written in the margin. I hated those "letters". Perhaps my time in Golovin symbolized the conflict within between belonging -- not belonging -- the longing to belong -- and emotional isolation. The months I was in Golovin
, my inner thoughts of why I was there were not entertained by me. The adventure remained an adventure. I wished my sibling could share it with me. Soon, however, the moment would come when I realized I was outstaying my welcome and my child-like needs were intruding on family that was, ultimately, a group of strangers.

In the meantime, my devoted admirer, Jimmy, was back.

(to be continued) copyright Tamara Ann Burgh, all rights reserved

Snow drifts in Nome

Dry dock in Nome

My Eskimo Family 71 (continued from March 20)

To start reading from the beginning, go to May 11, 2008.

One weekday as I sat behind the store counter working on my needlepoint, Maggie ordered me to close the store. We were going ice fishing -- tom-codding. 

I hung the closed sign and donned my warmest duds: parky with wolf ruff Maggie had sewn, snow pants, down mittens and reindeer mukluks. She had packed some things in a small trailer behind a three-wheeler: empty Blazo cans (round two foot high blue and white cans once filled with white fuel), bucket, thermos of tea, large slotted spoon and fishing gear. The fishing gear was unlike any I was familiar with; and I was familiar with most.

I came from an avid fishing family. My siblings and I could tie on a hook, spoon or lure; bait a hook; manage a spinning reel; toss a rod under hand, overhand, across the body . . . avoiding six other family members packed in a 12 foot fishing boat . . . by third grade. Each of us could handle a hooked fish, remove the hook and gut it knowing the difference between a blue gill, bass, trout, northern, wall-eye and a catfish and how each is to be best caught, gutted and cleaned. 

I held up a flat 18" stick notched at both ends and wrapped lengthwise with a tight nylon string decorated with transparent red beads. At the string's end was a  brass hand-made weight with three large bare hooks. "This is our fishing pole?" I asked Maggie. "What do you use for bait." She said none was needed, boarded the three wheeler and headed out to sea. Happy for this new adventure I followed her on the second three-wheeler toward a line of people on the ice some half mile or more from Golovin.

It seemed the entire village was out on the ice hovering over a series of holes drilled in the ice. Maggie overturned the Blazo cans to use for seats. I wondered if I were sitting on the same can I used in the dark to pee in last fall while squirrel trapping. Maggie used the slotted spoon to clear an existing hole that had filled with slush. I followed suit on a nearby hole. I watched as she unraveled her tom cod "pole" and dropped the hook into the water. She proceeded to bob the line up and down, sitting comfortably on an upturned Blazo can with her free arm nestled into her lap. Again I did the same but chose to get onto my knees and gaze into the deep clear water while my red beads bobbled up and down. It was too hard for me to believe catching fish with bare hooks and beads would offer up any fish, but looking down the line of village folks with stacks of fish at their feet, it had to be that simple. Soon enough I was able to see tom cods hovering around my hooks and as I lifted the weight of the brass knob, I hooked a tom cod. As I had seen others do, I simply wove the string from stick to hand, brought the fish into the frigid air, gave the end a couple of nods and the fish fell off and quickly froze. It was so simple -- so convenient. Physically, I was in 10 degree weather, on the frozen ocean with a dark wall of cloud nested just above the horizon behind me, a hole in the ice at my feet with a view to another kingdom; emotionally I was in heaven. It was so mythological -- so ancestral.

When my father first left Alaska to go "outside" (lower 48) to attend college, his mother gave him a collection of ivory carvings to possibly use for money. Fortunately, he kept these classic pieces. I grew up with them and would occasionally take them from the shelf and study them. We had early on asked Dad about one in particular. A stylized two inch Eskimo man stood over a hole in the ivory ice with two sticks in his hand connected by a thin line of sinew. On either side were tall shovel-like pieces. Dad showed us how the sticks were used for fishing through the ice. With a rocking motion to his hands, he held the tiny sticks connected by the sinew and wove the tiny fish attached to the end close to the stick. My child-hood iconography was now a living experience out there on the ice so far from suburbia. I was incredibly fortunate. 

(to be continued) copyright Tamara Ann Burgh, all rights reserved

The ivory carving that sat on a living room shelf in my childhood homes. The tiny hand sticks connected by a thin string of sinew appears to be missing.

 

Tom cods -- picture taken from Fisheries and Oceans Canada 

Images taken from Alaska Digital Achives. Click on link to see larger images.  

My Eskimo Family 70 (continued from February 23)

To start reading from the beginning, go to May 11, 2008.

I sat one morning behind the store counter working on an intricate rose pattern needlepoint I'd ordered through a catalog. A gaze out the window across the frozen bay broke my concentration In the white distance I saw a cloud of snow rolling over the ice. I first associated it with something like a sandstorm -- sudden boiling wind pushing a wall of sand across the desert. I thought I was viewing a rare natural phenomenon until Maggie explained it was reindeer. My imagination then switched to scenes from a western movie where wild cattle stampeded campsites, fallen cowboys . . . everything in their path. I imagined a thundering heard of reindeer storming through Golovin right past the window I stared through. I hadn't yet seen a reindeer and I was going to see them now in all their glory.

It wasn't an uncontrolled stampede, however; the cloud of snow rising above the horizon was due in part to a couple of men on snow machines herding the cluster of deer toward Golovin to be slaughtered. As I write this many years later and some 3,000+ miles away in a cozy tree lined bucolic neighborhood, I feel a ping of grief for the deer. At the time, however, sustenance indigenous to my relatives and ancestors was racing to the village -- it was exhilarating.

