Rolling on the River

Leaving Lucifer II cont'd

That morning, as in every morning for the past few weeks,  I woke to hear the fish wheel. My husband had left a little earlier to go up river to find some standing dead cottonwood trees. This meant that the tree had died but remained upright. The process caused the tree to dry quickly and this, the natives said, was the best wood to burn for smoking salmon. That fish wheel, I swear I could hear the salmon sliding and sloshing into the trough as the baskets on the fish wheel, moved by the current, plunged deep, deep into the swift Yukon River scooping up one salmon run after another. “Swish, flop, wiggle drop”, the endless white noise as the salmon fell into the  trough. I would retrieve the catch as soon as my husband returned with the river boat-another day at fish camp…

I rolled over and stretched before I rose. India was a year and a half ago but still each morning as I rose I felt the tug in my heart which remained at the Ashoka Mission Vihara in Mehrauli, India. There was a rooster at the mission and every morning before dawn he would flap his massive wings and crow. Now it was the sound of fish sliding down the chutes and rather than pending hours of meditation, I would be performing hours of manual labor. Manual labor of processing and smoking salmon-the old fashioned way. The baby stirred in my tummy as I brought myself to the present moment-oh did I not tell you? I was now about 5 months pregnant. 

I had returned from India, married J and we had purchased a riverboat and moved to Galena, Alaska, a village on the Yukon River. He was a bush pilot. I found work at the liquor store, I got pregnant, we decided we wanted to learn a more self-sufficient lifestyle, collected a nice group of huskies for a dog team, quit our jobs and moved down river to Ruby, Alaska, one of the finest Indian villages you’ll ever find. In retrospect it happened quickly, just like that, except every moment of that retrospective is alive and even now as I breathe this adventurous story into being, I can go there and BE there. The quality of air, its coolness; the quiet sounds like the Yukon River lazily brushing its sandy depths, the sight of endless spruce trees, white ptarmigans hidden in the first snowfall that magically flutter away. 30 below parkas and freeze-dried produce that you ran to the store to get. Just a short jaunt of perhaps a city block away; you get home and the celery leaves flake off into powder. It’s all there inside of me and makes up part of me; as I reach for the salt, it’s in the movement, in the very breath and blood of my human life form. 

I got out of bed-our little shanty was almost just the bed. I figure it was no more than about 9x10; wooden framed and sided with sheet metal. Metal all the way to the roof and, Lord help me, it was hot when the sun was shining-which was always. When dusk came-our term for evening in the summer, we hoped for a breeze to sweep through the shanty to chase away the heat. Sometimes it came; most often it didn’t.  I looked over to the *Blazo box shelves for the matches to light the tiny Coleman stove we kept on the small, really small front porch. I’d made some beans the day before so I would fry up a few eggs and that would be our morning meal. The small porch was also our cooler for storing food that would perish if kept in our tiny, hot, house. It worked and all summer our activities were centered around processing the salmon that ran up that big, muddy, Yukon River. 

Every summer the villages thin out as the families move to their fish camp. The salmon runs of the Yukon are the lifeblood of the families for winter food. One run comes after another as the salmon move closer to their spawning grounds so it’s an all summer job. Each family has a spot on the river and has had that spot for generations. The family fish camp is situated near an eddy (deeper water) in the river. The fish wheel which acts on the same principle of a watermill is placed on top of the eddy. In place of paddles, two baskets scoop up the fish that are running up the river. A chute attached to the baskets slides the fish down into a trough where they stay until someone retrieves them and ferries them, by boat, back to the fish camp for processing; smoking or drying. This is all done on the river since there are no roads back to camp or to the villages.  Harvesting and processing is from dawn to dusk. 

Not long after we moved to Ruby, we were fortunate enough to strike up a deal with Albert and Dolly. They had purchased Altona Brown’s family fish camp. Her only child had died a few years back and that was all she had left of relatives. Albert and my husband agreed to a deal where we (husband and I) would move to the fish camp, run the fish wheel, and process the salmon for half the catch. The camp was a mile from Ruby. Albert and Dolly were aging and were happy to pass on the responsibility.

