Rainin. Least the smoke from the wild fires is gone.
Sick an tired of eatin nothing but tallow that goes down hard. The Indians dont have much food to speak of an we have nothin to trade anyways.
July 15
Its me agin. The Colonels fever broke at last so hes gettin better but still just rides in the boat with not much talkin or helpin.
Im scared out of hell with these rapids. Nattie & me do most of the paddlin with poles to keep us out of the sweepers. The water is fast an theres big rocks an trees to run smack into. Seems all the rain is swellin the river more so that trees are topplin in. River like a notted braid so we got to pick wich way to go rite about the time its too late cause the waters fast an were alredy going some way. I dont like it much atall but I try an not lose my head.
July 16
Mitey glad the river is slowin. Just one big channl. Wether cleard up to.
Past by some Indians camped on shore. I shot a round into the air to greet them. Scairt the hell out of them. They all took to runnin into the woods. All but one old woman staid an we got some dried fish from her to cook in our tallow wich is a nice change for our bellies. Cant wait to find the tradin post to get some real vittles.
July 17
Nothin to report cept a long day on the river. Lutenant says we made 60 miles. Got some more meat an fish from some Indians. They talk a pidgin of English an Indian that we can kind of figure. They say were almost to the Yukon. There we mite come across the steamboat.
Dear Walt,
I’m getting close to the end of the transcribing, and I’ve been thinking a lot about something you mentioned in your last letter. Do I feel a sense of loss when I read these pages? It’s a difficult question for me to answer, because the question itself makes certain assumptions. But the short answer is no.
I also want to give you a long answer, and I hope you don’t mind, Walt, because I find the topic really challenging and interesting.
So let me begin by pointing out that I’m not one, or the other. I’m both, or more accurately, many?—?Wolverine tribe, Russian, Irish, Swedish. And that just pertains to some of my ancestry, which I think is only one aspect of a person. There are so many other labels people like to assign. Where am I an insider, and where I am an outsider? It all depends on where I’m standing and who is trying to put me into which box.
But what makes the question of cultural loss the most uncomfortable, and difficult for me to address, are the inherent definitions built into it. If a group of people is described as existing in a state of loss, it is necessarily therefore lesser, and those that took greater. It’s such a limiting and two-dimensional idea. Who defines wealth and success? How can we say this person is valued less or more, is better or worse, because they are a part of one culture or another, and why would we want to?
When I was 9 years old, my mom was making my favorite breakfast?—?sourdough pancakes with blueberries and black bear sausage. It was a clear September morning, and we were hoping my dad might be home soon from hunting camp, so I’d helped my mom clean up the house and my brother had started a fire in the woodstove. Outside the wind was picking up, and with every gust, yellow birch leaves would get blown off the trees, and I remember thinking they looked like spinning gold coins.
I was just getting the syrup out of the cupboard when there was a strong knock on the door. It startled me, because it was so pounding and unexpected?—?nobody ever knocked when they came to our house, they just walked in. My mom looked worried, too, and then she opened the door to find a tall Alaska State Trooper standing there in his blue uniform, Mountie-style hat, and holster. He’d come to tell us that my dad had died in an airplane crash in the mountains. He was flying out of his hunting camp when the weather turned bad.
My father was an Irish-Swede?—?his great-grandparents were immigrants who had come to America to escape poverty in their own countries. When he was 19, he moved up to Alaska from Minnesota because he wanted to be a big game guide. He fell in love with my mom, and he never left Alaska again.
I remember my mother crying for two days straight, and then she stopped crying and started organizing the potlatch. My dad’s friends held a wake at the bar, where they drank too much Jim Beam and shot rifles in the air in honor of my dad. And then my mom’s relatives from all around Alaska started showing up at our house. There was this endless amount of cooking and eating?—?moose meat, salmon, wild blueberry pie?—?and everyone was telling stories. My great-uncle played fiddle, and the old people danced and sang. They all slept on our living room floor and in tents in the yard, and it seemed like they were here for weeks.