Fish Camp

It's funny, but I'm still not done talking about that one week I was in Alaska. Which tells me I need to make sure I'm updating my blog regularly.

So one morning I spent a couple of hours at a fish camp. A fish camp is where a family cuts the fish they have caught and they hang it up to dry. Each family has their own site and it could be within walking distance or you may need to reach it by a boat. Fish camps are right on the water's edge.

I didn't take any pictures when I went to the the camp. Really, you should be invited to a fish camp, & not just show up. Out of respect, I chose not to bring my camera. I didn't want to act like a tourist. Plus, one of my colleagues was taking pictures for his family who was coming up & that was totally acceptable. So there are pictures, just none that I took.

Fish camp was a huge deal when I was there because the salmon were running. Every family has an allotment of fish they can catch & hang to dry. They also smoke them too. They use the dried smoked meat during the winter time and they had to be finished hanging the fish by a certain time. They hang there for several months.

So I was invited to spend some time at a family's fish camp. I went along with another teacher. I didn't know what to expect, and I certainly did not expect to be cutting any fish. I watched the women cut the fish and we talked about the tradition and where they had learned to do that. We were told of the various seasons and what we could expect to see the upcoming year. We were showed how they use every part of the fish except for the guts. The guts were thrown back into the river (from where it came) to feed the smaller fish. The fish head is actually put into the ground with some other stuff and allowed to ferment (rot). The fish head actually cooks from the heat of the rotting stuff and is then made into a local dish called stink fish. The name comes from the effect of eating the meal....basically what happens to you afterwards. Hmmmmmm.....

So I'm watching her (the matriarch of the family) cut fish after fish. And then she turns to me and says, "You ready to try this?" My response was: "Sure!!"

So she puts a shirt over my clothes and hands me her traditional knife. I'm not sure how you spell it but here's my guess: ulaq (pronounced ew-lock). And I began. I cut off the fish's head (along the gills) then I sliced open it's body. I ripped out the guts & scraped out the blood. Then I cut the fish into two parts. The top part was the fillet part & that was hung to dry, then I cut the back bone meat to hang in a different way. It was tricky & my fish didn't look like the other woman's fish, but I did alright. A man behind me said "Just do that 500 more times & you'll be an expert!"

I have to admit, it was kinda fun cutting up the fish. Afterwards, my hands were covered in salmon blood, but oh well! Even though I was hacking up what used to be alive, I felt peaceful and connected to the village. I even felt at one with the earth, knowing that people were going to benefit from what I was doing.

And really, it was just cool.

I found it funny that a vegetarian would enjoy cutting up a fish. But truthfully, I'm not really a vegetarian anymore. It's too hard to maintain that lifestyle when you are in the middle of the Alaskan tundra. I still haven't eaten cow or pig but I have had salmon & chicken. And I'm sure moose and caribou are coming up for me to try. But I'm okay with that. The animals are treated with respect & aren't suffering, which is why I initially became a vegetarian to begin with.

So that's my adventure of the fish camp. Below is a picture of the ulaqs (????) Enjoy! (And feel free to leave some comments)

Dogs in the Village

I was forewarned before going to Alaska: "Dogs are not pets there!" And I understood that. Or so I thought. Because as I heard this warning, I thought, "Well, they're still dogs and dogs love me!"

That's not quite what the warning was about as I found out. As with everything in Alaska, the dogs are kinda wild. There are some Fido's & Fifi's out there, but mostly the dogs I came across were more like stray dogs. Some were friendly, but other's were scared of you. Even the dogs who actually weren't strays really only trusted their owners.

The kids I saw love their dogs. One puppy followed a girl to the summer camp at the school and ran through my legs to find her inside the school. Everywhere I looked, there was a cute puppy! Normally following a group of kids.

But there's still an untamed nature about the dogs. I'd say they all seemed to be part wolf, but I saw a corgi who was skittish, so there goes that theory!

Dogs in the village can be dangerous. 15 miles from where I was, a 3 year old wondered into a dog yard & the dogs were hungry. Isn't that horrible? I have a feeling that gnarly stories are going to become a fact of life for me. I was only there for one week, but I already have a couple - nothing that happened to me, but I can tell my brain will have to switch over & start to think SURVIVAL as opposed to "Oh! That's pretty! What's over here?" and even "Doggies? Dogs LOVE me!" Yeah, for dinner!

