 Skip Wallen | Dance of the Halibut Spirit 2 "Roots" {Part 2 of A four part series) R T Wallen © 2018 |
We had already collected the alder and the cedar but neither Pop nor I had a brown bear tibia on hand from which to carve the bone barbs, nor did we have the spruce roots to bind the arms of the hooks together. The butcher at 20th Century Grocery Store on the corner of Seward and Front Streets solved the first problem by coming up with the same bone element, a tibia, albeit from a cow. So once we had spruce roots for lashings, the hooks could be completed. Pop said we had to find spruces growing “in the open, so the roots go straight, not mix up with others”. We knew of such a place at the mouth of Eagle River, twenty-five miles north of Juneau along the coast. Here several copses of Sitka spruce stood removed some distance from the greater forest on a grassy point formed of glacial silt deposited by Eagle River. We could drive out the road almost to its end as far as Amalga Harbor and, to save a hike through the woods, paddle the remaining two miles along the coast in my canoe
It happened that I had an Island in Amalga Harbor and had been asking Pop about its Tlingit name and history. Pop said, “We ask yo’ uncle, Tsee Xwaa. He know.” Johnny Fawcett, Tsee Xwaa, of the Woosh-ke-taan clan was older than Pop by five or ten years. Pop respected him and esteemed his knowledge. He was one of a few people to whom Pop deferred in this area. Moreover, the Woosh-ke-taans had a history in Berner’s Bay, a large bay and river estuary some miles north of Amalga Harbor. Even better, the Woosh-ke-taans claimed the halibut as a clan crest. If anyone knew about the island, Tsee Xwaa would know. He was living in the Native Village, a group of tribal houses in line on both sides of a single road in a section of Juneau that a hundred years ago had been on the waterfront. Now the old beach was buried with fill and development leaving the Village land-locked and a block or so from the sea. I think Tsee Xwaa, up in years, and sometimes a little befuddled, was not completely sure why he got dragged out on an expedition that morning. Pop went into the Thunderbird House and emerged a moment later gripping the old man by one arm. Tsee Xwaa, jacket half on, clutched his cane in the other hand while trying to straighten his fur hat as he got hustled out and loaded into my pick-up truck. Once aboard, he smiled at me blankly, whistled tuneless notes through pursed lips and stared straight ahead as though this sort of thing happened all the time.
In due time we arrived at Amalga Harbor and I launched the canoe while Pop found a crab apple tree and cut a forked limb for use as root digging tool. Two natural features here vie for place in my mind as
It happened that I had an Island in Amalga Harbor and had been asking Pop about its Tlingit name and history. Pop said, “We ask yo’ uncle, Tsee Xwaa. He know.” Johnny Fawcett, Tsee Xwaa, of the Woosh-ke-taan clan was older than Pop by five or ten years. Pop respected him and esteemed his knowledge. He was one of a few people to whom Pop deferred in this area. Moreover, the Woosh-ke-taans had a history in Berner’s Bay, a large bay and river estuary some miles north of Amalga Harbor. Even better, the Woosh-ke-taans claimed the halibut as a clan crest. If anyone knew about the island, Tsee Xwaa would know. He was living in the Native Village, a group of tribal houses in line on both sides of a single road in a section of Juneau that a hundred years ago had been on the waterfront. Now the old beach was buried with fill and development leaving the Village land-locked and a block or so from the sea. I think Tsee Xwaa, up in years, and sometimes a little befuddled, was not completely sure why he got dragged out on an expedition that morning. Pop went into the Thunderbird House and emerged a moment later gripping the old man by one arm. Tsee Xwaa, jacket half on, clutched his cane in the other hand while trying to straighten his fur hat as he got hustled out and loaded into my pick-up truck. Once aboard, he smiled at me blankly, whistled tuneless notes through pursed lips and stared straight ahead as though this sort of thing happened all the time.
