TELL A STORY OF A PLACE OVER TIME

"What would the Camel see?" is my version of Clay Good's "What would Raven see?" as I reflect on the story of my years growing up at Lena Cove. The day we moved from the Mendenhall Valley to Lena, I was 10 years old, excited to live on the beach, curious about everything around me when my neighbor, 9 year old Anya, who had lived there all her life told me two very important names. There were two rocks which prominently stood in front of my house that her family had named "Kneeling Camel" and "Chinaman's Hat". Camel was actually two piles of rocks, a small one that formed the camel's head and a larger one that formed his body and trademark hump. These rocks made a perfect resting spot for eagles, crows, ravens, and young girls. The Hat, however, was slightly taller and made a great lookout. It was shaped like a giant triangle with a peak rising out of the high tide of Lena Cove. The Hat is the first place I learned the power of the tide, as I got "trapped" on it from the rising tide when I had perched there to admire the view in the first few days we lived at Lena. I'm sure Camel giggled as Anya paddled a home-made styrofoam raft out about 6 feet to rescue me.

It was 1974. Camel could see Lena Rec Area where Juneau families frequently picniced in the summer sun. The tide usually licked the belly of the camel, tall beach grasses grew out of the rocky, gravelly beach, and a stream rushed out of the forest to the North of our house, separating us from the next neighbor and providing us a source of water for our home. Camel could see there was an eagle's nest in the tallest spruce tree behind our house. Eagles would pause on Camel's back coming to and from the cove, with or without a fish. Camel saw the humpback salmon which spawned in the stream to the South. I wonder if Camel ever knew the children's fear of a haunted cabin back by that stream? For most of my childhood I would only cross the stream in the wide open stretch of beach because I was too afraid of the hauntings up in the deep forest where the stream entered the salmonberry bushes, wound through the Devil's Club, then twisted through a massive steel culvert under Glacier Highway.

Did Camel see the deer that would occasionally drink from that stream? We didn't, but we did see their tracks some mornings. Did Camel see the bear that tipped over our trash cans at night? We didn't, but we did have to clean up the mess in the morning. Did Camel see us in August when we had massive "Fireweed Fights" in which we turned long cottony stalks of fireweed (after the blooms were gone) into swords and smacked one another until we were covered in cotton? Did Camel mind that my little sister and I collected his cousins, palm-sized super smooth rocks, and painted them into artistic creations that our parents called "paper weights"? I think my Dad even used them at his office in town. Camel also watched over us as we waded in the cove and played "house" among the rocks, grasses, and pebbles. When we rafted or floated on air mattresses, strapped tightly into old life vests, Camel watched us make our way home safely.

It was the summer of 1977. Did Camel notice there was a new critter in the house? A baby, Kevin, was born that spring and was the only original family member to have been born and raised at Lena. Camel saw that we tried to raise ducks and geese at Lena, since a portion of the rushing stream to the north had been channelled into a small pond in our yard. The first set of ducklings became food for a wily land otter that had found their cage a tidy place to capture them. We learned how to strengthen the fence against predators and started over. Bar-Too Bunny Barn, now known as Swampy Acres, is where we obtained our second supply of 3 ducks and 2 geese. Snowy, Fluffy, and Cotton were the Peking ducks and Winter was a white goose and Big Bird her gander. We had them a couple of years, where they swam in the cove, rinsed off the salt water in the pond and stream, pecked insects from Camel's back, and eventually became food for the eagles above, another otter, or possibly a neighborhood dog. Winter died of unknown causes and was buried by my sister and her best friend, while I think ol' Big Bird was done in by my mother who had witnessed him pinching one too many children. Once she nearly decapitated him with a 1/2 gallon glass jug of ketchup when he pinched her at a family picnic, though I believe she let him live a little longer... maybe to fatten him up and feed him to us one Christmas when we thought we were eating a Butterball turkey.

TO BE CONTINUED. . .

Inuit resilience and adaptability

(photo courtesy of Teachers' Domain website)

This is a brief video about the adaptability of the Inuit people - merging traditional and western knowledge. Like the indigenous people of Southeast Alaska, the Inuit have found ways to merge ancient and modern knowledge, though as this video shows, it is a work in progress and has not been easy. Resilience and adaptability, and their limitations, are presented in this video. As a school counselor, I am particularly interested in how cultures maintain the integrity of their traditional values and beliefs, how they pass on "life lessons" in the form of oral stories and cultural metaphors, in the face of western influence.

People of the Arctic Video

Thinking of a story

An assignment for this class is to "tell a story of a place over time." I am beginning to think of a story related to the most special place in SE Alaska to me: Lena Cove. Our instructor speaks of the metaphor, "What Would Raven See?". My story, however, is beginning to gel around the concept of "What Would the Camel See?", as a nod of respect to the Camel's Rock near my family's home on Lena Cove.

This is a picture of my niece in 2008 posed in the 10:30 pm sunset on Camel's back:

Thoughts on Place-based Education

When I decided to take this two-day seminar/class, I had no idea how much I would be immersed in reminders of my childhood, nor did I realize how much I'd missed out on learning about this area, even though I grew up in SE Alaska. My knowledge of plants, berries, trees, and shrubs is infantile compared to what I could still learn. Timely reminders to address the forest, the beach, the sun, and all of nature inspire me to continue to pass those words of wisdom onto my children.

What strikes me the most, though, is about language. I think the Tlingit language was suppressed when I was a child in 1960's and
1970's Juneau, though I do remember seeing the dances and hearing the drums and chants during occasional visits from tribal members to school. We didn't learn or hear the indigenous place names, we didn't see the written language, there weren't dual names to local buildings and landmarks. The children of Native descent weren't necessarily encouraged to learn the Tlingit language - maybe in their homes, but not in school or anywhere publicly. This past two days reminded me that those things were probably always there; it's just that they weren't available, obvious, or taught to me. Why? Why not? My best friend when I was growing up was born to a Tlingit mother and Caucasian father. I remember her beautiful Tlingit grandmother, but we learned no words from her. She likely was in the generation of assimilation and had been taught to appear as one of Western culture to some extent.

Here are my thoughts on three of the concepts we discussed on June 7 and 8:

Regeneration: I think of regeneration as providing renewed energy and interest in a project, issue, or social concern. The rise of the use and teaching of the Tlingit language in Juneau over the last 20 years is an example of regeneration, or the regenerating of the value of the language.

Resilience: I think of resilience as the flexibility of a species or culture to maintain it's integrity while existing in the 21st century. It is noted by one of the Tlingit culture bearers in a DVD about Elizabeth Peratrovich and her speech to the Alaska legislature, that the Tlingit people have never been "conquered", but have gone from "repression" by the western culture to "assimilation" into western ways to "parallel existence" with western influence.

Restoration: I think of restoration as the process of returning something to it's original state of being. The example in the STRAW project video was powerful in illustrating place-based education in a natural science setting. The students, and eventually their teacher, worked to restore something to it's original state - the waterways to protect the freshwater shrimp. A number of people at this two-day seminar commented that it would be nice if somehow the herring and sockeye populations in the Auke Bay area could be restored in time.

Just learning

I've just made my first blog and I'm going to learn how to post a picture! I think I did it!

Here's how to do a link! Check out Juneau School District