Tag Archives: Alaska bush

Old Tikigaq–The Last Shaman

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The last of the shamans of Point Hope, a man by the name of Masiin, lived in this house in the now-abandoned village of Tikigaq.

The history of shamans in Inupiat culture is a complex one. At the turn of the century, a man identified in texts as both a shaman and a chief, Atanjauraq, grew wealthy trading with the whale hunters of several nations who had settled near Point Hope in a polyglot village called Jabbertown. The ruins of this village are still discernible, albeit barely, as raised mounds a mile or so east of present day Point Hope. Atanjauraq’s increasing wealth was accompanied by a taste for alcohol. As he grasped for ever more power, he created enemies and ended up murdered by his own people while sleeping off a drunk.

Shaman Masiin, the last shaman of Tikigaq, died of natural causes in 1958. In his book The Things That Were Said of Them: Shaman Stories and Oral Histories of the Tikigaq People, Tom Lowenstein reports this story told by an individual named Asatchag.

“It was 1953, wintertime. My wife invited Masiin to supper. And after we had eaten, the old man told several stories. Then he called me by name and told us he’d been traveling last night. He’d been to Russia. And when he’d flown round for a while, he saw the Russian boss. ‘That’s a bad man,’ said Masiin, ‘so I killed him.’ Next day, at three o’clock–we had a battery radio–I listened at my coffee break. The news announcer said Stalin was dead.”

To add mystery to the above story, it is reported that Masiin did not listen to American radio, and knew no English.

Cooking in the Alaska Bush: Salmon Pesto Ravioli

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Flash frozen just after being made, these ravioli are ready for a few brief minutes in boiling water.

Is it really worth making your own pasta?

That’s what we wanted to find out. So when we shipped staples up to our home in Point Hope this summer, we included a 25-pound bag of semolina flour and a CucinaPro manual pasta machine. And we eschewed buying the bags of dry pasta from Costco that have been standard in our kitchen for the past several years.

The verdict? It’s definitely worth it, provided one has the time–which, happily, we do. That being said, with each batch of linguini or ravioli we turn out, we are becoming more efficient. Two sets of hands make the work easier and faster, and the pasta itself is amazing! The flavor is superior to store-bought dried pasta, it cooks up in a fraction of the time, and the variations one can create are limitless.

Below is a salmon-based ravioli filling we recently created.

Salmon Pesto Ravioli

½ pound salmon, pan-fried in olive oil, skin on

1 tablespoon dried Italian seasoning. Morton & Bassett or Spice Hunter offer tasty mixes.

1 ½ tablespoon garlic, chopped fine

2 tablespoons finely chopped pine nuts

¼ cup mushrooms, chopped fairly fine

a few grinds of black pepper

¼ cup – 1/3 cup pesto

Olive oil

Sherry (optional–no sherry for us out in the bush)

1. Place cooked salmon in a glass bowl. (Remove skin and cut it into small pieces and add for maximum flavor.)

2. Combine chopped pine nuts, garlic and mushrooms in a small bowl and set aside.

3. Heat a little olive oil in a small frying pan. Add pine nut, garlic and mushroom mixture, and sauté until cooked through, stirring frequently–about 2 to 4 minutes. Add to salmon in bowl. Include the oil in the pan. (Add Sherry while cooking mixture, if desired.)

4. Add remaining ingredients to the bowl. Use a fork to mix thoroughly, breaking up the salmon. Add additional olive oil, if needed, so that mixture holds together. Cover and place in refrigerator for an hour or more.

5. Use mixture as ravioli filling.

6. Serve ravioli with a lightly seasoned marinara sauce or with an olive oil topping, such as onions and sun dried tomatoes sautéed in olive oil.

Finish with grated Parmesan cheese and perhaps a couple of grinds of black pepper. A Willamette Valley Pinot Noir would be the perfect complement. Another good choice would be Chardonnay.

The Bones of a Village

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New enough to reveal steel and aluminum nails, old enough to be well-weathered by the Arctic climate, the bones of this seal-skin whaling boat were left behind when Point Hope (Tikigaq) relocated two-and-a-half miles inland in the 1970s. Point Hope is one of the longest continuously inhabited places in North America.