In due time we arrived at Amalga Harbor and I launched the canoe while Pop found a crab apple tree and cut a forked limb for use as root digging tool. Two natural features here vie for place in my mind as
Pop Dalton hefts the freshly cut crotch of a crabapple tree before peeling the bark and sharpening the short limb.
the most enchantingly beautiful on the limited Juneau road system: Amalga Harbor and its neighboring Salt Chuck. The harbor itself, unmarred in those days with paved launch ramps and parking areas, held me in thrall on every visit. Three forested islets surrounded the little cove, replicating themselves into six on a tranquil day like this as they mirrored on the undisturbed surface. Through the passageways between the islets one glimpsed the wide reach of Lynn Fjord and beyond it the Chilkat Mountain Range, blue and white in the atmosphere and about 10 miles off. Within the cove, the hooting conversations of ravens lingered in the air. A few minutes wait and a kingfisher was certain to burst onto the scene and settle on an overhanging limb. All the while, with loud impatience, it would rattle out its complaints, raising and lowering its unruly crest and spying down through its reflection to abundant schools of salmon fingerlings and other minnows. Irascible and tough, kingfishers spend the winters here. How they keep from freezing the toes on their little naked, fleshy feet is a wonder. There are lots of wonders about kingfishers. How can their beaks hang on to a slippery minnow, for example, while energetically swinging it right and left as they bludgeon it to death with sweeping blows on a limb or piling? For that matter, how can they bust out of the sea after an aerial dive, yelling the whole time with a minnow in their beak? And why does the female wear two belts, one blue and one reddish brown, while the male contents himself with only a blue belt?
The grandeur and beauty of Amalga Harbor, from a hill to the Northwest looking along the Southeast Alaska mainland. The island under discussion is centered in the view. The salt chuck is just out of the frame to the left.
Then there was the Salt Chuck, a short walk along the shore to the north. Salt chucks, or tidal lakes, are periodically breached by high tides, so their waters are brackish. This one, separated from the sea by a narrow rocky isthmus, collected the dark waters of Peterson Creek draining the mountain valley immediately inland. Most hours of the day and night the creek tumbled over the isthmus into Lynn Fjord, but the highest tides reversed the flow, replenishing the lake with charges of seawater. It was, and is, a beauty. Steelhead trout ascend the creek as far as a waterfall a mile or so inland. One can count on a great blue heron stalking its green margins, and sometimes a flotilla of mergansers, trim and racy, their faces submerged like snorkelers as they paddle along scanning underwater for prey. And there are always black bears.
The island about which I had questions is the main geographic feature sheltering the cove from the seaward side. Entirely forested, with a mostly sheer margin that drops directly into the sea, it lies less than a quarter mile from the mainland, with a beach of fractured blue mussel shells on the inshore side, the only good landing place. The outer side of the island drops immediately into deep water, deep enough that whales steam by within a pebble’s toss. Each year at least one, sometimes two, nesting pairs of bald eagles make their home on it. A couple times each year, on extremely low tides, minus five footers, much of the harbor bottom directly inshore of the island lies exposed and strewn about with starfish of many colors, sea anemones, and, sometimes, hundreds of baby king crabs, perfect little miniatures of their giant parents.
This morning we were on an average low tide with lots of water in the harbor and since the sunny, windless weather promised an easy paddle to Eagle River I took time to circumnavigate the island with the two elders. Pop translated the questions I had about the island to Tsee Xwaa. “They call that island “Kaan xat’ a gook“, Tsee Xwaa said in Tlingit.” He added two stories one of which I recount here briefly, paraphrasing: Before white people, Tlingits from Auke Bay had been camped at this spot and were very hungry, even starving. A shark killed a halibut in the cove, thrashing about and chopping out big bites and when the tide went out exposing the bottom, people salvaged the large chunks of the fish left behind. The second story I heard years later when Pop retold it in a somewhat disjointed way in the office of an opthomologist. The story was somewhat similar in that it had to do with a rescue of people, but this time by a killer whale which drove Dall Porpoises up onto the sandy beach, possibly behind my island or possibly onto the sandy beach at Eagle River toward which we were now bound. I’ve recorded what I have of it as a footnote at the end of this story. **
Tsee Xwaa did not say what time of year these events took place or why people were starving.
Paddling around the shadowed side of the five-acre island and coming out into the sun I looked up to see a mature bald eagle perched on a high snag, a bleached and twisted spire that leaned out over the sea, its tip maybe two hundred feet above us. Resplendent in the morning sunshine cresting the island, white head and tail shining, the eagle preened itself, throwing tufts of downy white feathers into the air, one after another into a cloud of little diadems that glinted around her briefly and floated down like dandelion fluff. I had stopped paddling and Pop, in the bow twisted around to see why. On spotting the eagle he remarked, “Your Uncle taking his bath” (“Uncle” meaning the eagle and signifying a kinship relation in Tlingit social structure between the bird and me.) One of the down feathers wafted over the canoe and without thinking about it, I reached out and plucked it from the air. Pop witnessed this. “Now sometin’ going to happen!” he said. “Put in your pocket, don’t say anything.” Pop was thinking about Gowakaans, Peace Dancers, and the significance of taking eagle down from the air. But that’s another story. Just now, we’re on our way to Eagle Beach.
