A Story of Renewed Friendship, Part II
An invitation to Alaska
You can read about our reunion here in Part I of this two-part story.
According to Wikipedia, Yup'ik (plural Yupiit) comes from the Yup'ik word yuk meaning "person" plus the post-base -pik meaning "real" or "genuine.” Thus, it literally means "real people.”
The First Morning
The salmon I held in my hands was a five pound miracle. I had just released it from the net that was pulled on shore, its body squeezed tight between the nylon netting, made tighter by its fight to escape. Its gills were entangled making it even more difficult for me to release it. Its slippery, silver skin made it hard to grasp, even with my rubber gloves. I watched Scott and Clara Torrison and their son Luke, their brother-in-law Joe, and their nephew Kenneth, effortlessly remove the salmon and toss them one by one up the beach just beyond the net where they would be loaded into the back of a pick-up truck filled with a slurry of ice and water. The less time out of cold water was important to harvesting the best wild-caught Alaskan salmon. Speed and efficiency removing then from the net was key, without damaging the skin and the flesh. I imagined the whole salmon laying flat on a white Styrofoam tray with clear plastic stretched tightly over the top, calling out to shoppers from the refrigerator case in the seafood section at Whole Foods or Costco . It would be clearly marked Wild Caught Pacific Alaska Salmon and would stand out from the cheaper farm-raised salmon in the next case over. The Torrison's had years of experience and their talent removing salmon from the net was clear. I was frustrated by my slow pace and even surprised when my firm grasp of the mid-section of one salmon let out a loud gurgling as if it had lungs, it’s body arching and twisting still trying to escape. It took days to improve my technique so I could move faster and feel that I was helping the collective team. After a time hunched over on my hands and knees picking salmon, I straightened my back and looked toward the horizon line obscured by a heavy overcast sky so the water and the sky joined as one.
The Salmon Return Home
The salmon were on a journey from the Bering Sea, through Bristol Bay, to their birthplace up the Nushagak River, into the Wood River and Lake Aleknagick where it would spawn and die along the shallow shores and tributaries. Their bodies turn a brilliant red color as they expire in a three to five year life cycle that’s been repeated over and over again for thousands of years. Along the way the salmon have fed marine mammals, bears, generations of Native people, Missionaries and Russian settlers, corporate fisheries and small family enterprises like Scott and Clara Torrison’s compound in Ekuk, Alaska, a fishing village on Bristol Bay, a three hour flight in a Cessna from Anchorage. It’s been passed down through Clara’s Yup’ik Native Alaskan lineage with fishing rights for using gill nets from the shore. I was invited to spend a week this summer with them harvesting Red salmon (Chinook) from the nets they put out twice a day at high tide. My goal was to find a balance between observation taking photographs for this photo essay, and participatory, jumping in to be a part of the family crew, laying my gloved-hands on the cycle of nature that draws the salmon home.
Scott, the Pilot
Before my arrival in Alaska, Scott asked me if I experienced air or sea sickness. The question had an impression of adventure in it, as if our journey to Ekuk would include one or both means of travel to our destination. I knew there were few roads that connected Alaska and Scott mentioned he had a Cessna to get around. I answered, “No, no sickness,” although after years of cancer treatments accompanied by plenty of nausea and brain imbalance I wasn't sure how I would react. Scott picked me up at the curb at the airport in Anchorage just like I picked him up at the small airport north of Bend, Oregon two months earlier. We drove to his house in Chugiak just outside of Anchorage so he could organize his flight plan, check the weather report, and pack last minute things for the 3 hour flight from the small community airport near his home to Ekuk. Scott warned me that if there was any chance of bad weather—and the weather changes fast in Alaska—that we would delay the flight. It looked clear all the way so we loaded the Cessna. I felt reassured at his safety measures and donned my headset, buckled my seat belt and prepared to see Alaska from 1,000 feet.