A dog yard is an area where the dogs are kept. And not in fences. Each dog has it's own area with a dog house & is tied down to a post. These are the sled dogs. Now, some people are going to think "Outside!?! Doesn't it get freezing!?!" And the answer is yes. However, these aren't your normal dogs. This is what they are built for. Surviving in snow & running. Puppies are kept indoors until they are about a year old. A good musher takes good care of his dogs, but they aren't made for the inside. It takes 13 dogs to pull a sled. So you can imagine a dog yard.

Walking by several dog yards was actually kind of intimidating. They watch you. And not a tail wags. They sit and watch you. Their eyes follow you as you walk by. If you walk by close enough, they start to bark at you. I'm pretty sure those ones were part wolf. I'm telling you, common sense tells you to be careful in a dog yard!!

I did venture into one though. Mike Williams, Jr ran the Iditarod last year. His father has been running it for years. A teacher who taught in the village last year invited us newbies over for dinner, and she invited Mike Jr. He was very nice. He was very polite and soft spoken. After dinner, we went to his dog yard. He has 40 dogs. Probably more than 40....I didn't see his puppies.

Can you say night & day difference with the dogs? These dogs were so friendly! One dog (my favorite) was howling to get our attention! Huskies, malamutes, & mixed dogs - all were gorgeous! Some dogs tails were wagging so hard I thought they were going to hurt themselves! That was one of the coolest moments...everywhere you looked there was a dog wanting your attention. I was in dog lover HEAVEN! Okay, some of the dogs weren't too sure about us, but most of them were happy to see us. Now, I kept to the edge of the path, I didn't want to walk through the middle of all those dogs. But I probably would have been okay.

Mike is planning on running the Iditarod again. I think that's very exciting! There's also a smaller dog sled race that happens right on my river in the winter time! You can bet I'm taking pictures of that!! (I didn't bring my camera that day, otherwise you'd be seeing tons of pictures of dogs.) (Especially of Flash, he was my favorite!)

I Want to Suck Your Blood!

This post is dedicated to the mosquito, or rather the swarm of mosquitoes that attempted to suck me dry during my "recon" trip.

I had bought bug spray. Leaving on my kitchen counter was not part of the plan. Smooth, I know. But my roommate (I shall call Miss L) loaned me her bug spray.

Now, I had some reservations about constantly have pesticides on my skin. So I was careful where I put on the bug spray. I missed a spot.....



I tried to outsmart them, but I failed. They aren't any bigger than the mosquitoes we have out here (I was told I missed the bigger ones) but they are meaner. They went for my hair and went through my jeans.

Why a post about mosquitoes? Because by the end of the week, I counted over 30 mosquito bites. The ones on my hands & feet were the worst! Yeah, they got me in my sleep.

But they loved me!! They would swarm around me as I walked. I started walking to the school swinging my hands in front of my face, quickening my pace, creating my own type of cardio. I looked cool and graceful, like a dancer! (Maybe not so much...)

So there are some things I learned:

1) You need bug spray

2) Spray it ALL OVER yourself: hair, over clothes, and at night - This is war people!!

3) Try all bug products (I'm so getting that thing that hangs on your belt!!)

4) Mend all cracks in window screens (I found duct tape works well).

5) It's better to use two hands to slap a mosquito dead than try to catch it in one.

6) I can't wait to get a bug zapper to inact my revenge.

7) I HATE mosquitoes.

24 Hours of Daylight

If you notice, I don't refer to any daylight in any of my previous posts. Mostly that's because I forgot I was going to be in Akiak during the summer soltice. Which means - I never saw darkness during the week I was there. If there was a twilight or any bit of the sun setting, it happened so late at night that I was already alseep. And when I say the sun was shining, it was like a mid-day shine: bright, bright, bright!

I didn't think the daylight would really mean anything different. And it wasn't annoying. It wasn't anything negative, but there were some effects it had on me that I never saw coming....