The Inupiaq name for Point Hope Village, Tikigaq (tick-ee-yahk) means index finger and described the way the gravel point once hooked into the Chukchi Sea. Time and tide long ago washed away the crook of the finger, leaving behind a triangular point near enough to deep water that the whales that first drew the Inupiat people here thousands of years ago still swim close to shore. The 2.3 mile hike from the current town out to the point gets a little tough once the road ends and the pea-to-chunk-size gravel begins, but it is well worth the effort. In addition to bowhead and other whales, which are frequently sighted, the collision of currents at the point holds large schools of finger-sized baitfish, which in turn draw flocks of Arctic terns, gulls, murres, puffins, jaegers, guillemots and ducks while various sandpipers patrol the shore. At times, the sea and sky are filled with hundreds–if not thousands–of birds. The small fish also attract roving schools of pink, silver and Chinook salmon and sea-run Dolly Varden which in turn are followed by spotted, common and bearded seals. Walruses show up from time to time as well.

The walk to the point passes through the Old Village, a ghost town of semi-subetranean homes made from sod, whale bone and driftwood as well as more modern, wood and metal houses. It’s fascinating to walk through the Old Village and contemplate what life would have been like up here before electricity, running water, guns and gasoline engines–when the only “grocery stores” were the great herds of caribou 25 or more miles to the east, bowhead whales swimming in the freezing Arctic Ocean, and the various fish, seals, berries and plants gathered in their seasons.

Cloudberries and Freezer Jam

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Ball Jars filled with freshly-picked cloudberries (often locally called salmon berries). We’ll add a little lemon juice, pectin, and sugar to the crushed berries, mix and simmer this in our bread maker for an hour-and-twenty minutes, pour the mixture back into the jars and put them in the freezer to set. This will provide us with some of the most tantalizing jam imaginable. Cloudberry jam… 

The morning was cool and cloudy, with mist and banks of fog rolling across Point Hope. We’d been told that we’d find berries about three miles east of town along Seven-Mile Road, and so seven of us had gathered to make the hike out. Two of the men carried 12 gauge shotguns and a third carried a side arm. Bears are always a possibility.

The wildflowers which all but carpeted the tundra when we arrived here nearly a month ago are mostly gone now, though here and there a few tiny yellow Alaska poppies and beautiful blue but deadly monkshood and other flowers are still blooming. And then, right about at three miles just as we’d been told, there they were… cloudberries, growing together in small patches where mounds of earth were just high enough above the boggy tundra to allow roots to drain. The unripe cloudberries (Rubus chamaemorus) were deep red and beautiful. The ripe ones are the amber-orange color of Chinook salmon flesh, giving their close relatives, salmon berries (Rubus spectabilis), their names.

Wherever cloudberries grow across the upper latitudes of North America and Europe, they are a prized delicacy, agreeably tart when barely ripe, becoming creamy rich and sweet as they continue to ripen. They contain twice as much vitamin C as oranges. Growing very close to the ground, the berries were surprisingly inconspicuous at first. But once our eyes adjusted to what we were looking for, the tundra seemed to sparkle with their red, orange and amber glow.

We picked for about two hours, happy to have worn Muck Boots as we slogged through the soft, wet ground. By the time hunger caught up with us and it was time to head back, Barbra and I had about three pounds of berries between us–enough for a few jars of the freezer jam which would make the hike well worth the effort.

On the walk back, the sun began to push its way through the thinning clouds, lighting the land around us. It was then that Barbra and one of our friends spotted a large white bird perched motionless on a hump out on the tundra. “It’s got to be an owl,” I said. “Let’s see.” We made our way toward the white shape until there was no doubt we were looking at a large snowy owl. These owls are huge, the heaviest in North America. When it finally spread its magnificent wings and lifted off, it revealed an underside of almost pure white–a male in its prime, grown fat on ground squirrels.

Reflections

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At 18, when I moved out of my parents’ house and moved to San Francisco, I had my first taste of feeling really alive. I remember days when I would walk around the city and I felt this incredible high. I didn’t know it then, but it would be a taste I would always crave…life. When I moved away from the city, I let myself fall into a rut some might call “The American Dream.” Marriage, large house, child, career track and decades down the road a retirement plan hanging like a piece of magical fruit that would make the hours, days, weeks and years slogging through a job I didn’t particularly like all worth it.