Perspective
I’ve thought a lot about my perspective of life since my most recent recurrence of cancer eighteen months ago. After radiation treatment to my brain and spine and the science of immunotherapy that keeps my disease stable, I find my view of the world, even the mundane chores of daily life, to be a miracle. And now through the window of the small airplane I find the landscape below me to be almost indescribable, a map of my interior self, of rivers and tributaries winding its way through the tundra like arteries in my body, disappearing and resurfacing, always moving, diving into aquifers or joining larger waterways to the sea. While our flight elevation remained the same, the mountain range ahead cleaved in two to form a deep valley through which we flew, the mountains on each side of the plane seemingly growing skyward, remnants of receding blue glaciers pouring water down from it’s melting ice into waterfalls that spilled from the cliff face into the growing lake below. The week before I was in the cancer center receiving my immunotherapy treatment, the IV bag hanging from a pole above me to allow gravity to drip medicine into a vein in my arm, then pumped through my heart and dispersed through my arteries to search and destroy rogue cancer cells. From the air, my perspective of the earth, of my body, of my life and my survival was finely tuned, like hearing Ave Verum Corpus chorale from Mozart for the first time, where words aren’t enough to express the immensity of the experience I was in, the nature that surrounded me, the distance between life and death and where I sat in between the two, my lifetime relationship with Annie, our three children and eight grandchildren, all entertwined in my psyche, in my soul. My brief flicker of my light in this world was held in geologic time, in mid-air, between the majestic mountains we flew through with glaciers of ancient ice and as true as the blue water below us. With thirty minutes to go we exited the mountain range and emerged unto tundra once again. The clear sky grew cloudy and rain began to fall. Scott reassured me that the heavy mist that obscured the windshield wasn’t a problem, and flying lower at 500 feet he would navigate the final stretch and safely land at the small strip of dirt runway near the shore in Ekuk where Clara was waiting for us in a pickup truck. After Scott tied down the wings to cleats in the ground in case of high winds we drove a few minutes to their family compound and the warm cabin where dinner was ready.
The Cabins, Coffee and Truck Time
We ate all our meals together in the small main cabin where Scott and Clara slept in the loft upstairs. I was sleeping in their daughter, Holly’s, cabin near the bath house, their son Luke, had his own cabin closer to the pond, Kenneth, their nephew, and Joe P., their brother-in-law, had their own cabins near where the trucks were parked. Although summer, the weather was cool on most mornings. The central stove warmed the cabin and the smell of coffee, and Tater the dog, welcomed us as we entered. Clara would get up before anyone and brew a full pot of coffee to make sure the crew — the family — was fueled up for Truck Time, the designated time to meet at the two pick-up trucks parked at the entrance of the compound closer to the beach. Scott was serious about Truck Time. If the schedule said 6:00 a.m. Truck Time, he meant 6:00 a.fm. Depending on the tide schedule we would eat a hearty breakfast before pulling the nets, other times we would head out in the dark just before dawn and eat breakfast after the catch. It was up to us to schedule our coffee time at the cabin early enough to make Truck Time. It was during these early morning coffee rituals that Scott and I would have some of our most intimate conversations and remembrances of our childhood and sharing of lessons learned from our adult lives.
The How-To of Gill-Netting Salmon from the Shore
Scott had impressive spreadsheets of tide schedules and pounds of salmon caught at each net pull. The pull itself took 2 trucks, one ATV and five people, six if you include me. I would take photographs with my 15 year old Canon SLR with a fixed 50mm lens, use my iPhone for candid photos and video clips, then jump in to help and pick salmon from the nets. I would watch and learn, the first day struggling to handle the first one. I would remove one slippery salmon to every five the others would remove. We would toss them a few feet up the beach just beyond the net. While we were picking, one person would take the truck to the salmon production facility (known as The Cannery but no longer canning fish) a fast 10 minutes down the beach and onto a one-lane dirt road and have the bed of the pick-up filled with a slurry of ice water. Upon return we had emptied the net and the salmon were tossed, two, three or four at a time — depending on technique — into the ice. From the cold water of the artic sea to the ice water in the pickup bed to the cannery, the salmon stayed fresh and ready for market. Once a pickup bed was loaded with salmon everyone would try to guess the amount in pounds, based on experience and how much the bed sank on the tires. On at least one occasion they needed two trucks to haul the large catch to the cannery, literally a ton of salmon. The nets would be returned to the water in an ingenious pulley system using a pickup truck and lots arm strength, then tied to an anchor on shore ready for the second pull of the day in the early evening.
Salmon for Dinner
Lunch was usually sandwiches, grab and go style, always with a pot of coffee on. Clara timed dinner around the second net pull. We had fresh salmon one evening that was a reminder of its life cycle at sea, eating small fish and crustaceans and Zooplankton, turning its flesh a deep red, rich with nutrients, protein and healthy fats. The salmon have fed generations of Yup’ik Eskimo families in this fishing village through a long lineage of ancestors, the tradition passed down through generations with only technology changing the method and efficiency of the catch. And now it was feeding us a short distance from the shore where it was caught.
