The Lemming....

This short story is based on a ancient oral story past down for many generations.  It describes the origin of the little brown song birds that migrate up to the arctic for the warmer months.  They are quite plain these birds, though their origins are not.




The Lemming

by Nasugraq Rainey Hopson







Lemmings don't really have names.  Instead, as you can imagine, we have a set of complex scents we carry with us to identify ourselves to each other.  Pockets of aromatic air that if translated would be paragraphs and paragraphs of information and history-and maybe even tiny lemming thoughts.

I am such a lemming.  A northern arctic cousin of the mouse.  And my name.  Well my name is...Want. 

It's not a normal lemming name, not a normal lemming scent. It's a mixture of so many smells and so many places and so many experiences that it speaks of only one thing-want.  The need to explore, to be something different.  To search, to reveal, to examine.

Today I was close to starving.  Spring had finally arrived, bringing with it that span of days  when the food is scarce.  The winter food stores I had carefully hidden were drained, and the sun, still heavy from sleep, hadn't gotten around to melting the snow fully and coaxing the plants to waken.  So I decided to check the food burrows that I keep for emergencies, far from my usual haunts.

It was a long journey.  And it took me some time to remember the paths.  Some paths were blocked by melting slabs of snow and I had to scramble round them, marking my trail with tiny bites and teeth nicks in plants and sticks, leaving faint marks of my saliva so I could retrace my steps if I needed to.  Even these marks smelled of Want.  And maybe a tad bit of Wish, too.

I did not like where I was going.  Most times these underground holes that I laboriously filled with sweet bulbs and roots of the bistort plant were raided.  They always looked like they’d exploded from the earth, leaving a wide opening which would fill with ice, and then water as the ice slowly melted.  They almost always smelled of Human. Humans all smell pretty much alike-like seal oil and predator fur, smoke, and the moisture they leak almost constantly. 

These food stashes were near the Human dwellings, which is why they survived.  No lemming likes being around Humans, and their Human things.  Unlike Fox and Wolf and Owl, Humans are unpredictable.  You never know if they are going to kill you-or make you a pet for their young. 

I veered from my path to climb a small mound that rose above the tall grass by a foot or two.  Only those who are destined to be arctic fox scat fail to sniff the winds.  The wind hit my dense fur and made me shiver. Sunlight warmed my back and made my scent stronger.  I quickly inhaled the smells and cupped my ears to catch the drifting noise.  My hair stood on end as I risked being spotted by a predator.  The winds told me I was close to the Human dwelling.  I could see it nearby, a dark tall mound in the distance.  Close to my stores. I heard the quick snap of wings above me and froze, but is was only a bouncing Snowbird as he joyously tossed himself into the winds.  Snowbirds are the heralds of Spring, strikingly marked in contrasting black and white.  They call to each other with warm voices that seem to pry the ice from the ground.

I tucked myself low on top of the mound, hiding my feet and ears as I tried to look as small and as unobtrusive as possible. I wanted a moment to watch the birds.  They fascinate me.  With deft and fragile movements they hop from place to place, wings sharp and precise, molding the air to their purpose.  I blinked as my eyes watered a bit.  Deep in my triple soul I felt something melt, I felt it melt and warm and recognize something in these birds. 

My name rang on the winds.  Want.  Part of me smelled like the birds, it smelled liked the wind under their wings.  It smelled like the sun warmed drafts rising to carry a tiny body.  I blinked again as my eyes watered more. My tiny brain was working hard to understand what was happening.  

Then I realized: I wanted to fly! 

I closed my eyes against the pain of the thought, as it made my already racing heart beat faster.  It was such a foolish thought.  A thought that went against every thread that was my tiny being, yet it still ripped through me as if it were put there by something other than myself.  I recognized it as a dangerous thing. 

I pulled my warm front paws from under my plain brown fur and looked at them.  They were not wings.  They were nimble paws made for nimble things, but they were never wings.  I took some time to clean the thought of flying from my fur with careful licks, certain that if I ran into my kin they would smell it and be afraid of it, foreign as it was.  Things that were different did not survive long in my world; conformity meant safety and predictability.  If I could have sighed, I would have sighed.   I would have released that breath of air that contained my name.

