Paul Herbert catches fish in his wheel - Part 1 of 2

This is Paul Herbert, last Saturday morning, just after 8:00 AM, driving his boat up the Yukon River from his house on the bank of a slough in Fort Yukon. He is headed to the fishwheel that he built two months earlier and hopes he will find a good number of salmon in the box.

Paul made this boat 22 years ago. He says it is an old, tired, boat but it skims across the surface of the Yukon quite nicely.

When he arrives, Paul finds some 15 fish in the box, including these. Driven by the swift current, the wheel keeps turning and the baskets plunge into the water over and over again. Every now and then, a basket will come up with a fish and then drop it into a chute from which it slides down into the box.

Fish in the box. The day before, there had been 30. 

Paul transfers salmon from the box into his boat. 

Paul spreads the salmon out across the bottom of the boat. A few of them are missing their anterior dorsal fins. Paul explains that this identifies them as having been born in a hatchery in the Yukon Territory.

Paul washes his hands in the river.

Paul checks his wheel two, sometimes three times a day. Each time, he adjusts it to make certain it is secure and aligned as he wants it. Each time the baskets plunge into the water, they should barely scrape the bottom. When we hear the sound pebbles tumbling through the wire mesh of the baskets, Paul knows he has the wheel properly set. 

Note the fence that barely protrudes above the water between the bank and the wheel. That fence will direct fish that come to it into the path of the fishwheel baskets.

When he was a boy living out in the woods with his grandmother, Belle Herbert, Paul would sometimes fashion toy fishwheels from sticks. When he grew older and started to fish by wheel himself, he just made them bigger.

The structure that holds the paddles that the current pushes against to keep the wheel turning...

...and turning and turning and turning. It is an easy thing to stand for awhile and watch the wheel, hoping with each half-rotation that a salmon will appear in the basket as it rises from the water.

After watching for awhile, accompanied by the sound of the current, the paddles and baskets splashing into and rising out of the water and the groaning of the wooden axle turning in its sockets, I felt almost as though I was being hypnotized.

No fish appeared in the basket during any of the three visits that I made there with Paul.

Paul with a King Salmon. At sea, the salmon are silver, but grow redder and redder as they migrate upstream to spawn. When they reach this shade of red, Paul notes, the run is nearly over. As the red deepens, the flesh of the fish will become inedible. It has been a poor year for kings. The river has been unusually high and the drift of wheel-smashing, net-ripping sticks and logs heavy.

The silver salmon run should begin soon. Paul hopes it will be better. When the silvers run heavy, the baskets will sometimes pull one up with virtually every scoop - sometimes, the wheel will grab two, three, or even four fish in a single scoop.

This means a lot of work, but also a good staple of food to eat through the winter, and to give to friends, relatives and community members who, for reasons of age or health, may not be able to fish for themselves.

It is time to go back to Fort Yukon, where Paul will soon be cutting fish.

Heading downriver, fish in front.

A young couple from Norway had pulled up in front of Paul's cabin in a canoe several days earlier and he had invited them to set up camp. Julie takes a photo of Paul with the big red king, which he is hoping will still be good.

After Julie gets her photo, Paul gives her a fishing pole, tells her to hold it and pose with the fish and get her picture taken. Now she will have a good picture that she can lie about when she gets home, he tells her.

Paul has some serious work ahead of him. He transfers the salmon from his boat to a box on his fourwheeler. Next, he will take them to the cutting table in front of his smokehouse and then cut them, just as his grandmother Belle taught him to do.

The cutting and smoking will be the subject of my next post.

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The Gwich'in grandmother who lived to be perhaps the oldest person in the world; the grandson she taught with his fish wheel and King Salmon

After thinking about it for a bit, I decided that before I start posting my various little photo stories from the Gwich'in Gathering, I needed to set the context, to run a photo spread that says something about the traditional way of life for the Gwich'in as it has evolved into modern times. Although the term most frequently used to describe this way of life is "subsistence," that word has always struck me as very wrong, for in most American minds it denotes poverty, ways of living that people suffer through only because circumstance has forced them; ways of living that they would flee to join the masses who live the suburban lifestyle if only they but had the chance.

