Alaska Dispatches
# 23  —  14 July 2001

Comfort

I am feeling more and more comfortable here in Piniq, and the end is in sight. Folks have started asking when we plan to leave, and we have an answer; we even have plane tickets. My days of hunting, fishing and steaming will soon come to a close.
Leisy is pregnant, and has developed an untimely aversion to fish. We both crave greens, but her longing is extreme. The other night we were watching the movie Philadelphia, in which Tom Hanks plays a lawyer dying of AIDS. In a pivotal scene Hanks’ character meets with Denzel Washington’s character in the hospital. Hanks looks terrible. Gaunt, pale and immobilized by his connection to an IV drip and a bevy of medical machinery, he is clearly close to death. Dramatic underscored music reaches a crescendo as the two men talk for the last time. In the background an orderly strolls across the frame pushing a food cart. Leisy suddenly perks up and asks: “I wonder what kind of food they’ve got on those trays?” It is time to get her out of here.
On the other hand, we entertain fantasies of what it would be like to stay, or to come back to live here again. I imagine that in a few months this place and our life here will seem so far away. Jules, of course, will come to remember none of it. But that we are even considering staying is a testament to how far we have come this year.
The summer has been working out quite well for me. Leisy’s pregnancy precludes her from taking hot steams and from traveling on the rough ocean waters. Also, many of the people that she hopes to interview and interact with are either out of town working at various canneries or extremely busy with subsistence. We have also hired a capable teenage girl to watch Jules as needed in the afternoons. I have fallen into the rhythm of regular fishing trips and nightly steaming sessions.
I am called with an invitation to steam almost every night. In fact on nights when I don’t get the chance to steam I find myself having trouble getting to sleep. I feel like a core member of my steaming group, and have become an active participant in the unremitting teasing amongst the guys. 
As with steaming, so goes fishing. I am invited pretty much every time Peter and Junior fish. I have gone out for salmon, whitefish and herring, traveling to Dall Lake and up and down the various rivers that run through these parts. Halibut fishing on the ocean is still the most fun. Although the change is certainly subtle, I must be getting better at it, since I am catching bigger and bigger halibut. I caught my first trophy fish the other day – a 4-footer.
We were about ten miles out and had been fishing for a couple of hours when I felt a mammoth tug that bent the tip of my rod to the water’s surface. The fish fought like crazy. My muscles burned as I reeled and pulled, reeled and pulled. I finally tugged the monster to the surface and Peter shot it twice with a handgun. That just pissed the fish off. He dove deep, pulling out my line. I reeled it in again, and Peter shot twice more before grappling the fish to help me pull it up into the boat. For the rest of the day I couldn’t help periodically looking over at my giant halibut. Peter busted me. “You just want to keep looking at your fish, don’t you,” he said. “It’s a great feeling, isn’t it?”
Learning to hunt and fish is a cycle that repeats itself. At first, I simply don’t know what in the hell I’m doing. I am along for the ride, trying to imitate my partners, but having no idea where to look or what to do. Slowly I learn a bit, and then I am overcome with the desire to successfully hunt whatever it is we are after. The first one is always the best, but also whets the appetite for more. As I start to develop some proficiency and to appreciate the subtleties of what’s going on, hunting becomes more fun. And, ultimately, I want to catch the bird, fish or whatever we are hunting in order to eat or to share it. That is where I am with halibut right now. I am not only doing it for the sport, although it is undeniably fun and challenging. I am in it for the fresh fish.
I am drying my own fish strips and cooking lots of halibut. I have also given away a fair amount of halibut lately, which allows us to feel that, in at least some small way, we are able to give something back to this community.
I am enjoying the time on the water immensely. I was even high man on the boat last week; I caught 5 halibut in one day. I marked the spot and we used my GPS the next time out. I am more and more comfortable on the sea and can actually make myself useful nowadays. I generally know where we are, although I still wouldn’t attempt to find my way back alone.
I find that Peter and I are talking a lot more when we are out together alone. It feels like he takes me along now because he wants my company, not because he feels obligated to. Peter is an interesting person. Diagnosed with Tuberculosis as a child in the late 50’s, he spent over a year in a sanitarium in Oregon, and so was one of the first people from the region to develop proficiency in English. He went to boarding school “down states,” and then decided not to attend college because he wanted to come home to hunt. He had a good job here in town working for the local power plant, but lost it due to politics when the current traditional council took over. Having lived outside and made the choice to live here, Peter always has a unique perspective on things. I learn a lot from him.
My Yup’ik seems to be developing as well. I am starting to pick up phrases more frequently, and can follow along more and more. It feels like I have stumbled up onto another plateau with the language.
I take pride in the friends we have made here. I don’t know how to explain this without sounding elitist or snobbish, but there is a certain set of people here who befriend outsiders. We have become friends with people beyond that circle. An example is my steaming group. There are no other Kassaqs who steam with us, and it gives me an odd pleasure to know that I have somehow ‘broken into’ a closed group. Perhaps I am guilty of the Woody Allen adage about only wanting to join a club that won’t have me as a member, but it is reminiscent of something I felt when I lived in Japan. I didn’t want to do the things the other foreigner students, much less the tourists, were doing. I wanted to somehow move beyond, to break down barriers. I take delight in being called the ‘white Yup’ik’ in the steam.
Feeling part of a group is not something I always feel in San Francisco. Here in Piniq I have an almost daily, strong social connection. Apart from my steaming crew, I have my basketball team and my hunting partners. I am one of the guys. At home things aren’t so regular. We are all somehow more harried and busy, and social circles wax and wane as people move, switch jobs or hobbies or partners. As a result I feel, at times, more isolated.
This is not to say that all is perfect here. While the fresh food is wonderful, everything available to us here for accompaniment is dreadful. I could sure go for a salad. And steaming is awesome, but it would be nice to spend an evening alone with my wife. More than these things, though, I remain an outsider. Perhaps it is a language or cultural barrier, but my connections here stay looser. I am not included in local politics, for example, and from what I have learned I wouldn’t want to be.
And deeper still, on an interpersonal level, intellectual connections somehow misfire. I miss living among liberal, open-minded men and women and having the opportunity to debate issues and ideas that I feel strongly about. Most people here are entrenched Christian conservatives. For example, in the steam the other night one of my closest friends here wanted me to explain something to Leisy.
“You need to talk to your wife,” he started. “It was Eve who made the mistake. God didn’t create woman to be as smart as man. She needs to realize that.”
Where do you begin with something like that?

©2001, Michael Thornton Wyman