I don't remember, and probably didn't ask, how they were killed. If the 30 some deer were shot, I don't remember hearing the gunshots. Late afternoon Maggie sent Sister and I to the slaughter area. The ice was red and pink with a pile of reindeer heads and guts the only remaining evidence of that wild herd hours earlier. I assumed the meat and furs were distributed among the villagers. Sister and I were on an errand to get some "books". "Books", if I remember correctly were a grisly part of the esophagus that did look something like a floppy bundle of pages. Maggie boiled them for dinner and we had a rather noisy meal of slurping and sucking. She fixed another meal of tongue and reindeer brains -- the tongue was fine for me to eat but the brains were one of the few meals I just couldn't eat.

At dinner Mating mentioned that the reindeer heads made good seat covers. It took awhile before I understood he was talking about the fur skinned from the skull that made just the right size for a warm seat cover. I wasn't in need of a warm reindeer head seat cover but there was a pile of heads out there on the ice and the challenge was irresistible. The following evening I had a reindeer head on the kitchen table while Maggie, relaxing on the black vinyl living room couch and Martin in the lounger, talked me through the skinning process. I was happy to have another opportunity to use the ulu she gave me months earlier to skin squirrels. Later that winter, while living and working in Nome, I purchased a Honda Odyssey ATV. My reindeer head served as a warm seat cover. Tragically, one night, I forgot to bring the seat cover into the house and dogs must have carried it away.

However, I still have and display the rose pattern needlepoint pillow I made behind the store counter in Golovin.

(to be continued) copyright Tamara Ann Burgh, all rights reserved

 

I wish I'd picked up some antlers.

The Honda Odyssey I had in Nome. 

The needlepoint pillow I made in Golovin.

My Eskimo Family 69 (continued from February 12)

To start reading from the beginning, go to May 11, 2008.

Martin and Maggie would regularly fly a ways up the coast and inland to bring groceries and government check to an old retired reindeer herder. This day they buzzed over his cabin but things didn't look normal. There was no swirling smoke coming from the chimney even though the temperature was below 0°F. When they landed, they found old Kiyukuk nearly starving with his feet inside a stone cold wood stove. Apparently he had gashed himself in the side with an ax and was unable to do the hard work necessary to survive such frigid temperatures. Martin and Maggie packed him up then hauled him back to Golovin to recuperate.

With the extreme cold, frost built up on the door jam. One had to give the door a good yank to un-stick the bottom of the door from the threshold. It opened with a screech not unlike nails on a chalk board. Upon arriving Maggie shoved the door open and Martin helped the stooped old man, protecting his side, into the house. He seemed visibly relieved to be in the warmth with promised food and care. I was shocked to see him. He looked so much like the holocaust victims I saw in pictures that my stomach literally turned over. The base of his jaw line protruded like a ship's deck while his neck disappeared somewhere under the inverted bowl under his jaw. 

It was hard to imagine this old frail man running across the tundra tending, herding and butchering reindeer. I could imagine, however, after living with him a short while, why he remained a bachelor. He had some pretty quirky ways. He was given my old room -- a small room filled with grocery inventory and a cot. At night he listened to his radio tuned to a Russian station. Lying in his long underwear he probably hadn't taken off in years, he would mimic the radio voices speaking Russian. "Does he speak Russian," I asked Maggie. "No," she answered. He did speak only in Inupiaq with Martin and Maggie. He wouldn't respond to my English though Maggie assured me he could understand. 

Because he had been in near starvation condition, Maggie felt it best he be given food rationally. Most nights the family had ice cream. When the freezer door at the bottom of the stairway opened, he was down the stairs from his room and at the kitchen table in seconds. But when the toilet seat over the honey bucket displayed evidence of his distressed digestive system, the ice cream for Kiyukuk (Donny called him "Captain K") was off limits. Some evenings we would wait for him to retire then the rest of us would open the freezer door as quietly as possible to retrieve ice cream. Most of the time we got away with it, which was difficult as he had excellent hearing, especially for the particular squeak of the freezer door. 

Blue berries picked in the late summer and fall then frozen were also a regular winter dessert. The first evening Captain K had berries with the family he would take a bite then spit little bits of berry debris onto the floor. Finally he said (in English) "Maggie, who picked these berries?" I first wondered if it was me but then assured myself that I picked a pretty clean bucket of berries and was proud of it. I'm sure he chose to speak English that one and only moment for my benefit. 

He hadn't and probably couldn't wash his hair for a really long time but he didn't hesitate to take Maggie's pink comb from a kitchen drawer and use it.

One morning, standing atop of the stairs, I witnessed the top of Captain K's wispy haired head bending over trying to look through the cracks in the stairs. Beneath the stairs was the honey bucket (toilet) where Maggie happened to be taking care of business. Captain K apparently was trying to peek a look through a narrow opening. He swayed back and forth trying to find the clearest view.  "What'ou doing?" I asked (I had begun to pick up village speak). Surprised I had caught him, he scurried on up the stairs saying his usual mantra, "Yah, yah,"  passing me and into his room. I heard Maggie laughing and I had to join her. I should have been more aware a couple nights later of just how female lonely this 'ol guy was.

One night when I passed his room I saw he was still clothed and reading a Bible but seemed to be having trouble. I offered to sit on the end of his bed and read to him. I had read a passage or two when he grabbed me and kissed me on the mouth. Ewwwwwwwwww! I was surprised at how strong he was as he had trouble opening the front door for the frost on the threshold. But, I should have known better. 

(to be continued) copyright Tamara Ann Burgh, all rights reserved