Pregnant spider walking; Lavina comes to pick up her babies as we wait for the new baby; Hannah Solomon, who lived for almost 103 years

On my morning walk, I came upon this pregnant spider -- VERY PREGNANT! I had the wrong lens to be photographing a spider, but, to quote once again from Donald Rumsfeld:

"As you know, you photograph a spider with the lens you have, not the lens you wish you had brought or might bring at a later time, when the spider is gone."

Lavina had planned to come out yesterday and then spend the night with us so that she could see her babies again, but she didn't. This was because she had been having contractions Friday - not true labor contractions, but getting ready for labor contractions. Then it intensified to the point where she told Jake that it was time for him to take her to the hospital.

So Jake got ready to go and then the pains went away.

Margie and I then made plans to drive the boys back home Saturday. Lavina called to cancel our plans. She and Jacob were going to come out and pick them up themselves.

The idea of her traveling an hour away from her hospital scared me a bit, but I guess she had been cooped up at home too long, and needed to get out.

In the meantime, Kalib took a nap.

Jobe and me on the back porch.

Kalib prunes some bushes as he waits for his mom to arrive.

She arrived in the early evening, with Jacob and Muzzy in tow. She saw Jobe first, so picked him up and just gazed at him. This bed-rest stuff has been pretty hard on Lavina, because she loves to be with her babies but over the past weeks we have had them here more than she and Jacob have had them there.

Kalib then wanted her attention and he got it.

Soon she had them both.

Soon, they were ready to go - and they were taking Margie with them, so she could help out. Margie is one hell of a grandma, I'll say that. Back when we young and making babies ourselves, I never thought of her as a grandma, but she is a grandma and quite an amazing one, I think.

Before they got into the car to drive away, Jacob and Lavina discovered they had to clean dog poop off their shoes.

I jokes! I jokes! I jokes!

They were just checking out the soles of their shoes.

I think their shoes were new, that's why.

They sure look new to me.

Sooner or later, though, they will step in dog poop.

It happens to us all. It happened to me just yesterday... in the marsh that has dried up and become a meadow.

Gross!

Then they were all in the car, ready to go.

And there they go, Jake and Margie waving at me. You can't see Margie's face because she has turned it to her grandchildren, telling them to wave goodbye to grandpa, but I couldn't see them, so I don't know if they waved or not.

Kalib probably did. I doubt that Jobe did.

He wouldn't have been being stuck up or ornery, he's just not quite into waving yet... but he's getting there.

As I left, I climbed onto my bike and pedalled off on short ride, about ten miles round trip. As I pedalled down Seldon, this airplane flew overhead.

You can hardly see the plane at this size. It would show up bigger in slide show view. A few seconds later, I took a shot that I like better, because I dropped the camera down just a bit and you can see headlights coming down the road with the plane above.

But the plane is too small in that frame to even bother posting here.

I mention this less for the readers' benefit than my own.

One day, I intend to include these words in the title of a book I have so far only dabbled at but hope to publish before I die:

I still look up

And I think the one with the car headlights in it might be good enough to include in that book.

So I write this to myself so that when I come back to this page and see this plane, I will know that there is another image that I must go take another look at.

Remembering: Hannah Solomon, 10/10/08 - 9/16/11

Hannah Solomon, Matriarch of the Gwich'in Nation, who passed away in Fairbanks late Friday afternoon - three weeks before her 103rd birthday. July, 2006.

Hannah Solomon dancing at her 100th birthday party.

View images as slides

Katie John, champion of traditional Alaska Native fishing and hunting rights and culture bearer, becomes Dr. Katie John: Part 3 - honored in Fairbanks

At a reception held for Katie John the day before, Dr. Bernice Joseph, UAF Vice Chancellor and an Athabascan herself, stated that all students in Alaska should be taught the story of Katie John - that Katie's is a story that everyone who lives in Alaska should know. I agree, and I had hoped to post a few highlights from that story here so that readers unfamiliar with it could get an idea of the magnitude of what Katie John has done with her life, and what her fight has meant to every Alaska Native - and also to non-Natives who have made this place home yet still believe that respect and justice must be paid to the original people of this state, that the rights that they held prior to our coming did not simply disappear because we came and wrote down a pantheon of legalities upon paper.