Sure that there was little of The Thought left on my fur, I dashed back to the path that wove its way through the dry, winter drained grass.  A few more moments and I would be at my store of sweet bistort bulbs.  The grass above me snapped as a Snowbird dove at an insect trying to find shelter in the grass.  I looked up and saw the bird perch on the Human Dwelling.  The bright blue sky glowed behind it.  The bird cocked its head at me, regarding me first with one eye, then the other.  It chirped a brief greeting.  Then slowly and deliberately it hopped to the edge of the dwelling, cast itself into the air, and fell a full breathtaking span before spreading its wings wide to catch its fall.

It was like the bird was trying to tell me something.  A secret maybe?  Like why my name was so different?  I paused in the grass, hunching my body as small as it would get, trying to hide while the message soaked into my being.  The smell of that painful thought bloomed again.

Jump. 

If I could have shrugged, I would have shrugged.  With a blurring speed that is only gifted to arctic prey, I scuttled towards the human dwelling, and, sooner than I thought possible, I was at its base.  It rose high above me, but I was not afraid.  I knew the fall would not kill me, as we lemmings are tiny and tough beings.  No, the height did not bother me at all.   It was the risk I would be taking by exposing myself to predators that frightened me.  The fear curled itself around my middle and made my heart race.  I did not want to get eaten by Snowy Owl.  Or Raven.  Or even clever Fox.  Every cell in my body screamed for me to hide.  Thousands of years of evolution fought with the tiny new electrical sparks in my tiny tiny brain. 

I looked at my paws again, flexed the almost Human like fingers, and then began climbing the towering mound.  In no time at all I was at the top, sitting hunched in the same spot where I’d seen the bird earlier.  I shivered at the exposure.  I scooted to the edge and looked down.  I saw, far below me, a bowl made of wood.  A human tool. It was filled with a gleaming thick amber fluid;  the heavy smell of seal rose from it like a cloud.  I had seen the Humans eat this substance, use it to create fire.  They treated it with reverence, this oil, and you almost never saw them without it nearby.  It glistened and waited for me.  At least I thought of it as waiting for me.  

I hunched down into myself at the edge of the dwelling, letting the sun warm my fur as it gathered the scent of seal oil in its strands.  I needed to know what my name was.   With a panicked jerky movement I flung myself over the edge of the mound.  My body stiffened as the world fell away and the wind forced my eyes and ears to close.  My heart stopped.  I held my breath.  And I dropped.  It did not take long, as I wasn't extremely high off the ground, and I was but a tiny bit of being.  When I hit the surface of the seal oil it felt hard as rock.  Then it suddenly softened.  I took a quick breath before it took me under.  I panicked for a split second till I felt the bottom of the bowl beneath my feet.  It was shallow enough that I could just reach my nose above the oil to take quick, rapid, painful breaths.  Legs skidding on the slick bowl, I made my way slowly to the edge.  As I reached the rim a small amount of the strong smelling oil seeped into my lungs and burnt its way into my body making my lungs work hard to try and cough it back up.  The world spun and sparkled a bit, and I tasted blood and green shoots on my tongue.  The air warmed and made the oil clinging to me loosen its grip. 

Once I stopped coughing I leaned against the rim of the bowl and reached a paw out to grab its thick edge.  But what came out of the oil wasn't my paw.  Instead it was an oil-sodden wing.  A brown wing.  A brown speckled wing.  I flexed my feet under me and launched myself out of the murky golden fluid.  My feet clamped tight to the rim of the bowl.  They felt odd to me.  Gone were my familiar five fingered, weak paws.  Instead, very long, clawed and incredibly muscular claws clung to the wood.  I flapped my wings-wings!-shaking the last of the seal oil from their sleek surfaces.  I pumped them up and down till I felt my body rise, and then I loosened my clawed grip from the edge of the bowl.  Though my mind tried to hold me back my body knew what to do. With a shiver I shed all of me that was a Lemming.  I felt the hold that name had on me slip from my soul like the oil slipped from my beautiful wings.  And I took to the sky in an explosion of glorious golden song that burst from my brown throat.  In an instant I had forgotten that I was ever a lemming.  And truly, only my color reminded the world of what I once was.