From time to time I, experienced flashes of the feeling I’d experienced in San Francisco. But hemmed in by the walls of the rut I was in, these flashes only left me feeling antsy. I needed to do something. I thought it was an itch to travel. So I quelled the feeling by planning little trips. I distracted myself with little projects and little classes. The choice of the diminutive word “little” is with purpose. The activities were small gestures designed mainly to let me avoid looking at the larger sense of dissatisfaction with my life. The BIG need.

Up here in Shishmaref, Sundays are devoted to tasks like laundry and baking–tasks that allow me to engage in reflective thinking. Lately I’ve begun to notice that the antsy feeling is gone. The need for something vibrant in my life is satisfied. When I saw Shishmaref from the sky for the first time, tears came to my eyes. I felt alive. I felt like I was doing something. Over the past few weeks, I have realized that I have always felt I was meant to live an extraordinary life. The life I initially chose for myself as a young adult couldn’t have been a worse fit. I was not meant to live a life of safe routines. This is not to say I’m an extremist and want to live on the edge. But it does mean that I enjoy doing things off the beaten path. Generations ago, living in Shishmaref would have been hard. Living in Shishmaref now is extraordinary–not extreme, but out of the ordinary. I am experiencing a life that isn’t usual. I still walk my laundry to the machines every weekend (today I had to plow through fresh, powdery, knee-high snow), and take out the trash (and then burn it at the dump every couple of months) and shop for groceries (in a sparsely appointed store that would fit many times over in the Safeway where I used to shop)…This life is very un-rut like. I feel like I’m living the life that I was intended to live.

We took a big risk moving up to the Alaska bush. We (foolishly) accepted the first two jobs we were offered without doing much research. Our haste contributed to a year that at times has been rocky. But in taking this risk, we discovered that we love living in the bush. We feel alive here. Moreover, working up here puts an infinite number of summer adventures at our fingertips.

With risk comes the chance to lose, and to lose big. But by taking a risk, there is the opposing chance…the chance to win, and to win big. I feel like I am winning…really big.

That taste I had of life many years ago in San Francisco is now part of my regular diet. It manifests itself in feelings of happiness, freedom, adventure and love. There is a contentment that penetrates to the marrow of my bones. It almost feels as though my heart has struck a new rhythm. A smile comes to my face more often. I feel lucky to finally be living an extraordinary life.

Snow Blindness and Homemade Pizza

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Chronology is the only thing that snow blindness and pizza have in common.

The sun making its way across the sky now has an incredible effect when it’s overcast. I was told to make sure I had good sunglasses. I was also told the snow is really bright. This week, it was snowing and overcast. Who needs sunglasses, right? As Jack and I headed to the store and back, I had to literally pull my hat down over my eyes and take his arm like a blind person. I couldn’t see! And it actually hurt my eyes to have them open. The moral of the story – NEVER go outside without my sunglasses, regardless of the weather.

The pizza part of the week has no pain, nor any lesson attached. We tried making pizza a few times…experimenting with different recipes with varying results. As our peanut butter dwindles, we decided to make pizzas for lunch. Using the best of our dough experiments, I settled on a recipe using the bread machine. Then the culinary genius is turned over to Jack.

The pizza sauce and delicious toppings were easy for him. The pizza above pictured has a sauce infused with garlic and herbs. The toppings were seasoned chicken, sun-dried tomatoes, and olives. The part he is beginning to master is the whole throwing it up in the air and spinning it in order to stretch it. So far, so good. None of the crusts have landed on the floor…

The cafeteria food is pretty good, but we still make the kids jealous when we pull  out our delicious pizza slices from our lunch sacks!

Grocery Shopping

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(The current mode of transportation for us is a snowmachine towing a sled. Cool, huh?)

Last summer, we shipped up 30 rubbermaid tubs full of provisions for the year. We calculated out how much rice, beans, pasta, flour, canned products, tea, coffee, etc. that we thought we would need. We spent a full day shopping, packing, and shipping our groceries. From Anchorage, it cost about $.75 per pound to ship the containers to Shishmaref. In addition to the mailed tubs, we stuffed three coolers full of frozen goods (meat, juice, veggies) and hand carried those out here. We actually saved all of our lists and have them analyzed and ready to use again this coming summer.

We estimated as best we could what we thought we would need for a school year. I’m impressed how well we have done. We have supplemented our initial shopping with items from the two stores in Shishmaref. The stores have quite a bit of ready-to-eat processed food. We were surprised at how much was available at the stores. We are careful. Sometimes the products are outdated. Our grocery shopping at the stores is usually eggs and fresh fruit or veggies. The eggs run about $8 per 18. Because eggs are too hard to ship ourselves, we rely on the stores up here.