My time has been so filled and my schedule so busy that I have not yet been able to do that.*

So, for now, at least understand this about Katie John:

She was born on October 15, 1915 in the upper Copper River basin, into country and society where the only real law was Indian law -specifically, Ahtna Athbascan law. There were no roads, an airplane was a rare sight as was the appearance of a white or other non-Native person. Yet, as it happened, there was a white man in the area who was befriended by her family and he recorded the date of her birth.

Katie grew up in a society where knowledge was found not in books but in stories and teachings passed down and memorized, to be held fast in the head. Knowledge was also gained by living upon the land, by observing the animals and fish that yielded their flesh to the people so that they might survive.

That knowledge was deep and complex. Not many hold it today.

Katie John grew up in this world, speaking her own language, eating her own food, following her parents to the places that they would go to catch their fish, kill their moose and caribou and do all the things necessary for their survival. They did this without the oversight of game rangers, State or federal, without the incursion of law written by people who did not know their ways.

They worshipped and prayed in their way and danced according to their own tradition. 

And then one day as she sought to feed her family by setting up a fishwheel in the same place where her "Daddy" had set up a fish trap and caught salmon to feed her, a ranger, new to her ancient country, knowledgable about what was written in books and on paper but ignorant of her history and the Indian law by which she lived, showed up and told her that she must take that wheel down.

And so began a fight that lasted well over a decade until finally Katie's lawsuit forced the federal government to take jurisdiction over fishing in the waters where she set her wheel away from the State of Alaska. This because, in its over-zealousness to grant "equal" rights to all to what had once been the exclusive right and property of Native people, State law has always refused to recognize any aboriginal right to hunt and fish. The federal government, despite all the many wrongs it had brought down upon indigenous Americans, does recognize aboriginal rights, including those of "subsistence" users to be given a preference over sport users, at least in times of shortage.

Thanks to Katie John, the federal government must now regulate fishing in navigable waters with "subsistence" as the highest priority.

The story is much more complex than this, of course, but I need to move along and complete this post so that readers will know that Katie John not only stood up for her people against the State of Alaska and won, but has now been honored by the State of Alaska, through its most important university, for the determined, principled, courageous stand that she took against it.

The main University of Alaska, Fairbanks, graduation was held at the Carlson Center, not far from the bank of the Chena River. Graduates would number 1141. Dr. Katie John would precede them all onto the graduation floor. As the moment for her to enter drew near, she waited with her granddaughter, Kathryn Martin, for the door to be opened.

While Martin had received her bachelor's degree the previous Friday in ceremonies at the UAF Interior-Aleutians Campus in Tok, just as Katie had received her honorary Doctor of Laws degree, graduates from the rural UAF extensions also earn the right to walk with and be honored with their larger graduating class at the main Fairbanks ceremony.

Ninety-five year-old Katie John raises her hands to acknowledge the applause she receives as she enters the stadium. The red sashes signify that graduates are Native.

Katie takes her position of honor among the seats set for the graduates.

She is followed by the Ahtna Heritage Dancers - most of them her direct descendants.

Then the Ahtna Heritage Dancers took the stage. With the Alaska flag and it's "eight stars of gold on a field of blue" standing large behind them, danced with energy and enthusiasm for their grandmother - for all the graduates - but grandma especially.

Does this look almost identical to a picture that I posted yesterday from the Tok ceremony? Yep, same girl, giving her great or maybe great-great grandma a congratulatory hug. Katie and her late husband, Mentasta Traditional Chief Fred John, raised 14 children and six adopted children.

