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Today started out incredibly frustrating. Here’s the thing: remember when I was all excited to ride on a tiny airplane across Alaska? Remember when I posted a bunch of pictures and was like “this is so cool, I got to do it!!” Well, after Santosh read my first journal and I asked what I got wrong, he started laughing because that is not a tiny plane. The actual bush plane, which will have to take two trips between here and Telida, because it can’t fit five passengers, is weathered in at the pilot’s gold mine. You heard that right. Have I mentioned recently that I’m in Alaska?
Evidently there’s a hurricane across the Pacific, which is causing a weather pattern that keeps low clouds and high winds over the mine. So, we’re stuck in Nikolai. I can tell that Teresa’s anxiety is rising with the hour, because she loves Telida. She’s been working with people there for 16 years and has a lot of friendships, and I get the sense that the place itself is something really special. When we were talking about it on the first day, Teresa described Telida this way: “in Nikolai it’s quieter than a city, but you can always hear a generator going. In Telida, you can hear the vibration of the land. It’s a different one than what I get at home in Fairbanks.”
Plus it’s blueberry season, and I can see the berry bushes spinning in her eyes. They’re waiting for her upriver… sitting there… ripe… unreachable…
Needless to say, I’m low-key panicky about losing the opportunity to taste those blueberries or feel those vibrations. I want very, very badly to get to Telida, and this morning was a lot of sitting around hoping for a break in the clouds that we knew wasn’t forecasted. It looks like we’ll have to wait until Tuesday, at least, and that doesn’t leave us much time to do all our fieldwork and make it back to Nikolai on Friday, in time for our flight back to Fairbanks.
While we were sitting around inside watching the rain come down, Vicki and Talia stopped by with Taliea’s grandmother, Oline. She’s into puzzles, and has started an ambitious 2,000-piece one in the village office. We chatted for a while and watched Talia while I worked on uploading my last journal. Oline has some funny stories. When her sister Dorothy was being born (in Nikolai), Oline was 9 or 10 and got kicked out of her mother’s room, so she ran around outside the house. An airplane flew past. Later, her parents told Oline that her sister had arrived by being dropped out of the airplane. She believed them, so they nicknamed Dorothy “Cessna.” I asked if her parents had a good sense of humor. “Oh, yes,” she replied.
When she heard that I was from Portland, she told me that she had visited Portland in high school, because she went to Chemawa Indian School in Salem. She didn’t like her time there. It rained too much, she was only allowed to speak English, she missed home, and when the students messed up, the staff used to make them sit on chairs for a long time or hit them with rulers. One time they took her out apple picking, and she and her cousin Elsie picked a whole bag of apples and ate a significant number of them in one sitting. She got so sick, she hasn’t eaten an apple since.
After two years at Chemawa, Oline moved back to Nikolai, where she lived until she met her future husband and moved with him to Telida. When he passed, she returned to Nikolai. I asked how Nikolai has changed since she was a kid. “It used to be more fun,” she told me. “Everyone used to laugh here.” I also asked how Taliea’s childhood is different than hers was. “She’s more spoiled.” Oline picked her up and gave her a big kiss.
Teresa—I think to make herself feel better—said that we should roll with the weather because “everything happens for a reason.” I was still grumpy.
The rain did clear up a bit, so one of Teresa’s friends, Stephanie Petruska, took us out to pick lowbush cranberries. We walked about five minutes from her front door and found ourselves surrounded by them. You might also know lowbush cranberries as “lingonberries”: the soft plants have small, thin leaves and grow close to the ground, and the berries themselves are quite tart. We walked along a trail until we had a gallon collected (and the mosquito bites to match), and then headed back. This time of year, the women in Nikolai go berry picking constantly. Stephanie says she goes out just about every day.
Inside Stephanie and her grandmother Oline’s house (lots of grandma Olines here), we got what I think is the treat of the trip so far. Stephanie made nemaje for us, “Athabaskan ice cream,” which has neither ice nor cream. The dish is made from boiled fish (usually Stephanie uses white fish like sheefish, but this time she used salmon), berries (hence the cranberries), Crisco, and sugar. You can imagine how good a dessert is that’s made with fresh fish, fresh berries, sugar, and fat. I ate a lot of it. You can eat it either at room temperature or frozen, but Stephanie says it’s usually gone before she has a chance to freeze it. Sometimes you just eat it on its own, but we spread it on Sailor Boy Pilot Bread, a ubiquitous staple in rural Alaska. Pilot bread is a kind of hard tack that became popular here because it’s good survival food.
Stephanie also does beadwork, so after we had stuffed ourselves on nemaje, she brought out her projects. I bought a small purse (maybe I’ll have to start carrying purses?). Sam and I think she should start an Etsy store. Anybody in Portland want me to bring something back for them?
Walking back with a belly full of nemaje, the morning of frustration felt so far away. I continue to be so grateful for Nikolai’s warmth and hospitality. “Everything happens for a reason.”
But I still want the weather to break so we can get to Telida.
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