omes the Sun

 Here Comes the Sun

Kake, Alaska

September 15, 2022

What a great day! The sun was out, Kake was a pleasant surprise and the people who guided us about were so forthcoming. 

Did I mention the sun was out? For the first time since Matthew Island. Blue skies, no wind, no rain. It was the best day of the trip. Everyone dug out their sunglasses, hats and sunscreen for our morning visit to Kake. It once had both logging and fish processing industries but those are gone along with half the population. 550 or so Tlingit people remain, more or less living a similar subsistence lifestyle as there ancestors have for 1000s of years. 

Before we left the ship, Fallon, the Cultural Practitioner, and two of her former students came aboard to welcome us, talk a little bit about life in Kake and sing some Tlingit songs. Fallon is a learned speaker. Even though she grew up in Kake, the Tlingit language and culture were discouraged to the point of near extinction. She left Kake for a while, but returned so her children could grow up there. She began taking language lessons from the elders (Tlingit is not a written language. It has 40 consonants, 8 vowels and a range of guttural sounds.) an eventuality began teaching school children (100 students K-12) their native tongue. It’s distinctive rather than lyrical. Her sidekicks, young women in their 20s, wore gorgeous capes decorated in buttons and embroidery with their tribal animals. They sang a couple of native songs and You Are My Sunshine in Tlingit and then it was time to board the tenders and go ashore. 

We did a little shopping at a craft market set up for us in the community center/basketball gym just off the dock. Jim was hung ho to buy our grandson a drum like the one Fallon played but since that is pretty much textbook cultural appropriation that was a no go.  I opted for a necklace made by a local silversmith instead. I can almost hear the sigh of relief coming from Lucas’s parents. 

The pride of the city is the 132’ totem pole, the largest ever carved from one single spruce tree. It was commissioned in the early 70s and began the restoration of the Tlingit language, customs and art. It is a story totem that honors each of the tribes with carved interpretations of their mythical stories. It was once painted in black, white and teal, but is now weathered and grey. The Tlingit believe that totems shouldn’t be restored, but allowed to age naturally and eventually return to the earth, called “walking into the forest.”

Across the street, in the fire department’s garage, Fallon’s brother, was working on a commissioned totem for a customer in Juneau. He was carving a red cedar he guessed to be 300 years old. 

And speaking of forests, some of the conifers are draped in a light green material like Spanish Moss in coastal southern trees. This stuff is called Old Man’s Beard and only grows in very pure air. Lots of deep breathing to fill our lungs with the good stuff.

We had a special guest, the eldest of the elders, Marvin, age 90, talk to us about his life. Charming guy and a proud Korean War veteran. Courtney and Kelly (they all have Tlingit names that can’t be spelled phonetically) gave us the practical information of living in Kake. Most are employed by the local or state government, the school, the clinic. Their electricity is generated by diesel in Juneau. The state subsidizes some of the cost. Food and any other supplies come by water from Seattle once a week. The women says their biggest expenses is freight. A gallon of milk is $12, $2 for one onion and a single  avocado will set you back 7 bucks. 

Their protein comes from fish they catch or moose they hunt. Fallon has three deep chest freezers; one for fish, one for meat and one for everything else. Today is the first day of hunting season. As she drove us back to the dock on an old, but very comfortable Princess Tours bus, Fallon was keeping an eye out for the first Moose head of the season mounted on the hood of the proud hunter’s truck. We didn’t see that but there was a man filleting a big halibut on the dock by the tenders. 

The wildlife highlife was watching a trio of black bears filling up with the dead and dying spawning salmon from a bridge over the stream. FYI Bears prefer the heads. Lots of birds helping themselves to the salmon buffet, too. Also FYI, dead and rotting salmon stink.

 

We had to head back to the ship by noon when our ship headed down the Inland Passage towards Wrangell. After lunch Myrta and I went up to the bridge to watch the captain and others doing their jobs and to look for whales. Various crew members take turns with binoculars watching for wildlife in the water ahead. It didn’t take long for the first humpbacks to appear, blowing and slapping their tales. Then we had an escort of porpoises for a while.