At the reception the day before, Kathryn put the number of Katie's grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great grandchildren at 211.

Katie spoke of how she had set out to raise her children in the Ahtna way, always speaking Ahtna to them. Then came the time that her children were sent off to boarding school. In the summer, when they would come home and she would greet them in Ahtna.

No, her children told her. At school, their mouths had been taped shut when their teachers had heard them speak Ahtna. They told their mom to speak only English to them. Ahtna was the language of the past, English the future.

Katie did not know what to do. She hardly spoke English at all.

She did her best, and through it all fed them from the land.

In her old age, she has run a culture camp at Batzulnetas, which I have had the privilege of twice attending. There, she teaches not only her descendants and all others who wish to come and particpate the Ahtna way of living.

Noted scholars of significant achievement file past Katie and take their places alongside her.

Katie sits as many graduates file past after receiving their diplomas. A few stop to shake her hand, including Juliana Orczewska, an Ahtna who had just received a Masters in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

Katie and granddaughter Sara Demit, who earned an associate degree while studying at the UAF Interior-Aleutians Campus, congratulate each other.

Granddaughter Kathryn Martin receives a congratulatory handshake from Chancellor Brian Rogers after being awarded her diploma and bachelor's degree in Rural Development. 

Dr. Katie John and her granddaughter, graduate Kathryn Martin.

Katie is congratulated by Chancellor Rogers and other dignataries.

Dr. Katie John - who rose from her wheelchair and under her own power walked onto the stage to accept this honor.

As she returns to her place, Katie raises her diploma for all to see. The Alaska flag, which she predates by nearly 40 years, rises behind her.

Katie blows a kiss...

...to one of her multitude of admirers.

When the time comes, Katie observes as Kathryn moves the tassel from the right side of her cap to the left.

Then Kathryn helps grandma Katie do the same.

As balloons are released to drift down upon the graduates, Katie double-checks the position of her tassel.

The ceremony over, Kathryn wheels her grandmother past graduates toward the exit. See the young woman at the far left with the red sash? She is Crystal Frank, the daughter of a good friend of mine, Kenneth Frank, Gwich'in of Arctic Village and has just received her Master's degree.

To the applause of scholars of merit, Katie leaves the stadium.

Outside, the temperature was in the mid-60's - by far the warmest weather I had felt since I paid a visit to Utah last October. Graduates took advantage of the pleasant weather to stand in the sun, shake many hands, and pose for many pictures.

Katie had been going hard for three days straight now. She is 95, going on 96. She chose to leave and get some rest. As she returned to her car, her family presented her with a copy of the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner that included a story on her.

*I will put a fuller telling of this story as one my priorities for the future. Perhaps I will tell it on October 15, when she turns 96. I won't commit to that date - I could be anywhere October 15, from the Arctic Slope to Wasilla, the Yukon River, Arizona or maybe India.

In time, I will tell this story in greater depth.

View images as slides

depending on the size of your monitor, they will appear larger and look better

Just prior to the honoring of Katie John, I see a Marine Corp veteran of the Vietnam War stop at a red light

This is not what I intended to post today, but it is 12:22 AM and I just drove into my driveway in Wasilla after adding 1000 miles to my odometer over the weekend as I made my way to three ceremonies for Katie John - one in Tok, two in Fairbanks. All this driving and ceremony coverage immediately followed my two weeks in the Arctic, so I am feeling kind of sleepy right now.

What I decided to do, then, so that I could post something quick and then go to bed, was to grab the very first picture that I took today - or rather, yesterday, Sunday.

This is the first picture. I took it at the stoplight on University Avenue and Airport Drive in Fairbanks. I was driving to Sam's Sourdough Cafe to eat a breakfast of ham, eggs, hashbrowns and sourdough pancakes. It was a beautiful, sunny, warm day with temperatures that would rise into the mid-60's - an amazing thing to experience after two weeks spent largely on the Arctic ice, followed by a drive that had taken me through a snow storm and sub-freezing temperatures.