Birds don't really have names, but if we did then my name would be ......

Fireweed....

One of my projects this winter will be compiling and organizing information and photos for a 'Anaktuvuk guide to plants' thing I am putting together, which is going to take me years and years but you have to start some where right?  I do it only for my own sanity!  I thought it would be neat to post some info and a couple photos of various plants I am learning about.  This is not going to be gospel people, I am not a scientist or expert on herbal anything and I m not diagnosing a darn thing. Insert your expected disclaimer here.

This post is about Fireweed.  Also known as Epilobium Angustifolium and in Inupiaq, quppiqutaq.  this is one of those plants that I am really enjoying getting to know.  It grows all across Alaska, but for some reason I do not remember seeing it growing up on the coast (it's not really found in the northern parts of AK either).  When I first moved here I was blown away by how showy and large and vibrant the flowers were, and for some reason it struck me as just being 'pretty.'  But I was wrong!

This plant got it's name because it usually the first thing to grow in a place that has just been burned by fire.  The young shoots that grow are usually a purplish color and are eaten in salads, fried, steamed, or traditionally here dipped in seal oil.  Traditionally these shoots were not stored for winter but were eaten as soon as they showed up.  I haven't actually tried a shoot yet because for some reason I always miss that stage of growth.  By the time I remember it they are already too old to eat, it happens pretty fast here!  

Pretty much all of this plant is edible before it flowers.  The young leaves are good in salads or in mixed greens, and can also be used as a medicinal tea.  The leaves make a very tasty pale green tea that has soothing and physically calming effects good for sleeping problems and even coughing, and can also be used as a mild laxative.  In Russia they call this tea 'Kapor' tea.  The leaves also can be used to treat skin issues, like acne and infected insect bites and such.  The flowers themselves you can make into amazing jelly or 'honey' that has a surprising citrus taste and a really pretty color to it.

You can also eat the pith of the stem and it is said to have a sweet taste.  The one thing I did notice is that the taste of fireweed changes according to location.  I have tasted some that were very sweet and others that were pretty bitter.  

You can used the dried stringy bits of fireweed stem to weave twine for nets and such, though I haven't tried it yet.  When fireweed goes to seed the fluffy stuff is really great tinder, and can even be used as a insulator for blankets and boots.  They say that when fireweed goes to seed then it '6 weeks till winter.'  I don't know if it's true but it always seems like it is! 

Fireweed comes in a dwarf version also that is short and close to the ground and seems to like the river beds the most.  It is used in pretty much the same way as it's larger cousin.  Both plants are adored by bees and other flying flower lovers...which makes it interesting to pick!

fireweed growing near a bolder in the vallye here.

close up of the bloom

fireweed gone to seed

vibrant fireweed jelly

Garden...step one...

I hinted a bit in a earlier post about my journey into planting my own garden this year.  A couple days ago I actually bought seeds.  I literally worried over what to plant in my garden for a couple of long excruciating months.  I dreamt about it.  I drew layout after layout of what plants and what type of container would go where into my imaginary garden, and how I could rotate them year after year.  I read everything I could get my hands on, from every topic you could think of; from soil conditions to homemade fertilizer to seed saving techniques, to preservation techniques, to studies done on what varieties to plant in the arctic.  I guess I am a bit of control freak when I enter into any new area of experience.  I go from teenage first-kiss-giddiness to an absolute certainty that I will totally and utterly fail at anything having to do with plants.  I haven't been this excited about anything since I bought my first supplies for my perfume line. 

I recommend that everyone go through this type of experience at least once a year!