1) I was not tired. A part of me was exhausted, sure. But overall, it would be 11:30 or midnight and I was not ready to go to bed. I just wasn't tired. I had to force myself to go to bed. And then I would crash!

2) I had all this energy. You know how people say they wished they had more time in the day? Well, go to Alaska! I'll give you an example: one day I got up to go to a fish camp (a future post) at 10:00. I stayed there for two hours when I went to the summer camp and helped out there until 3:00. Between 3 to 5 was spent with the IT guy, fixing up our laptops. At 6 we had dinner at another teacher's house and after dinner, we went to a dog yard (future post). After that it was about 8. So another teacher and I walked back to the school to check our e-mails. The internet went down while we were there. So we walked backt to the housing. It's now 9 p.m. Time to wind the day down & go to bed, right? Nope! It's time for another visit to the fish camp (I stayed home & caught up on my homework).

The activities never stopped! At midnight, you could look out of your window & see kids walking to and from the river. You weren't tired and there was still stuff you could do.

3) I had four meals a day. My mentor explained that the constant daylight increased your metablolism and you needed more food. So at 10:00 p.m., it was second dinner time. I felt hungry most of the time.

And this makes me wonder....will the opposite to all of this happen during the darkness? Because I will be there during 24 hours of darkness too. The nice thing that I will be awake to see some sunlight, but what will happen? I'll just have to wait & find out!!

So that's my experience with the constant daylight. Overall, not bad & I got more tanned being out by the river. So I went to Alaska & got a tan!!

Here's a picture of the closest thing I saw to sunset. And that's only because it was a raincloud covering the sun!!

Musings on Akiak....

It's taken me several days before I can sit down and even try to describe my experience. The flight was great. When I saw the tiny little bush plane, I excpected to be scared. I hauled myself in the airplane (no easy task) and strapped myself in next to the very cute bush pilot. (By the way, I don't know if they come ugly or plain.) I expected to be scared taking off....I waited for it. But no, I was good. And away we flew.....

Soon it became time to land, and here's where I expected to get scared. Again, I waited for it....the black hole to form in my tummy, but again nothing. The wheels touched down ever so gently and I had landed in my village.

Now here's where things got dicey. Before I can really explain what happened, let me give you a crash course on the stages of culture shock:

Stage 1: Excitement - Wow! I'm here!! There's my roommate!
Stage 2: Problems - Okaay, the windows are boarded up to prevent vandalism? Why are there no doors on the bedrooms? Wow, my room has no closet & is really tiny! The 24 hour sunlight makes me not tired at midnight. If I order something it will either take weeks or I pay double to triple the amount.

Stage 3: Adjustment - This is where I am now. I met more people. I met the kids (who quickly helped me move out of stage 2). I went participated in more activties. I've got plans to make my room cozy & homey.
Stage 4: Stability: This is the next stage where I will have a sense of home. Things will have settled down & I will feel a part of the community.

I wanted to explain these stages so you will understand that when I laid down on my bed the first night thinking, "Dear God! What did I do!?!" You will understand that it was part of the process I had to overcome. There's nothing wrong with Akiak, it's just a different world out there. And I really did think I could take my Benicia apartment living and transplant it out on the Tundra of Alaska. Clearly that first night was a wake-up call.

That was actually the worst night. Things got better immediately. I woke up with a fresh sense of "CAN DO" and started re-evaluating what I was going to bring to Alaska. And I really liked my roommate. She is awesome. I have never spent so much time with someone & not wanted to kill them by the end of the week.

I met some amazing people! My colleauges, the villagers, and the kids. The kids are what really saved me. I was feeling very doubtful in myself & I started playing with the kids at the summer camp. After juggling with them & laughing & playing, I felt like I could breathe! Whatever challenges came up, I could face them and I would make mistakes but give me time and I could do THIS! That's when everything spun around and I felt better.

There's actually so much I want to tell, that one post isn't going to be enough. I am going to end this post, but on a good note. We got the boards off our windows & my little home is actually quite cute and will be a very nice place once my roommate & I put our finishing touches on it. So here are some pics of the village: (the brown building is the corporate store). Enjoy!