I wonder what this Marine's life story is? What kind of journey has he taken from there to here? I sure would like to know. If you ever see this, Marine, and care to share your story, just get ahold of me and I will help you tell it. If not, that's okay.

No pressure. No pressure at all.

After breakfast, I went straight to the site of the UAF graduation and very quickly found Katie John and then followed her through the process.

After I get some sleep, I will begin to piece together the story of the last three days and then post it Tuesday, probably in three to five parts. Then I will get back to the story of my most recent Arctic travels.

The bite of winter, coming on - Update, 1:01 AM, Monday: Violet is her name

Originally posted at 4:58 PM, Sunday, September 26.

The wind was tearing when I drove out of Wasilla Friday afternoon, gusts slamming so hard into the car that at times it felt like we were going to be blown off the road. Worse yet, it had whipped up the powdered-sugar fine glacier dust and filled the air with it, irritating my throat and lungs and, judging by his little cough, Jobe's too. Our valley trees had been stripped of much of their fall color. The air felt cold, too, the way it does just before winter sets in. Margie dropped me off at the airport and soon my flight was being hammered and buffeted as it climbed through the turbulence roiling off the mountains, but at altitude, the air was smooth. As we descended into Fairbanks, we again encountered turbulence so strong as to cause the stewardess to be lifted from the floor and me to fear for her safety. I had an hour-and-half layover in Fairbanks, extended by delay into two-and-half hours. In the wintertime, when we drop into Fairbanks from South Central, we expect the temperature to be colder there. In the summer, we expect it to be warmer. The weather my last two stops in Fairbanks, the most recent just two weeks ago, had been very warm. But on this day, as I walked back to the plane and took this picture, I was struck by the cold bite in the wind. Winter must be coming on.

There was no snow when I arrived in Barrow. When I first became familiar with the town, back when I was producing the original incarnation of Uiñiq magazine, the snow had always set in for good by now, usually about the 20th of the month. Sometimes, I would hear some of the older elders speak of how things had warmed up, how, when they were young, snow and freeze-up would often set in by the end of August. In recent years, it has often not set in until early October. When I woke up Saturday morning, I found that the snow had come.

I walked to Pepe's for breakfast and saw that the moon was up.

Coming home, I walked by the Chukchi Sea of the Arctic Ocean. The water was dark and turbulent. The wind caught tufts of foam and sent it flying by, in delicately frozen tufts.

The Friends of Tuzzy Library had brought me up to talk about doing Gift of the Whale and to show slides from the book. As starting time drew near, the wind was tearing, snow was flying and I wondered if any more than the five or six people who had already gathered when I took this picture through the library window - very near to starting time - would show up.

As it turned out, people did come, pretty close to what would be the full, comfortable, capacity of the library to hold them. We ate a potluck dinner and then I spoke and showed my slides. It was great fun. They gave out door prizes afterward, including a few copies of Gift of the Whale. Anna Jack, here with husband Simmick, won the first copy. She told me that was good, as she had worn her first copy out. Authors like to hear this kind of thing.

This young lady, held in the arms of her father Bryan Thomas, was youngest person to buy a book, which she had me autograph. I feel terrible, as I have forgotten her name. I thought I would remember it after I addressed a book to her, but I didn't. I don't know about this getting older stuff.

Afterward, I stepped outside. The snow had momentarily stopped flying. This is the bowhead skull that sits between the entrance to the Tuzzy Library and the Iñupiat Heritage Center.

As I walked back to the house of Roy Ahmaogak, my host, I heard a knock on a window to the side. I looked and saw the gentleman at right waving, and gesturing for me to come in. I did, and James and Ellen served me tea and ice cream. Thank you, James and Ellen. Thank you, Friends of Tuzzy. Thank you, Barrow. Thank you, Arctic Slope. I just got a call from Melanie. She says it snowed in Anchorage this morning, but didn't stick. Wouldn't it be nice if we got to enjoy a real, old-fashioned, Alaska winter this year? Except that we don't have any firewood. The summer that just ended was just so tight that we weren't able to get any. We had better get some, soon, though.