The wide sandy beaches of the Eagle River delta, rising from a mill-pond calm sea, simmered brightly in the light. Flounders, startled from their half-buried hiding places on the bottom by the shadow of the canoe passing over them, rocketed away through the clear shallows leaving little contrails of sand behind them. A black oystercatcher let loose a spiky-voiced protest at our arrival, stared for a moment with yellow, unflinching eyes, then flew off down the beach. The oystercatcher, called in Tlingit tloo gun’ (fire nose) referring to its fiery red-orange beak, had no grounds for complaint, anyway. I knew it didn’t belong here because it had a nest on a rocky island half mile away. As we glided to the beach, the bow crunched softly on the bottom. No worry about rocks and barnacles lacerating the canvas canoe here. Canoe-friendly beaches like this being a rarity in Southeast, I took pleasure in the easy landing and disembarking.
The island about which I had questions is the main geographic feature sheltering the cove from the seaward side. Entirely forested, with a mostly sheer margin that drops directly into the sea, it lies less than a quarter mile from the mainland, with a beach of fractured blue mussel shells on the inshore side, the only good landing place. The outer side of the island drops immediately into deep water, deep enough that whales steam by within a pebble’s toss. Each year at least one, sometimes two, nesting pairs of bald eagles make their home on it. A couple times each year, on extremely low tides, minus five footers, much of the harbor bottom directly inshore of the island lies exposed and strewn about with starfish of many colors, sea anemones, and, sometimes, hundreds of baby king crabs, perfect little miniatures of their giant parents.
This morning we were on an average low tide with lots of water in the harbor and since the sunny, windless weather promised an easy paddle to Eagle River I took time to circumnavigate the island with the two elders. Pop translated the questions I had about the island to Tsee Xwaa. “They call that island “Kaan xat’ a gook“, Tsee Xwaa said in Tlingit.” He added two stories one of which I recount here briefly, paraphrasing: Before white people, Tlingits from Auke Bay had been camped at this spot and were very hungry, even starving. A shark killed a halibut in the cove, thrashing about and chopping out big bites and when the tide went out exposing the bottom, people salvaged the large chunks of the fish left behind. The second story I heard years later when Pop retold it in a somewhat disjointed way in the office of an opthomologist. The story was somewhat similar in that it had to do with a rescue of people, but this time by a killer whale which drove Dall Porpoises up onto the sandy beach, possibly behind my island or possibly onto the sandy beach at Eagle River toward which we were now bound. I’ve recorded what I have of it as a footnote at the end of this story. **
Tsee Xwaa did not say what time of year these events took place or why people were starving.
Paddling around the shadowed side of the five-acre island and coming out into the sun I looked up to see a mature bald eagle perched on a high snag, a bleached and twisted spire that leaned out over the sea, its tip maybe two hundred feet above us. Resplendent in the morning sunshine cresting the island, white head and tail shining, the eagle preened itself, throwing tufts of downy white feathers into the air, one after another into a cloud of little diadems that glinted around her briefly and floated down like dandelion fluff. I had stopped paddling and Pop, in the bow twisted around to see why. On spotting the eagle he remarked, “Your Uncle taking his bath” (“Uncle” meaning the eagle and signifying a kinship relation in Tlingit social structure between the bird and me.) One of the down feathers wafted over the canoe and without thinking about it, I reached out and plucked it from the air. Pop witnessed this. “Now sometin’ going to happen!” he said. “Put in your pocket, don’t say anything.” Pop was thinking about Gowakaans, Peace Dancers, and the significance of taking eagle down from the air. But that’s another story. Just now, we’re on our way to Eagle Beach.
The wide sandy beaches of the Eagle River delta, rising from a mill-pond calm sea, simmered brightly in the light. Flounders, startled from their half-buried hiding places on the bottom by the shadow of the canoe passing over them, rocketed away through the clear shallows leaving little contrails of sand behind them. A black oystercatcher let loose a spiky-voiced protest at our arrival, stared for a moment with yellow, unflinching eyes, then flew off down the beach. The oystercatcher, called in Tlingit tloo gun’ (fire nose) referring to its fiery red-orange beak, had no grounds for complaint, anyway. I knew it didn’t belong here because it had a nest on a rocky island half mile away. As we glided to the beach, the bow crunched softly on the bottom. No worry about rocks and barnacles lacerating the canvas canoe here. Canoe-friendly beaches like this being a rarity in Southeast, I took pleasure in the easy landing and disembarking.
