“But a sober look at our world shows that the degree of human intervention, often in the service of business interests and consumerism, is actually making our earth less rich and beautiful, ever more limited and grey, even as technological advances and consumer goods continue to abound limitlessly. We seem to think that we can substitute an irreplaceable and irretrievable beauty with something which we have created ourselves.” – Pope Francis
I took the picture of the saak, or eulachon, or in the colloquial– hooligan, this morning at 7:15 on the flats where the Chilkat River meets the sea. It was about 40 degrees, calm, and light. (The sun has been up since I woke with it at about 5:15.) Very low tide. It’s okay that the little fish is dead. It’s supposed to be. They spawn and die and feed the gulls, eagles, ravens, crows, terns, ducks, sealions—what the photo doesn’t show is how noisy it is. So many birds.
Last night we ate down on the beach with a front row seat to the spectacle that is kind of like the battle of the bands—
My silly phone camera can’t capture the thousands of birds all over the flats on the west side about two miles across the valley, and all the way up to the airport at 4-mile. They are like confetti, like snow. “What is your guess, 50,000?” Chip, who never exaggerates says, adding, “100,000? What does a million look like?”
I answer that I can see more birds than there were people in St. Peter’s Square for the Pope’s funeral. The reports say there were 250,000.
He also spotted our dinner guest in a pack raft. She and two friends were putting into the river by the side of the road at 8-mile when Chip and I rode bikes by. That was two o’clock. It was half past six. They’d been out there a while and my guess is they had a good hour to go before they reached the shore. They had wet and dry suits. Warm hats and gloves. They are three capable women. No one was worried. She was bringing mashed potatoes, sausages, dessert and a friend. I guessed she would need a hot bath and a warm bed and I was right. Don’t worry, we had plenty of snacks, salad, and deer steaks. I tend to over-cook. I hate for there not to be enough.
The sack run happens once a year, in April or May, and cannot be pinned to a specific time, or date, day or tide. All of the sudden spring hits the Chilkat River, and yesterday the saak arrived at the Chilkoot River, too. The water under the bridge was black with them and a crowd from Klukwan was dropping in small purse nets and pulling them up to the railing, dumping them in buckets and taking them home to smoke, and cook, or cover in pits and later boil to render the oil. Hooligan oil is liquid gold for northern Natives, not just here, but all the way into the interior. It has been so since as they say, “time immemorial.”
The elders warn to keep dogs away from the river when the saak are running, so I obliged and we walked instead out on the tide flats, way out, past Carr’s Cove, almost across from Mary Jean and Mike’s place.
It was my aim to reach the end of the sand, to put my boot in the waves. Why do I have that urge, to set a goal, a finish line, even on a walk on a Sunday morning early, all be myself? Just as I wondered about that, I heard a sea lion’s horrible roar. That scary guttural growl and belchy bellow. Sound must really carry out here, I thought. I looked toward the inlet with the binoculars. The big stumpy hunk of driftwood in the sand became a sea lion. He lifted his head and roared again. He was up on the sand. On land. Where I was going.
“Did you take a picture?” Chip asked.
“No!” I calmly told the dogs we were heading back and they pivoted before they noticed the sea lion, which was easy what with all the din from the birds ( a pair of ravens hopped along scolding us, and dozens of terns ratcheted overhead.)
On their last night here, Emilia and Henry’s parents went out with JJ’s sisters and their friends, and Chip and I happily babysat. After baths and pajamas we watched a movie. (It was Friday). I picked the original “Mary Poppins.” It was the first movie I ever saw. My mother took us to the theater to see it. I grew up listening to the record of the soundtrack. I never much liked the “feed the birds” song. It was kind of sad. But watching it now, I was stunned by the message—that spending your savings to feed the birds and take care of the poor woman feeding them in St. Paul’s churchyard is better than making more money on it as an investment.
I sure hope they pick a new pope who loves birds like St. Francis did, and loves this earth—all of it, birds, dogs, sea lions, children and elders, migrating and local, water, air, land and sea– as much as Pope Francis did.