The update:

As it happened, two hours after I made this post at 4:58 PM, Sunday, Roy Ahmaogak drove me to the Barrow airport, helped me carry my bags into the Alaska Airlines terminal, disappeared and then quickly reappeared to tell me that Bryan and his young daughter whose name I had forgotten were also here at the terminal.

Here they are: Bryan and one year old Violet, whose name I know now and have recorded in my history of the world as I experience it.

Then I was out on the tarmac, walking toward the Alaska Airlines jet that would take me to Anchorage. As I walked toward it, I wondered if, anywhere in this world, there is another land so magnificent, great and wonderful as Alaska.

I do not wish to offend any of my Outisde readers, but, no, I don't think there is.

And lucky me - right here in the midst of it!! Surrounded by it - traveling through it, calling it home - my home, that I still yearn to know so much better than I do.

View images as slides

They will appear larger and look better

Transitions: Wasilla to Cross Island; same state, totally different worlds

I now back up two weeks, to September 1 - a horribly discouraging day for me. It was a day that I contemplated just giving up, to just say the hell with it, to admit that after 35 years of hard, intense, work for which I have accumulated nothing but debt, I'm finished, exhausted, done, wiped out, my career is destroyed - you plunderers at Well's Fargo bank, just take the house and I will take Margie and go live under a bridge somewhere.

But I didn't think Margie would like to live under a bridge, so I decided to rethink the situation.

The thing that had gotten me so down was that I had been planning to cover the Nuiqsut fall bowhead whale hunt based on Cross Island, 79 miles east of the village and about ten miles offshore from the Prudhoe Bay oil fields. At the end of each summer, the Nuiqsut hunters load up their boats, drive them down the Kuukpik River into the chilled waters of the Beaufort Sea and then journey to Cross Island, where they move back into their cabins from where they launch their hunts. 

Under the bowhead quota, Nuiqsut had four strikes to land four whales. Typically, the hunt will last into mid-September and it has been known to extend through the entire month. On Thursday night, August 26, I learned that the crew of Edward Nukapigak, Jr. had invited me to join them and they planned to leave for Cross Island on Sunday, August 29. If I could reach Nuiqsut by Saturday, I could hop on the boat and go with them.

But I couldn't get there by Saturday. I was flat broke, all my credit cards were tapped out and I had no way to pay for my plane ticket - plus, most of my good, Arctic cold weather gear had disappeared and I needed to shop for more. Even in late August/early September, one can easily get chilled into hypothermia out on the Arctic Ocean and so one must be properly dressed.

I had an invoice out that I knew would be paid soon and then I could buy my ticket, pick up a bit of gear and go - I figured by the first or second of September.

If the weather turned good, I reasoned that the Nuiqsut hunters might land one or two bowheads right away, but that would still leave two or three for after I arrived.

As it happened, when the hunters reached Cross Island, they were greeted by a rare, three-day stretch of absolutely perfect weather conditions with whales in the water and they took advantage of it. This year's hunt took place in record speed and all four whales were landed in three days - the last one on September 1, the same day that I photographed this school bus, secured my ticket north, and pulled together cold-weather gear sufficient to the task I had hoped to complete.

I was very happy for the hunters, but discouraged for myself and very disgusted with myself as well, for I should have been there. Although I knew it would take them several days yet to take care of and put up the four whales, I had missed the hunt itself and for awhile it seemed pointless for me to still go.

I decided to go anyway and to see what I could make of it.

I am extremely glad that I did, because once I reached Cross Island, I cast off my depression, immersed myself in the experience and had a truly wonderful time. Plus, as I missed the hunt itself, I now have a good excuse to return for another, so that I can round out and complete my photo essay on Nuiqsut/Cross Island bowhead whaling.