George Dalton Sr. “Pop” as he wanted me to call him, and the author, out to collect spruce roots. Pop and Tsee Xwaa, both about the same height and stature and each with a cane hooked over an arm, stood like twins looking up the slope of the wide beach to the goose tongue and grassy cover above the intertidal. Tsee Xwaa wore his fur hat and Pop his ever-present short-brimmed fedora. We had arrived on a low tide and so had a gentle climb of sixteen or eighteen feet over the expanse of sloping beach to the grasslands above. Mindful of my friend Amos Burg’s admonition to tie down your canoe even if its in the middle of an Iowa cornfield, I carried the canoe and stashed it out of the reach of the flooding tide hitching the bowline around a driftwood root, not that we expected to be here that long. From the top of the beach we could look out across the level grassy plain to the dark islands of spruce a hundred yards or so distant.
Song sparrows and Lincoln sparrows flushed in short, low altitude flights fluttering back into the waist-high verdure ahead only to take flight again as we waded through. Pop, in the lead used his cane machete-fashion every once in a while to slash a wild celery plant, ee yana aet, from our path. We’d not gone very far before the warming day started to exact a toll, reminding us to stop and remove jackets.
Reaching the first spruce copse and ducking into the shade was like entering the shadowed chill of a stone cathedral. Tsee Xwaa found a comfortable depression on the mossy ground and stretched out, using a spruce bole for a backrest. Whistling without sound he began picking up twigs, cones and needles, rearranging the forest floor within his reach.
Song sparrows and Lincoln sparrows flushed in short, low altitude flights fluttering back into the waist-high verdure ahead only to take flight again as we waded through. Pop, in the lead used his cane machete-fashion every once in a while to slash a wild celery plant, ee yana aet, from our path. We’d not gone very far before the warming day started to exact a toll, reminding us to stop and remove jackets.
Reaching the first spruce copse and ducking into the shade was like entering the shadowed chill of a stone cathedral. Tsee Xwaa found a comfortable depression on the mossy ground and stretched out, using a spruce bole for a backrest. Whistling without sound he began picking up twigs, cones and needles, rearranging the forest floor within his reach.
George Dalton Sr. gets hold of a spruce root and will try to extract as much of its length as possible.
Pop pulled his root digger, now stripped of bark and sharpened, out of the pack and began work. The crab apple had been cut just below a forking branch and again above the crook so that the long part could be used as a handle with the crook angling back, something like a hoe or an adz. This would be the ‘hook’ and was cut eight or ten inches long, its end sharpened to a point. Pop chose a spot near the edge of the copse and chopped the hook of his digger into the earth three or four paces from the tree, snagging and drawing up a root about 3/8 inch thick from a few inches under the surface.
Pulling a good Sitka spruce root from the duff and moss at Eagle River
As he pulled on this root in the direction away from the tree it came free of the earth with a ripping, popping sound, breaking through lesser roots above it. Pop had exposed about 10 feet of its length when it snagged under a larger root that crossed over it. In the forest proper, this kind of entanglement would make it difficult to extract roots at all, much less the long straight kind desired for lashings. Pop cut the larger root with an axe and continued drawing up the prize until it forked and diminished to less than ¼ inch in diameter. Cutting it free at both ends he had a mostly straight run of root about 25 feet long which he coiled neatly and tied off. We repeated this effort until we’d filled the backpack with roots. Mom Dalton would later soak them in water, strip away the outer sheath, and split the roots in half lengthwise.
Pop Dalton and Tsee Xwaa wait for their ride back to Amalga Harbor as the canoe is readied for the trip
The Tlingit elders make their way arm in arm down the Eagle River beach with me behind them portaging our canoe to the shore. An earlier tideline is visible behind the canoe, running around the point. The Chilkat Mountains lie across Lynn Fjord in the distance. Beyond them lies Glacier Bay, and beyond it, the wide Pacific. The only human tracks between the tides on this wild, mile-long beach, are those we made, coming and going. They will be wiped clean in a few hours by the next tide
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