While waiting for the run to come in, we stayed at the roadhouse. As we got closer and closer to the run the villagers waited anxiously. One day while I was sitting at the dining table of the Esmailka’s house a tiny white butterfly fluttered by the window. “When you see that butterfly, that means the run is coming in about two weeks” Harold was passing on to me what the elders had once told him. I watched the butterfly flit in and out of plants and flowers then off it went to nearby flora out of my line of vision. Sure enough, rumors swelled about where the salmon were-one day-two days out. It was coming and coming soon. My thoughts traveled back to Harold Esmailka’s statement and my fingers counted about 14 days. Sure enough; the salmon were coming. 

We moved to the fish camp, tethered our dog team to poles planted firmly into the river bank and began to move our meager possessions up the hill to our little shanty. Right next to our lodging the giant smokehouse loomed over us. It was the size of a warehouse three-stories high and 20 feet or more across. After we unpacked in our tiny space we went over to look at the smokehouse where we would be filling it to the rafters with smoking fish. It was huge-in my mind I could not imagine the need for such heights in hanging salmon. Peeled spruce poles crisscrossed the scaffolding all the way to the top. The smell of  smoke was embedded into every inch of the warehouse.

Albert would be there the first day of the run to show us how to prepare the salmon for smoking and that day was coming soon. My heart was soaring with excitement as the day neared. J went out and did the first harvesting of standing dead cottonwood. The dogs were neatly tethered; we were ready. 

Albert ran us all the way through the process. He rode in our riverboat to view the first catch of salmon that were waiting for us in the trough of the wood and chicken-wire fish wheel. We scooped them up and brought them back to the camp. The wheel was almost halfway between us and Ruby. Our eddy was one of the best on the river; it hugged a rocky cliff that was at least 30 feet high. The water ran swiftly and deep on this one. Back at fish camp, we had a gravity fed water hose placed in the creek that brought ice-cold water down into a galvanized steel tub situated near the creek's edge and back from the river. The tub was our holding tank for the fresh catch. As we gutted and prepped the fish at the fish table, the others, now dead, chilled in its icy cold water. 

After the catch was put in the tub, Albert moved to the cutting table and we moved in close to him as he began to explain the whole shebang of fish preparation. I won’t go into the lengthy conversation but it was detailed and specific to each run. The dog salmon, for instance, would not be dipped in a salt-water brine like the king salmon would. The fileted salmon were carried up to a hanging rack that resembles gymnastics parallel bars about 6 feet high; all made of peeled spruce. Seven prepped fish dangle from a  pole and that pole hangs between the two parallel bars . The fish straddle the pole by the tail end-inside out.  We would have to have smudge fire under the salmon as they “glazed” creating a shiny veneer that would seal the salmon. 

“You must keep the smudge going otherwise flies will plant their eggs in the salmon and destroy the process” Albert solemnly told us. Smudge-he showed us, was collected quackgrass and such-you light it but don’t create a fire; a smoke must rise from the burn and remain smoldering under the fish to keep the flies away. The fish were cut with a machete that must be razor sharp. He then showed us how to sharpen the machete with a sharpening steel and tested it on the hairs of his wrist-a clean shave. “That’s how sharp it must be at all times to avoid tearing,” he told us.

The poles of hanging salmon were on a slight rise of ground between the shore and the warehouse and had to be taken up the steep hill to the smokehouse once they were properly glazed. The first catch would be placed on the lowest scaffolding in the smokehouse and as time passed they were moved up, up and up to the highest part of the ceiling; making way for more and  more poles of processing fish. In so many weeks you could jar some, in so many weeks you had the gyeoga ready for the dog teams winter food (non-salted or brined). At about 6 weeks you had the best smoked king salmon in the world. All the time the cottonwood must smolder under a piece of sheet metal and beneath the fish-24/7. 

As Albert chanted his litany, I rocked back and forth, “Boy, this will be fun!” I exclaimed. Albert stopped what he was doing and looked at me. “This is work,” he said. I felt sorry for him. This poor man has no pleasure in life. I thought to myself.

Now, as I stretched and lumbered my way to the shoreline, viewed the holding tank of fish, gazed at the table and  sharpened my knife I knew what he was talking about. Baby growing, winter coming and food wanting. “This is work, let's get on with it…” 

*Blazo boxes are wooden boxes that hold two, square, five gallon tins of kerosene oil. This was the way the oil was shipped back in the day. The boxes are as prized as the tins of fuel. They make good stools, shelves, drawers, etc.. If you spotted one abandoned on the shore you made sure you got there before anyone else did to claim it.