Cross Island is a cold, windy, place where, just to take a walk one must either carry a gun or walk in the presence of others who are armed.

But it is a fantastic place and when the time came to leave I was sad and did not want to go.

Anyway, this is how I got there:

On the morning of September 2, I boarded an Era de Havilland Dash 8 at Anchorage's Ted Stevens International Airport, bound for the Prudhoe Bay airport at Deadhorse, with a brief stop in Fairbanks. The plane was nearly empty, with only six passengers to fill the approximately 40 seats.

We flew past Denali on our way to Fairbanks. So many tourists come here each summer hoping to see this mountain but never get to, as it spends so much of its time shrouded in clouds.

But on this day it was out, and even the murky, plexiglass, window of the Dash 8 could not conceal its magnificence.

One of my five fellow passengers observes the mountain.

As we cross the Tanana River on the approach to Fairbanks International, the pilot has lowered the landing gear. I see a shadow plane coming our way.

It looks to me as though we are on a collision course with the shadow plane.

We are! We are going to collide with the shadow plane! There is no way to avoid it now!

And yet, it is a gentle collision.

We spend 20 minutes on the ground in Fairbanks and then leave for Deadhorse with even fewer passengers than when we landed. I worry about this, because I don't know how an airline can long operate with this kind of passenger load and I want Era to keep this flight going.

"Don't worry," the Stewardess tells me. "We will be full coming out of Deadhorse."

All three of us passengers then pay rapt attention as she delivers the preflight briefing.

When I first got a bike as a young boy living in Missoula, Montana, I hooked up with some friends and we spent the day riding our bikes all over Missoula together. It was one of the most fun days I had yet to experience in my life.

Not long after I first purchased my now crashed airplane, the Citabria that I called Running Dog, I stopped to spend some time in the village of Anaktuvuk Pass, located elsewhere down there in these same Brooks Range mountains.

As it happened, there were two other men living in the village who also had Citabrias. One day, we all hooked up together and we went flying in our separate Citabrias all about these mountains, cutting through various valleys.

I felt just like I did on that day when I was a boy and rode my bike with my friends, all about Missoula, Montana. But now it was the Brooks Range Mountains, Alaska.

Do you begin to understand why I miss that airplane so much? Why I dream of it night after night?

Coming in on final to the Deadhorse airport, a pipeline beneath us.

Touch down at Deadhorse - the airport that serves the Prudhoe Bay oil fields.

I catch a ride to the North Slope Borough's Service Area 10, where Dora Leavitt of Nuiqsut operates a radio communications center for the Nuiqsut whalers, as well as for those at Kaktovik, 100 more miles to the east. She radios Edward Jr., who sends a boat to pick me up, along with some needed supplies, at West Dock, a slow, strictly restricted-speed, forty-minute drive by pick-up truck from the Com Center.

West Dock.

It is Eric Leavitt who comes to get me. He has packed some freshly-boiled uunaalik from the Nukapigak whale for Dora into a cooler to keep it hot. He hands me a piece.

Oh, my! I had not eaten fresh uunaalik in a long time. Tender. So good.

We pass under the bridge and then head out into the ocean. The absolutely perfect conditions that allowed the hunters to land their four whales in three days - record time - are gone now. It is windy and the water is rough. The boat bounces hard across the waves. I do not take pictures, because I have to give my full attention to protecting my cameras and laptop computer from being pounded into oblivion. 

I do this by pulling them close to me. I use my body as a schock absorber.

We reach the island just as everyone takes a break. I go into the Nukapigak cabin and make myself at home. That's captain Edward Jr. on the left, his brother, Thomas, and Eric.

Soon, the work of butchering the last of the four whales commences again. I go out and put myself in the middle of it.

View as slide show

Images will appear larger and look better