People up here take opportunities to go to Anchorage to do fill-in shopping. Otherwise, we can “bush order” groceries through the mail from Fred Meyer or a couple of other companies. Most companies will charge a packing fee, the cost of the groceries, and the cost of the shipping. Besides flying in and out of here, groceries are our biggest expense.

We had an opportunity to go to our district office last weekend. The picture above is the last of the grocery shopping for the year from the village store at Unalakleet. We bought frozen vegetables, apples, butter, onions, gum, and other items. After spending $212, hopping a 10-seater bush plane, and being toted behind a snow machine on a sled,  our groceries are home and we are stocked up for the last part of the school year.

Banana Split ala Alaska Bush

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We spent the last couple of days finishing up projects and watching lots of football with friends. A perfect end to a great weekend? A bush-style banana split. Curious?

(Warning-the following blog entry may make you crazy with cravings for a banana split…read on with great care…)

Bananas rarely appear at the store. A beautiful golden bunch was waiting for us at just over a dollar a banana. They were perfectly ripe and unbruised. They tasted creamy and sweet. These bananas begged to be used in the perfect split.

Several months ago we happened across heavy cream at the store and bought them out…twelve cartons. We quickly realized that we had two weeks in which to do something with these or else they would spoil. We made four different kinds of ice cream: rocky road, chocolate chip, vanilla bean custard, and toasted almond. We also froze whipped cream topping and squash pie filling. Whew…used every carton.

A good banana split needs more than just ice cream and bananas. Toppings! We found a bottle of Smuckers caramel sauce at the store. Ok, that was good. How about hot fudge…homemade! Oh my…I made the best hot fudge I’ve ever had in my life. It was chocolately and smooth and oh, so tasty.

Nuts! Don’t forget the nuts. Jack toasted up some chopped pecans in butter. He sauteed them long enough for them to get hot and absorb the buttery goodness.

There it was…a creamy golden banana, halved.  Scoops of home-made rocky road, vanilla bean custard, and chocolate chip ice creams. A drizzle of caramel topping. An avalanche of home-made hot fudge –so hot it melts the ice cream –. Generous scoops of toasted pecans drenched in butter. All topped with a few dried cherries.

The dish was set in front of us and two minutes later it was a glorious memory.

Shishmaref 2010

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Golden tufts of grass offer a tell-tale that Shishmaref’s short summer has ended. In another two months, Main Street (shown here) will be covered in snow and snow mobiles, which are locally referred to as snow machines, will replace the few trucks as means of transportation. The ATV’s, known universally as Hondas in the Alaskan Bush, are pressed into service the year around. 

We spent this last summer traveling and moving from California to Alaska. I had promised to start a blog when we finally settled in. With this promise in mind, I contemplated… “Where do I start?”

Where did the adventure of Alaska begin for me? There was the decision to apply for jobs in the bush. No, it was before that. The beginning started during our 42 day adventure to Alaska and back in the summer of 2009. Actually, that was not really the beginning. Before our trip, Jack and I planned and dreamed about spending a summer in Alaska for three years before our trip. We poured over maps. We read everything we could get a hold of about camping and fishing and roaming around Alaska. We subscribed to magazines. We checked anything and everything on the internet that seemed relevant. I would read a book and Jack would read a different one and then we would trade.We had no boundaries. It could be a boating trip. Maybe a car camping trip. Time limits would not hold us back. We could spend a summer. A whole year was not out of the question. The rule was no rules. We had a huge map of Alaska tacked up on foam board so we could pin ideas onto the map. It was exhilarating and revitalizing to research and plan this adventure.

When we finally had outlined our timeline and itinerary of our trip, I was so excited I couldn’t sleep. Was that the beginning?

I thought about my personality. An Alaskan adventure was a metaphor of something true to my core. I have always wanted to be on the road and have always wanted to be outside where most people haven’t been. So the beginning has always been there in seed form. It was just a matter of nurturing the seed and bringing it fully to life.

When we flew into Shishmaref this summer and I saw Shishmaref from the co-pilot’s window from where I was sitting…tears came to me eyes. I inhaled a deep breath and thought…this is the beginning.