Tundra Gathering

A vision comes to me from memory. In it I can see from far above, like an arctic tern gliding in long August light. I see a slow spread of people dotting a low valley before a huge, shallow bay.

Faintly I recall the efforts and talk of planning one last tribal foraging at Kweguk. There is a flurry of discussion about harvest concerning an abundant crop of berries. So plentiful were the berries that four families agreed to spend two days picking berries up the coast at Kweguk. Each segment of the Nashalook clan had their own fish camps scattered throughout the Unalakleet basin in Alaska.

Auntie Lillian Ivanoff, Uncle Henry Nashalook, and my mom, Helen Lockwood, had large families, which kept the men busy harvesting the natural abundance of food throughout the seasons. Traditional life is hard work, and careful timing essential to reap the return from plants and animals. There was always danger waiting for the unwary, taking away an important person to greet.

With the advent of Alaskan statehood in 1959, the greater quantity of cashpaying jobs lured my aunt and uncles away from the harvest of the land. Yes, it was during these infant days of statehood, when fewer family members could participate and greatly synchronized efforts were made with the various families of Nashalook clan to gather berries. My uncles got ready to do their part by repairing backboards of canvas made of planks of wood and rope, which would carry the ten gallon wooden barrels up Kweguk valley. They cleaned and repaired hunting equipment, and fixed the tears in the gill nets.

Before the trip, mom baked biscuits and packed berry buckets. Her bucket was a special one made of steam-curved wood, with the seam bound by a tough walrus thong. Once bound, a carved bowl was fitted at the bottom of the frame. At the top was an ivory handle. For the rest of us, different sizes of coffee and Crisco cans were transformed into buckets by fitting wire handles through two opposite holes punched at the top of each can with a quick pound of a hammer on a number ten nail. Several strands of wire were twisted over and over to create a handle that would prevent the cutting of one's hand with the weight of berries.

All the children were fitted with rubber boots, hats, scarves, pants, and jackets for two days of living outside. We needed mosquito repellent and bedding, cooking and eating utensils, and ways to deal with the baby diapers, since there were no plastic diapers at that time. The process became progress in four different households, and then we finally put everything and everyone in wooden boats and made our way up the northern coast to Kweguk.

There the hodge-podge cargo was unloaded on the rock shore, and the resilient boats went back out to sit perpendicular to the shoreline to catch salmon. Canvas tents were set up along flat dry spots near the tundra, while children gathered firewood along the tide line.

After setting out the nets for the salmon, the men hoisted the barrels that would hold the berries upon their broad backs, took up their rifles, and made out for the tundra. The rounded oak barrels swayed the men's gait as they went up a gentle incline. One man dropped a barrel in the open space and moved ahead of the others toward a ridge to be on the lookout for moose or bear. Another deposited a barrel further up a hill toward the opposite ridge. One kept going up the valley to deposit a barrel beside willows growing near a stream where he looked for signs of beaver or rabbits. The last went through a barrier of cottonwood thicket and placed the last barrel on its far hillside.

Back at the beach, the women had all the children fed and ready to harvest the fully ripened blueberries, salmon berries, blackberries and cranberries. Off...