I believe that the word "subsistence" has helped to create the justification that exists in the minds of many Alaskans, Alaskan politicians and writers of Alaska law, most of them urban residents of Fairbanks and Anchorage, that, as citizens of the State of Alaska, they have every bit as much right to harvest the wild animals and fish that live with the Native people in the rural areas as do the rural, Native residents themselves, even if their doing so badly impacts the lives of those who have lived by these animals and fish for thousands of years.

So I decided to begin with a series of photos of Paul Herbert harvesting the salmon that have helped to sustain his Gwich'in people since time immemorial. However, it became clear to me that if I were to do it this way, I would not succeed at getting the essay up until maybe four in the afternoon. I feel a need to post something sooner than that.

So I went searching through my computer and found a photo that I took of Paul's grandmother, Belle Herbert, at an athletic event in Fairbanks in the winter of 1982.

When he was a child, Paul spent much of his life living in the woods with his Grandmother Belle. She is the one who taught him how to catch and cut fish, how to live off the land. She gave him a rich education and a rich life the likes of which cannot be found in any city or university anywhere.

This was the first and only time that I ever saw Belle Herbert, for she died not long afterward. She was said to be 129 years old.

During my first years in Alaska, it seemed that I would find a centenarian or two in just about every Interior Athabascan Indian village that I would visit. There are still a few to be found out there, such as Fort Yukon matriarch Hannah Solomon, now living in Fairbanks, who will turn 102 in October, but I don't find them everywhere the way I did back then.

I think it is because the traditional diet of wild animals and fish, supplemented with wild berries and greens as nature provides, is much healthier than the diet most of us eat today. I sometimes hear vegetarians claim that a vegetarian diet is much healthier than a meat diet but, no, I don't think so. If this were true, then these centenarians that I have met in Alaska Indian country, where a vegetarian would literally have died of starvation, would not have lived such long lives.

I think it's just that so much junk and so much unhealthy stuff has worked its way into our modern diet. It is not the meat, but the junk and the overindulgence that kills us.

This is he, the grandson, Paul Herbert still living from the foods and according to the knowledge that his Grandmother Belle taught him. It's a little tough right now because so far this summer the numbers of harvested salmon have been low.

Still, they have been coming and people such as Herbert have been harvesting them. On the day that I took this picture, this King Salmon was one of 15 that swam into the fishwheel that he had built two months earlier, out of the resources that surround him.

Tomorrow, I will post a series that will show a bit more of the process.

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A pocket camera glimpse back at the gathering before I get going for real; roadside scenes while on coffee break in Wasilla: Baby Jobe in green

That's Harold Frost of Old Crow, Yukon Territory, playing fiddle on the left and Chester Fields of Fort Yukon on base. Yesterday, I stated that today I would begin posting my Gwich'in Gathering images in earnest, but I am not yet ready to do that.

I was very lazy yesterday and it was the only day this week that I would have Margie home with me. I did not even begin to transfer the 360 gigabytes or so of high resolution, RAW images from my big pro cameras from the portable hard drive I took to Fort Yukon into what for the moment is my big working harddrive attached to my desktop computer, until about 8:00 PM.

Those images were still transferring when I went to bed about 12:30 AM. Now I must put them in my photo editing program and start the task of editing and processing and I feel completely overwhelmed. It feels like a task that would take a month to do right.

The very thought makes me feel like I just want to go back to bed and sleep for a year or two.

That's another thing that I really like about my tiny pocket camera - the Canon s90. Not only is it tiny and light, but there is no way to shoot pictures fast with it, so you don't get that many. The ones that you do get have nowhere near the resolution of those taken with my pro cameras, so they do not bog the editing program down and they are quick and easy to work with.

I didn't use the pocket camera much in Fort Yukon, but I did keep it in my pocket at all times and every now and then I did pull it out and shoot a frame or two - such as in this case.

There was a table in front of the fiddle player. I wanted to get a shot from under the table but there were speakers and other gear beneath it, so it was a whole lot easier just to reach under there with my pocket camera, frame it in the LCD and take a snap than it would have been to have crawled under with all that stuff with my big gear and then let rip with bunch of frames.

So for today, I am just going to use  the few scenes associated with the gathering that I did with the pocket camera. Once I get some editing done, you will see Harold and Chester again, along with a whole lot of other folks.

Harold did not come to the home of Ben and Carrie Stevens, my hosts, with his fiddle, but when we all gathered there we could still hear the fiddle music in our heads.