 So what did I choose to plant?  I plan on growing oats in much of my available space.  I jokingly tell family and friends that I want to eat after the great zombie invasion but really it's just for a couple basic reasons.  One:  I LOVE Oats.  I love oatmeal, and oatmeal muffins, and oatmeal cookies.  Oats are such a versatile and healthy yummy thing.  I bought hulless oats in hopes that it will be easier to process them.  Two: The grass from the oats will go to reducing the cost of the winter straw we buy for the dogs every year.  Along with the grass we will collect wild in the fall time.

Of course potatoes are on my list. Alaskan potatoes.  I have talked with people and read about using wild rhubarb type plants to feed the potatoes and that this really works well.  It will work well for me also because I will already be collecting and processing sourdock for a food supplement.  I also will try a squash that supposedly does well in central Alaska and stores well, another versatile crop.  Peas are next on the list, though I have nightmares about the canned peas that were endlessly fed to me as a child I absolutely adore fresh peas.    The rest of the plants I chose based on what they will be used for.  Chives for cooking, lettuce for eating, calendula for it's healing properties, and stevia just to see if I could get it to grow and then use for sweet. 

I don't have a huge amount of room in the back, and I will have to share that room with a drying rack and the various things my husband adores to stash, but it will work to get me started on getting familiar with how to use a space for gardening.  My husband has agreed to build me above ground boxes in various sizes, being the saint he is he is willing to hand over a sizable amount of his wood stash for this project, and I plan to use modified buckets for the container friendly plants. 

Today the sun officially crested the towering mountains and I opened the window curtains to let it in.  The weather has stopped being ridiculous for the moment and today it was a 'balmy' 10 degrees.  I spent most of it attacking the outside yard with a shovel.  The husband got x-rays and though the collarbone is healing as planned he is still doomed to another month without using a snowmachine or lifting anything more than 5 pounds.  So I do my best to clear the snow from stove exhaust and shovel out most of the snow in the dog pen so that they don't figure out that they could just jump out if they are inclined. 

The world seems to want winter to end......

Stay warm and cozy everyone.

My husband found a few tufts of muskox hair caught in the willows.  I finally found a use for it and made a embroidered mini-muskox. 

Frozen days.....

The weather has become ridiculous lately.

Of course I (for some strange reason) forget that I live in the arctic, and when the blizzards blow in and we get to -70 degrees at night with wind chill...I am surprised.

It is really hard to describe to people what that type of cold feels like. It's not only the feel of the cold on your being, but the emotions that it produces, the mentality of the it all. There is no being 'warm' in the winter. It's more just making sure you are not going to suffer permanent damage. You learn to breathe a certain way so that the cold does not make you gag and so you don't suffer from lung shock and end up coughing for half an hour. You turn your head at that perfect angle so that the wind doesn't steal your oxygen away. You blink rapidly and squint a bit to make sure the ice freezing on your eyelashes doesn't prevent you from seeing. You try and relax your muscles so that they don't waste calories shivering. But most of all you change your mental perception. It's hard to do when every cell in your body is in shock.

Like every winter the extreme cold created an earthquake of symptoms. Our tub drain quit working, and now we do a daily dance of hair dryers and boiling water to try and thaw it out. Frost crept up a corner in the pantry. We increased the calories the dogs were eating, and decided to let one of the stay in every night as she has a thinner undercoat. Trips outside we're shortened so had to be planned accordingly. I had to brush off two feet of snow that caked the satellite dish. I broke one of the dogs chain clips because I tapped it against the shovel to try and dislodge some ice inside the mechanism, and so now rope is being used. It is a bit like having an annoying relative stay at your home; you love them, you tolerate the stay, but you know it will only last for a little while.

Our only unfixed female dog gave birth to two tiny pups during the coldest part of this winter. We bred her with our husky and we knew that she was going to whelp, but her tummy was pretty small so we figured she had a few more weeks to go. I checked on her daily and one chilly afternoon I could not get her to come out of her house to change her bed straw. Tiny little mews were tucked against her tummy. So now she and her pups are in the house with us. Momma dog has a annoying habit of taking treats and leftovers and 'burying' them around the house wherever she can find a nook or cranny. Everyday I pay a gross version of an Easter egg hunt and look for her stashes. It works to beat cabin fever.

