Expedition
Log
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Expedition Log:
August 15, 2001
William
Cronon
Gambell, Saint Lawrence
Island
We awoke this morning at around 6:30 A.M. to
overcast skies and a moderate swell rolling the ship. My roommate Richard
Nelson and I spent half an hour lying in our beds and sharing reflections
on our recent doings before getting up for breakfast. Our days are often
so packed with activities that, curiously, Richard and I have seem to
have some of our best conversations not at night, when both of us are
so exhausted that we go right to sleep, but just at the moment when both
of us first rouse in the morning, with curtains closed and the room still
so dark that we can't even see each other. The morning grayness is itself
one of the odd proofs of how far we've now traveled: clock time and sun
time are strangely out of sync with each other out here. We're far north
in the Bering Sea, roughly 64 degrees north latitude, which of course
makes for long days, but the much more important reason that the sun isn't
rising until after 7:00 A.M. is that we're at the extreme western end
of the immense Alaskan time zone, which packs three or more ordinary time
zones into just one to produce huge variations in the times of sunrise
and sunset at opposite ends of the zone. This morning, we talked about
the awful shipboard cold that has bedeviled Richard (and seemingly half
the other passengers) for the past couple weeks, drifted from that topic
to the peculiarities of the immune system, and wound up reflecting on
the linguistic conservatism of human communities on islands in contrast
to the evolutionary dynamism one typically associates with island biogeography.
I doubt that either of us could retrace the conversational steps that
carried us among these and other topics, but I came away again feeling
immensely grateful for Richard's companionship on this voyage. It is surely
one of the things I will remember most about this extraordinary month
in Alaska.
After breakfast, we had a
morning of lectures and conversations. David Koester offered
some illuminating reflections on "Cultures, Local Ecologies
and Political Histories in the Russian Far East" to prepare
us for our visit to Russia tomorrow. He offered extended
readings from several key documents about the communities
we'll be visiting, including a fascinating textbook from the
early days of the Soviet Union when the government in Moscow
was working hard to transform the cultures of these remote
Yup'ik Eskimo communities to bring them into the modern era
(with some striking parallels to earlier efforts by the
United States government to do the same thing in American
Indian communities). He closed with some sad and disturbing
comments on how much the Russian government has abandoned
these Yup'ik communities since the collapse of the Soviet
regime. David's talk was followed by a panel discussion
about the challenges of conservation in modern Alaska, in
which it was great to see how engaged and concerned our
shipmates have become about Alaskan issues as a result of
what they've seen.
During lunch, we arrived
offshore of Gambell on St. Lawrence Island, but the strong
waves and current required a repositioning of the ship which
delayed our arrival onshore by half an hour. It was one of
the most dramatic Zodiac landings we've had, with large
waves breaking on a pebbled beach as we passengers dashed to
get onto land as quickly as possible so the boats could get
out of the surf without taking on water. We were met at the
shore by dozens of the all-terrain vehicles that residents
of the Eskimo community now use to get around on the loose
beach gravel (after walking a mile or more on the stuff, I
can certainly see why they find ATV's attractive). Some of
us were taken to the cooperative store where local ivory
carvers sell their art, while others of us walked the
three-quarters of a mile through the town before ending at
the community center for some Native dance performances. I
walked in with Richard, Kim Heacox, and Kathy Frost (all of
whom have extensive experience in these northern Eskimo
communities), and we were soon joined by a Native woman
named Karen who accompanied us as we strolled through her
community. She took us to a house where an elderly woman was
working with four men to cut the walrus skin for a new
umiak, a fascinating process involving quite incredible
skill --- not least, because walrus skins are too thick and
heavy to use in their original tanned state, so have to be
carefully split in half before they can be attached to the
wooden frame of the boat. A couple of Eskimo toddlers were
running around outside the house where the boat was being
assembled, and seemed to take great delight when they
managed to draw me into a game of peekaboo and hide-and-seek
in which they peered out around the corner of their house to
catch my eye, then dashed back into hiding with a great roar
of laughter when I smiled and made clown faces at them. The
kids here have such incredible smiles: so playful, such easy
joy. I could easily have spent the whole afternoon playing
with them and their dogs, and was sorry, as always, that we
had so little time to spend here.
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Passengers
riding an ATV from the shore to the town of
Gambell. (Photo by William Cronon).
Click
image for a larger view.
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We next wandered past an
enormous pile of whale bones where Kim and I indulged our
photographic impulses, and I then spent some time looking at
the carved walrus ivory in the craft cooperative before
heading over to the community center for the Native dances.
The whole event had a casually spontaneous feeling that made
it feel not like a piece of theater for a group of alien
tourists -- Gambell sees almost no cruise ships like ours --
but a enthusiastic expression of their genuine pleasure in
the hospitality they were showing us. Best of all was the
closing "invitational" dance in which they asked members of
our group to come join them, so that even in the confined
space of the quite-small room into which 150 or more people
were packed, a couple dozen members of our group joined in
the dance and everyone -- visitors and hosts alike --
clearly had a great time. There were lots of big smiles on
everyone's faces (once again, the kids were just wonderful
to play with) as we milled around outside the building
before being taxied out to the beach on the SUV's for our
very wet Zodiac rides back to the ship.
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Whale bones
drying. (Photo by William Cronon).
Click
image for a larger view.
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Of the many communities I've
visited and admired in Alaska, Gambell surely stands high on
my list of personal favorites. Here are folks living in a
very harsh environment where I suspect most people in the
Lower 48 couldn't imagine spending their lives--and yet I
have no doubt whatsoever that in the midst of whatever
hardship they experience here, they find great joy, not
least in each other's company. I hope someday I get the
chance to come back.
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One of the
friendly Gambell childern sitting on the front of
an ATV.(Photo by William Cronon).
Click
image for a larger view.
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Once back on shore, we scholars
had a meeting to talk about the essays we will be writing
for the book about this trip, and I think all of us came
away feeling excited at the prospect of trying to capture as
best we can with words and images what this trip has meant
to us. It won't be easy, but I think we're realizing both
the seriousness of the challenge and the creative
possibilities.
But now it's after 11:30pm and
time for bed. I'm looking out the window to see that the sun
has only just set and the western sky is still glowing
bright yellow. There's a gray bank of clouds on the far
horizon, but a smaller cloud glows dark orange above the
gray, and overhead the sky is clear. The ship is making its
way through eight-foot swells, and great sheets of white
spray are shooting out onto the dark blue water just beneath
our window. Our cabin is at the extreme forward end of the
fourth deck, so we get a good shaking each time the ship
crashes down onto one of these waves. I can't think of a
better way to fall asleep.
Another wonderful day. I would
not have believed that there could be so many, or that some
of the very best would be out here on the cold waters of the
Bering Sea.
Postscript: I awoke at
2:30am to feel the ship rolling more vigorously in the swell
than ever before on this trip. Richard was also awake, and
we both marveled at the immense and exuberant water bed on
which we were lying. We finally got up to peer through the
curtain that ordinarily shields our slumber from the long
Alaskan twilight. Despite the early hour, the eastern
horizon was filled with a yellow-gray light that cast an
eerie glow on the steely green darkness of the deep.
Northward, low clouds and fog scudded along the horizon as
the ship lurched over the swell, whitecaps and spray
churning wildly in its wake. Perhaps because it was so early
and unexpected a morning gift, it lingers before my eyes
even now, hours later, an icon of sublimity and untameable
wildness.
(View
the day's photos)
(Community
Profile: Gambell)
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