-->
“I walked all the way up to Wales and then back down again,
and I’ll be walking toward Buckland next,” the woman spoke in her English
accent to the crowd gathered at Koyuk Covenant Church. “Nobody has walked that route before.”
“Plffffffbbb,”
Gram said to me under her breath. It was
her incredulous half laugh that she makes when someone says something ridiculous. “We used to walk like that all the time,” she
explains to me referring to the people she grew up with and around in Wales,
Alaska when she was a little girl.
Born in a
time before motorized travel was the norm in bush Alaska, she remembers moving
from Wales to Nome via Umiak (an open wooden framed, walrus hide covered boat).
“My daddy,”
she says matter-of-factly, “walked from Wales to Tin City and then back again
when he went to work.”
“How far is
that?” I ask.
“Only about
ten miles one way,” she answers.
Out of the
church and years removed, she returns to her walking stories, “My grandfather
Ayuluq told his boys that the ocean is a no-man’s land and that they should find
land jobs. He atiktaq (drifted out) when
the ice broke away from the shore. He
was out hunting seal and didn’t know he was drifting.”
Ayuluq had
walked out on the ice west of Wales in search of seals. He had been successful in killing one small
spotted seal and was walking back home pulling it behind him when he discovered
the ice was no longer attached and he was drifting out to sea.
“Back then,
boys would go to the qasgi and learn all kinds of things. The men would sit and work on their tools,
fix hunting things, and the boys would watch.
They would talk about how to survive,” Ellen looks away remembering, “too
much music in their ears now days. The
kids learn in school all right, but they don’t learn how to survive in emergencies. Anyways,” she adds, “Ayuluq learned to ration
the seal he caught should he ever drift out on the ice.”
At home in
Wales, Ayuluq’s wife worriedly watched his extra mukluks where they were
hanging. Some small breeze continued to
move them. She knew that as long as his
extra mukluks were moving that he was still alive.
Floating
further out to sea on the ice, Ayuluq repaired the mukluks he was wearing. As he rationed the seal he caught, he used
its skin to patch the small hole in the heel that was beginning to wear away
from walking on the coarse ice.
The wind
and currents began pushing the ice flow south and Ayuluq ran aground on Sledge
Island just outside of Nome. The ice did
not reach to the shore and so he was stuck on the island by himself. People from the mainland had camps on the
island, but no one lived there year-round.
“He went looking
through the igloos (sod homes) that were there to see if he could find any
food. He found a seal oil lamp with a
little oil left in it,” Gram makes a disgusted face, “it was nothing that anyone
would want to eat, but he had nothing.”
Gram makes a small bowl out of her hands to show size, “it would have
been cloudy and old,” she emphasizes.
Back out of
the igloo and looking around the island, Ayuluq found two dried up Tomcod heads
hanging outside another house.
“He ate
these heads with the seal oil,” Gram who is not a fussy eater scrunches up her
nose. “The ice finally reached to
Sinrock and he walked from the island back to the mainland,” Gram says as if it
is an everyday occurrence.
“The people
at Sinrock said they would take him back to Wales after break up in a boat, but
he didn’t want to wait. After the women
there fixed his parky, he walked. That
is what they did in those days especially if they didn’t have dogs: walk, walk,
walk.”
There were
no roads leading from Nome to Wales in those days as there are no roads
now. By skin boat, it still would have
been quite a journey, but Ayuluq wanted to be home.
“I knew you
were alive is what his wife said,” Gram repeats, “your mukluks were moving just
a little bit.”
 |
| Mountain meets the sea in Wales (photo courtesy of Jessie Towarak) |
No comments:
Post a Comment