Alaska Dispatches
# 2  —  10 August 2000

Steaming

	I am just back from my first steam of our sojourn here. Since we have no running water, this is the way we will get clean for the year. The steam house is a small structure containing a waiting room, or porch, the steam bath itself and sometimes a second entryway porch as well. The steam bath is an insulated space, perhaps 6 by 10 feet, with an elevated floor covering half of the room, the other half being a pit containing a 55 gallon oil drum turned sideways and outfitted for its special purpose. The drum is covered with an array of pumice and other stones that are held in place by a variety of metal objects and chicken wire. There is a small hole on the side of the drum for stoking the fire within, and a stovepipe leading up through the ceiling to release exhaust.
To prepare a steam the drum is filled with wood and stove oil, and a rectangular metal basin that hangs off of one side of the drum is filled with water. The fire is lit, and when the water in the basin is boiling the steam is ready. To take a steam, you sit in the steam bath and sweat. As the ‘driver’ pours water over the rocks, the small chamber gets hotter and hotter, until you are forced to go to the porch to cool off, catch some air and drink some cold water. After a few rounds of steaming you head back in to wash, filling a small metal basin with water to soap and rinse yourself with.
Traditionally, only the men steamed, and they did so in a large, communal steam bath house. Nowadays almost every household has their own steam, and it seems that people invite each other to steam with them. We have a steam house available to us, but since we arrived after the spring season when you can buy wood from men who collect it by snow machine, we are dependent on others for steams. I don’t know about the women, but among the men there is a macho ethic to the whole thing – who can take the hottest steams, which steam house is the most well built, who smoked whom out of the steam.
 Harry certainly smoked me out of there tonight. I feel totally relaxed, clean and damn good. Steaming here makes the hottest offering at the Kabuki Hot Springs back home seem like a lukewarm shower. Walking back through the village on this warmish August evening after a steam, all tensions have been melted out of my body. My heart racing and my mind as clear as the sky, I feel like I will be able to handle anything this year. In a word, I am happy.
	It is hard to fathom that only slightly more than 24 hours have gone by since I last wrote. Yesterday was a long day since Leisy was gone berry-picking from about 11:00 until 9:30 or so. We had a bunch of boxes at the Post Office, but I was unable to get them since I was single-handedly dealing with Jules. Leisy came home about 2 minutes before I was going to put Jules down to sleep, and hearing her come in, he promptly flipped out.
	Today was better. We cleared out a room for Leisy’s office and consolidated most of the junk scattered throughout the house into another room. As Leisy put it, local move-in condition means we move in, clear out all that was left behind, throw out the old qerrun bucket and clean like crazy. We also picked up about 15 boxes from the post office, including some much-appreciated foodstuffs from Sam's Club and Carr's in Anchorage.
It is such a familiar feeling - the bounty of the early days of a stay somewhere other than home when you have done the shopping and feel so flush with food It is analogous to the feeling you get when you have set up camp and are deciding what to eat on that first night. Or upon arriving home from a trip to the grocery store, sitting there with all those bags in the kitchen, anxious to open and taste everything. Only with 56 cans of rather gross-looking chicken breast in water, the feeling, while on a much larger scale, is at the same time somehow less intense. In the back of out minds we realize that in a few short weeks we are going to be sick and tired of the things we are ecstatic about now.
	It is remarkable how quickly I am growing accustomed to village life. I'm sure we will have low points, but at this moment I am feeling quite comfortable and don't see that staying here for a year will pose much of a problem. Tonight's dinner and steam didn't hurt, and it is Leisy's turn to empty our honeybucket.
	We ate this evening with our neighbors Jack and Josie and their son Gilman. It all worked out perfectly. We were across town visiting some other folks, and started worrying if it was getting late since Josie had invited us over for dinner earlier in the day. Suddenly a call came over the VHF announcing a seal party.
Seal parties were traditionally thrown when young boys caught their first seal. All of the women in the village would gather and the seal meat would be divided and given out. The ritual was essentially a coming out party for the boy who caught the seal, signaling that he was now available for mating.
Seal parties are now given to mark a myriad of occasions, and I understand that there was a string of something like 30 straight days with seal parties here this summer. In a bizarre iteration of keeping up with the Jones’s, hostesses now spend several hundreds of dollars on household knickknacks, candy, and more expensive items – everything from wash basins to candy bars to dish towels to pots and pans. A platform is set up on 55 gallon drums, and the woman giving the party stands up there for a good couple of hours throwing the goods out into the crowd of eager ladies. The women in the crowd shriek and laugh as they jostle each other, trying to snatch more desirable items, or as items blow around above their heads.
Leisy and her friend headed off to the seal party, and since it was the same direction as our house, Jules and I walked with them. On the way we all ran into Josie. She told Jules and me and to go inside her house and to start eating; she and Leisy would go to the seal party and join us later. Women here do not miss seal parties.
Jack and Josie have a great house. You really begin to notice who has the well-built houses and steams pretty quickly once the breeze starts blowing. The best part is that with two daughters, ages 2 and 3, they have a load of great toys, so Jules was as happy as a clam picking through their boxes of toys in a back bedroom while Jack and I dug in to this incredibly fresh baked silver salmon, rice and broccoli. I ate a ton. Jules eventually got into it and ate a bunch of fish as well. Leisy joined us after the party, with a bag of peanut M & M’s, a toy jeep for Jules, and a pasta spoon in tow.
Jack is a good musician and speaks great English, having studied music at Santa Cruz and Sonoma State. He is also the current Traditional Council administrator. There have been some major political happenings and the council changed hands over the summer. We'll have to try to get to the bottom of the local politics eventually. Our hosts loaned us sheets and pillows, so we'll be sleeping on sheets tonight, although after my steam I think I would be fine sleeping in this chair. They also sent us home with a huge piece of king salmon.
	One really nice quality of this place is that in general people look out for each other. I am confident that nothing really bad will happen to us here, since someone will step in to help us out. It is hard to ascertain how much of this is my benefiting from Leisy's years of hard work, and how much is just the way things go here. Nevertheless, the lifestyle is so much more communal, by necessity, and in that way alluring. We were joking with Jack about my mother being worried about us being here, and he laughed and said that people look out for each other. It is certainly more true here than in San Francisco.
	Jules seems to be adjusting well so far. He is as pleased as punch to jump around in puddles and to go see the boats. He has been manufacturing language at an unbelievable pace. Today as we descended the inclined end of the boardwalk bridge he said: "Jules and Daddy walking down down down together." Looking off the side of the road at an abandoned bike in a small pond, he commented: "There's a little bicycle in the water down there.” Despite the challenges I am thrilled to have so much time with him ahead of me. He already seems more excited to be with me, and shows none of the signs of despair from a few months ago at the disappearance of his mommy (whom he has taken to calling Leisy these days). It is hard to believe that he will remember absolutely nothing of this upcoming year. We will have to take loads of pictures, poor substitutes though they will be.

©2000, Michael Thornton Wyman