New pictures from Klukwan

               Ready to deal with fish!  You wear a mesh glove on your left hand - if you're right-handed!

My partner who went to Klukwan with me in August just gave me new pictures today after we spent the "debriefing" weekend with 30 other people who went to Culture Camps all around the state of Alaska with Alaska Native communities.

I wrote "travel haiku" everyday while I was gone, having heard something about it on NPR just before I left.  We learned to process the salmon (sockeyes), from the time they were caught (we didn't do the fishing) through cutting, brining, preparing, drying, smoking, canning, processing in the pressure-cooker, etc.  We were a group of all ages from a 4 month-old baby through - well, maybe I was the oldest, but there were several of us "there-abouts!"

Drying fish point upstream
Our lives are close by our food
Their spirits live on

Everyday I awoke to the mountains in front of me, often partially obscured by clouds and fog.

Shapes emerge in gray fog
The mountains revealing themselves
The Chilkat rushes by

Alaska Native villages hold these culture camps primarily for youth around the state of Alaska, often so that Native youth will remember and carry on the traditions of their culture.  Many of the camps include the Native language, which often has been lost and was for years forbidden to them to learn or to use in the public schools.  Klukwan has few children in the village, but a few of the youth performed dances and traditional songs for tourist groups in the summer.

Renewal and remembrance
Old ways, forgotten in new times
We reach back to learn.