Walking the Path of Subsistence

Many of the people in the village live by subsistence, or living off the land through hunting and gathering. The other day our pastor called my husband up and asked him to help him set nets in the river for fish. My husband took our s son while I was in school to help set nets. They had fun chopping holes in the ice of the river to put nets in to catch fish. The next day they went back and pulled the nets. They caught a TON of She fish. I don't know what their technical name is, that is what all the people in the village call them. The pastor gave my husband two fish for all of his help. My husband came home and put them on our porch until we could get around to cleaning them.

Here are the two beauties waiting to get cleaned.

Later, after dinner we decided it was time to clean them so we could get them out of the snow before the local dogs came to eat them. I started cleaning the first fish while Glen was doing the dishes. Good set up, huh?

I couldn't believe how much blood those fish had in them when I cut into them. I never really thought that fish had much blood, but apparently they do! When I was pulling the guts out, I must have cut into the stomach because small fish came tumbling out onto the table from the stomach. Some were partially digested while some look like they just got swallowed before our fish was caught! Yum!

Growing up we rarely went fishing, maybe once or twice in my childhood, and we never ate what we caught. It was strictly catch and release. I had never cleaned a fish until we moved up here. Thankfully our neighbors took us under their wing and showed me how to clean a fish. Now I feel much more comfortable cleaning the fish. There is something deeply satisfying about catching and preparing your own meat and fish. It really helps you feel in touch with your surroundings!

Till my next adventure...
Jacqueline

Alaska's Storm of the Century!!!

When moving to a new location the last thing you ever think is that you might be a part of the biggest storm to hit that location in over a century. Well, I am glad to say that I actually witnessed one of the biggest storms to hit the coast of Alaska in a century. It actually wasn't too horrible where we are located. Kotlik was right in the middle of two raging storms, one to our north and one to our south. We got some wicked winds and some crazy flooding but everyone in our village was safe. Many had to camp out at the school because their homes flooded or their housing was unsafe during the 80 mph winds. Glen walked through those winds to and ice storms to go to the post office and pick up our new parkas. When he returned his face was wind chapped. Poor guy!

Here's a picture of me in my new parka by my new lake house!

The front door to our house has some great cracks around it and the storm pushed all kinds of snow through the door. We hung a blanket to try to keep the snow to a minimum in our mud room. As you can see quite a bit of snow still managed to make it into our house. We had a few inches of snow in our mud room by the end of the night.

Our school sits above the ground a few feet and the flooding made it to our school and started a little lake and some rivers around the school.

The river was frozen over when the storm hit but the flooding caused the ice to lift up and keep freezing. The boats were all on land before the river originally froze, now they are in the middle of a giant ice river. The river rose about ten feet from its original position. It was quite an experience to see everything changing because of the storm.

I can't wait to see what lies in store for me this winter. Till my next adventure posting...

Jaki :)