Little two-and-a-half-year old Alex, "Sunshine," must have heard the music very clearly and he remembered well how people had jigged to that music. So the sound and the memory went down to his feet, took hold of them and suddenly he began to jig in the kitchen. Soon, Sunshine had three women dancing with him.

I wish I could dance like that.

This is Jessica Black, who served as Miss World Eskimo-Indian Olympics in 2000. Jessica also spent part of the gathering camped out in the Stevens home in the room across the hall from mine. We became friends, just like that.

She received the scarf tied as a band around her head at a give-away held in honor of a deceased baby boy. After she put it on, she did a short dance, Gwich'in style.

My host, Ben Stevens, preparing moose-rib soup to feed to those gathered at the gathering. Mighty tasty. Excellent ribs. I wish I could have some now. I can't, so maybe I will go to Taco Bell instead.

Ben had to leave early to return to his fish camp far down river, near Stevens Village, his original home.

Just to remind you that I am now back home:

Yes, I am in Wasilla and yesterday after stopping in at Metro to say "hi" to Scott, Carmen and Sashanna, I drove away with an Americano and then took a short drive to drink it. Along the way, I saw this car, parked with its lights on at a corner.

And I saw that someone had rebuilt the memorial for the young woman and her unborn child who had been killed in a collision at Church Road and Schrock. Two crosses used to rise from this memorial, but vandals broke them and messed up the scene.

Now it had been put back together, but without the crosses.

On my last day home before I left for Fort Yukon, I took Margie to Metro and as we waited in the drive-through, a succession of police cars and emergency vehicles screamed by, red lights flashing. A bit later, on our drive, we had just turned off Schrock Road onto Lucille Street when we saw that the road was blocked ahead and red lights were flashing.

We detoured elsewhere through the neighborhood to avoid the scene and then I forgot about it. I did not know what had happened. I never thought about it again until yesterday, when I drove past it for the first time since my return. This is what I saw.

Given the location, my immediate thought was that it had probably been a four-wheeler accident and that the person who had died had been young.

I looked it up online after I got home. Indeed, 17 year-old Cheyanne Jorge had died after rolling her four-wheeler. Her passenger, also 17, was treated at the hospital and released.

Horrible.

Early this morning, I drove Margie into Anchorage so that she can spend the rest of the week babysitting Jobe. Here he is, dressed to match the bathroom colors.

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Snook takes us upriver from Fort Yukon to Circle; Fat Cat comes along but does not accompany us on the drive to Fairbanks

Yesterday morning, I rode about five miles upriver from Fort Yukon with Paul Herbert, "Snook,"  to retrieve the salmon that had swum into his fishwheel, then we returned to his house where we ate a big breakfast of half-smoked salmon (....mmmmmmm.... as good as salmon gets!) coleslaw, apple pie and coffee and then I packed my stuff and we loaded up the boat and motored out onto the river with Fat Cat coming along.

That's Fat Cat, hunkered down near the door as we head upriver, headed east and south, from Fort Yukon to Circle.

Further upriver, Snook waved at the occupants of a boat headed downstream, towards Fort Yukon. You cannot drive a car into or out of Fort Yukon and, like most Alaska villages, once you get there you will find few roads, all very short.

But there is a wide-open, free-flowing, highway system and that is the Yukon River and its tributaries, such as the Black, Porcupine, Chandalar and the many other rivers and navigable creeks that drain into it.

Snook's wife Alma and another woman also traveled with us.

To travel on the beautiful Yukon River is a wondrous and marvelous thing.

After we had been traveling for what I believe was a bit over two hours, we came upon a man who had stopped his boat on the south bank. Snook stopped to see if he was okay. He was. I overheard the man say something about how he was going to be on TV, and how someone had lost her keys.

I mistakenly thought the TV reference was a joke in reference to me and my camera. I had no idea what the lost keys thing was about. 

Although a seasoned veteran of this trip, Fat Cat was a bit nervous. For maybe ten or 15 minutes, she found some comfort on my lap.

After what I estimate to be about two-and-half hours, we reached Circle, where the Yukon was very high and the drift had taken out a couple of fishwheels and nets. Before I transferred into the pickup truck for the drive to Fairbanks with Snook's wife, Alma, several people spoke of Jeanie Greene, famous throughout this state for her TV program, Heartbeat Alaska. She had documented the Gwich'in Gathering and just the day before, I was among those who waved to her as she set off by boat to Circle.