Family
To the Torrison’s, maintaining their seasonal fishing camp and salmon harvest is more than just a side family business, it is the essence of family itself. It’s a place to connect with their grown children and grandchildren that goes beyond the spreadsheets on Scott’s laptop. Sitting at the dining table in the warm cabin, wet coats drying on hooks from the ceiling above the stove and Tater curled up in his bed, I felt the welcoming love of my childhood friend and his family as if they were my own. His family was born through Scott’s adventure as a young man when he moved to Alaska in his mid-20’s, with a deep respect for nature, Native Alaskan culture, hard work, perseverance and faith. The family also has experienced hardship and the challenges of grief when Clara’s sister died much too young of cancer. And now here I was, a guest in their home in my own fight with terminal cancer, a reminder of their loss, but also a place to invest their empathy even though they risked another loss. When Scott and I were childhood friends my mother was alive and his memories of her were now accessible to me. Over our morning coffee I would drift between my nine-year old self and my sixty-year old self as we relived stories from the early 70’s in Evergreen, a time when the freedom-to-roam philosophy in childhood was yet to be named: it was just normal for kids to spread their wings. We would spend countless hours in the woods building forts and playing make-believe. Spending time with Scott brought me closer to my mom and my carefree childhood before her death, healing a tear in the tapestry of my youth.
The Steam Bath
During the day between high tides my favorite thing to do was take a steam bath. Next to my cabin was a small building with a shower, enough space in the entry area to change, hang towels, sit on the bench to cool down and a separate door into the steam room where a large cast-iron stove sat, ready for wood to fuel the experience. Luke would build a fire in the stove and stoke it until it was hot and embers of burnt wood filled the bottom. A slight crack between the stove and the stove door kept the right amount of air flow to power the burn. Orange light leaked through the crack and produced a flickering light show on the plywood floor. In the corner of the room was a water source. I filled up one large pot with water and then I used a smaller pot with a handle as a ladle to pour water over the top of the stove. It helped to stand back as I poured the water on the top of the stove as the reaction was violent, the water dancing and jumping from the surface of the stove as it turned from solid water molecules to vapor, the steam filling the room with wet heat. There was a plexiglass window that would let just enough light in to see what I was doing. After a few doses of water on the stove the room was filled with a dream of mist, a liminal space between the physical and the spiritual worlds, my imagination floating in the warmth, the beginning, the ending and the in-between. The moose antlers hanging on the outside of the bath house as a totem welcomed me into this way of thinking, a continuation of my perspective from the plane, me, the person, the spirit, as a part in the natural order of things, the steam in my lungs, the salmon in my hands. I sat outside to cool down as the cloud cover began to open to blue, the sun illuminating the tall grass around me in iridescent green.
A Dinner Prayer: A Lesson in Gratitude and Empathy
Before every meal a prayer was offered. First by Scott, and then over different meals, by each member of the family. I hadn’t had the experience of saying a prayer out loud communally in a long time. Yes, I’ve been praying like crazy since the brain metastases, and others have prayed for me. I’ve had prayer circles started for me , Buddhists chanting for me, groups of people meditating with me in mind. I asked Scott if I could offer the dinner prayer one night. I didn’t expect it to be so emotional; words that are whispered internally and then spoken out loud seem to compound in meaning. Like many families the Torrison’s had been touched by cancer. Clara’s older sister, Ronda, died of cancer not long ago and I felt how this family had been tested by her passing and how they opened their home to me, a person with terminal cancer and a reminder of their loss, praying with me that my cancer would not progress. Just as the steam bath washed my body and opened my spirit, the power of communal prayer opened my heart to the divine, to the cycle of life, to nature and the gift of the salmon we were eating, and the power of human creativity to not only survive, but to live in grace.
When I was packing my bag to head home Scott brought me four salmon fillets in airlock bags frozen solid so I could bring them in my suitcase to share with Annie and our family. Never has a meal I prepared meant so much to me. Every choice I made from when to remove the salmon from the freezer, how to cook it, what side dishes to serve with it, and the day we ate (Sunday), everything was a very deliberate and intentional choice, yet still allowing for creativity in the cooking, like Mozart writing notes to a musical score, letting the salmon sing the story of its nature and the cycle of life.
“Quyana" means thank you in Yup’ik.
Perspective, the power of prayer, nature and old friends. What a great experience and wonderfully written piece.
I enjoied so much to read it! A great story! What a happening!