That and satellite tv.

I have kept myself busy with chores and with planning a vegetable garden this summer. I get excited just thinking about it, it's the same feeling that I got when I was elementary school and we sprouted beans in damp paper towels.

On another note, I am looking for other bloggers who would like to sample my natural products and write a review about them on their blog. I have done this a couple of times and it was always amazing! So if you know someone or you write a blog and would like to write a review let me know! You can email directly at: nunainua@hotmail.com. If you want to see the products visit my etsy store at: www.salmonberryorigins.etsy.com Stay warm everyone!

A quick drawing I did of a arctic wolf.  It's tiny.  And fitting as winter is the season of the wolf.  visit it at: CLICK HERE

yeck. hospitals.

Fate has a sense of humor it seems.

My husband was planning a long winter camping/hunting trip into the arctic wilderness during my bi-annual shopping trip over the Christmas break.  The night before the trip my husband and his traveling partner somehow started chatting about various collarbone fractures that friends and family had suffered over the years.  Of course this meant that the next morning as he was finishing packing his sled, my husband slipped while carrying a 15 gallon jug of gas and slammed himself collarbone first into a grub box corner.  He broke it into four pieces.

As it looked and felt like a major fracture at the time (though they couldn't tell for sure) the clinic here in Anaktuvuk Pass sent him to Fairbanks where I picked him up and we trotted over to the Native Hospital for a late night visit to determine what would happen next.  We had been told that we were expected.

Anyone who is in the Alaska Native Health system knows that service is spotty and difficult.  It can range from outright insulting and frustrating, to competent and amazing.  It just depends on the waxing and waning of the moon.  As someone who has spent their whole life in the system all I know is that it will ALWAYS be a task.  And tedious.  And will normally take a very, very, very long time.    When I was teaching for the NSB I had the opportunity to enjoy my own health and dental insurance.  It was like a fantasy science fiction world all clean and bright and shiny.  I remember having that service as a wonderful and amazing dream.  *sigh*

In reality we showed up at the Native Hospital at about 5pm and were greeted with a few grunts and puzzled looks.  My husband sat in a chair grappling with the mind numbing pain that ensued from being jostled and bounced around in a tiny plane for an hour and half.  I was informed that it was just a 'common collarbone fracture' (though this person did not even examine my husband) and that we should come back tomorrow morning for x-rays.   I told them that he had only been given ibuprofen for the pain and that it was not helping, and if it was possible to get something a tiny bit stronger for the night that would be great.  This person started sputtering about how my comment will 'red flag' us....etc etc.  There was emphatic arm swinging and grandiose comments and other stuff I wasn't listening to.  I sat there frowning, biting my tongue.  They finally agreed to actually look at his shoulder, and once seeing it gave him something to help with the pain as it was a pretty impressive.  The next morning we arrived early only to have to sit in the waiting area for six hours.  In the end we were told that my husband would have to go to Anchorage for surgery.

I think in blogs people find it easy to use them as a pathway to complain about things, but this experience has left me dumbfounded.  Mostly because once we arrived in Anchorage the experience was such the polar opposite.  Again they knew we were arriving and we were helped and tended to during the whole experience.  Our waits were an hour or less.  The staff was professional and pleasant. The surgery went well and the surgeon and nurses were very kind and efficient.  We stayed for a couple of days and then left, me clutching a thick pile of papers with various instructions on aftercare and my husband sporting a new metal collarbone with 8 screws.

I am adjusting to taking on most of the chores in the household and we are both recovering from that whirlwind travelling and exhaustion marathon. I'm currently fighting a sore throat and head cold, of which I will not discuss it for fear of it actually occurring.  The hardest thing though is watching my husband figure out a way to survive 4 more weeks in a sling, as this is the season he usually does a lot of outdoor stuff like trapping and caribou hunting.

So I apologize for the future spotty blog posts this month!  I hope this finds you and yours all warm and healthy and that you all had a amazing Christmas and New Years!