I learned that she was still there, because she had lost the keys to her vehicle and could not drive off to Fairbanks. She was making good use of her time, though, and was taping and interviewing people in the village.

Not long after I took this picture, Fat Cat jumped off the boat and headed into some dense brush just beyond the beach. Alma told me that this is what Fat Cat always does, but when it is time to go, Alma opens a can of cat food and out she comes.

Finally, Alma's pickup truck was loaded and it was time to go. She opened up a can of food but Fat Cat did not come. So Alma began to search for him, calling out his name. At one point, she heard him "meow," but he did not come. This brush is very dense inside and has an undergrowth that is twisted and matted - easy for a cat to move through but hard for a human.

Snook and I joined in the search. Knowing that it would hamper my movement through the dense brush and might prevent me from retrieving Fat Cat, I put my camera down on the grass just outside the thicket.  As Snook and Alma combed the sides, I went to the top of the thicket and began to slowly work my way down through it.

As I did, I spotted the fur of Fat Cat's lower back, very well camouflaged beneath the thick matting. She had gone to ground. I was happy, for I thought she would soon be in my arms and I would be carrying her down to the truck. She was one step out of my reach. "Fat Cat," I spoke in my most soothing voice as I slowly took that step and reached out for her. Before my hands could reach her, she dashed off.

I did not see her again. None of us did, although we searched and searched. To make it worse, for about five or ten minutes I could not find the camera that I had set down, but finally I did.

There was only a tiny handful of houses in the area and it seemed likely that Fat Cat would eventually show up at one of them. One of the occupants promised Alma that she would get Fat Cat and keep her until she could be returned.

There were more people at the boat landing area than usual, Alma noted. Maybe the number of people is what caused Fat Cat to go to ground.

So, with me feeling worried and frustrated - Fat Cat had been just beyond my finger tips and I had not gotten her, as Snook launched his boat back into the Yukon and headed towards home, Alma, her friend and I set off on the three-and-a-half hour drive to Fairbanks.

We soon crossed this tiny bridge.

Not long afterward, we spotted these people picking berries.

There was almost no other moving traffic on the road, but after about 45 minutes or so this amazing vintage pickup truck appeared, traveling in the opposite direction.

We spotted more people picking berries.

Alma sacrificed her own desire to pick berries along with her daughter, Melanie, who drove up the road from Fairbanks to meet us, just so she could get me to the Fairbanks airport on time to catch my flight to Anchorage.

Thank you, Alma. That was exceedingly nice of you.

Somewhere near milepost 50, where we stopped briefly, just to see if there were berries present. There weren't, but there would have been plenty not far away.

As we neared Fairbanks, two men on big Harleys zipped past, going north. This is the guy who was second in line.

Alma dropped me off at Alaska Airlines, pretty close to the last possible moment. Soon, I was on the jet, headed home to heavy rain, Margie, and a troubled sleep in my own bed.

Perhaps, even as I write this, Fat Cat is safe in that woman's home in Circle. I hope so. I think the odds are reasonably good, but for now I have no way to know.

Tomorrow, I will begin to earnestly post a series of images and such from last week's Gwich'in Gathering.

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"Fat Cat" of Fort Yukon

I have been debating what I should put up for today's post: yesterday's picnic outing on the Yukon and Porcupine Rivers with the Gwich'in elders and their guests, pulling salmon out of a fish wheel, cutting salmon, jig dancing, talking stick discussions; people from Old Crow, Yukon Territory, packing up their boats, making their goodbyes and then heading out onto the river to begin their 265 mile boat-ride home.

Instead, I decided to post this image of Fat Cat.

I made this decision for very practical reasons. In less than half an hour, I will get back into the boat with Snook and once again zip upriver to his fish wheel. This is the very last photo that I took on the disk that I used to record my take of this morning and early afternoon, so I just went straight to it with no searching or editing.

Plus, I like cats. I always feel that I have accomplished something significant and worthwhile when I photograph a cat and put it on my blog.

And, it looks like Fat Cat and I will be boat mates tomorrow, so I should really introduce him now.

That will be exciting. Except for the fact that I am having a wonderful time already, I can hardly wait.