"This Journey is a Gift from our Ancestors"

According to the photos in the camera, the following things happened since I last posted:

July 21, evening, SA arrived from Northeast Nowhere. She'd come to watch Canoe Journey land on the 23rd. We went straight from the airport out to Ediz Hook to watch the Sunday night flock of cruise ships pass. Setting the theme immediately: journeys, and water. Forgot to take pictures, but anyway you've already seen many pictures of cruise ships steaming past.

July 22 we did important local things like go to the Goodwill to get her some warmer clothes, go to the library and the post office, and eat at Toga's Soup House. All major adventures for someone from Northeast Nowhere. We went out to the tribal library to try to get a clue what time the canoes would leave Jamestown the next morning, what time the landing might begin, and spent a long time talking books and libraries with TH. I introduced SA to everyone as my first library boss, and the person who taught me what kind of librarian I wanted to be.

July 23rd, we had breakfast with JL at Smugglers' Landing, and then went down onto the beach to watch the canoes land. But word was that a canoe had overturned in heavy fog and 4-foot swells, and they had all returned to Jamestown. Arrival time entirely uncertain. So we went to the T-Pier to watch the logship Selinda begin loading, it had come in overnight. Back to the beach. It was a false rumor that the canoes had all turned back, only some had. The rest of the canoes began coming in. Five hours later it had gone on all afternoon and there were 30 of them. This will get its own blog post. (I hope. My impulse to communicate is still uncertain.)

Woman from Tulalip. Not all regalia is cedar capes and button blankets. July 23, 2013. On Hollywood Beach in Port Angeles. (Click for larger image.)

VB and ML had arrived in town also on the 23rd. They came down to watch the canoes, heard how uncertain we were about what would happen when; so went up into the Olympics to Hurricane Hill (wildflowers!); then when I called them to say the canoes were coming in, hustled back down the mountain to watch.

July 24th, the four of us went out to Rialto Beach, so they could see a wild beach on the Outer Coast.

July 28/29: Portland again. Thankyou AngelFlight.

Right along, and especially the past two weeks, I've been spending a lot of time at the tribal library, and dropping in at the college library a bit though I don't work in summer quarter. My library peeps are my support system.

Also I spend a lot of time telephoning Florida, or procrastinating telephoning Florida. Family's woes continue. My cell phone is always in my pocket, and I always know what time it is there.

Button blanket. July 23, 2013. On Hollywood Beach in Port Angeles. (Click for larger image.)

Walking To Victoria

According to the photos in the camera, the following things happened in the three weeks since I last posted.

On June 14, I attended a field day at the west side of the mouth of the Elwha, where various little fishes were seined up, identified, measured, scanned for tiny embedded wire tags that say which hatchery they were born in, and let go again. There were lots of scientists, interns, and locals participating. The Peninsula Daily News had a very nice story about the day.

Elwha estuary, June 14, 2013. Two of the three ponds they seined. (Click for larger image.)

June 16, a deer hung around the neighborhood, performing such deer-ish tricks as eating all my landlady's beautiful new deep orange pansies, and parading down the middle of 8th Street grazing the yellow paint of the center line.

June 22, I went to Tukwila to a support group meeting for people with my kind of cancer.

June 25, LR texted the tribe's Education Director from out by the mouth of the Elwha on the tribe's side; there was a super-low tide, and she said we had to come out immediately, it's amazing. So we tumbled into the car and went. We were playing hooky from work in the education building, but when it was time to head back lest we miss Elder's Lunch (lasagna!!), I announced "I'm walking to Victoria!" and headed north toward the soft silty edge of the mudflats. LR and TH followed me out to as far as we could get. It was amazing.

LR rushing to greet us. The new silty lands at the mouth of the Elwha, June 26, 2013 (Click for larger image.)

June 25, picked WC up at the ferry, and June 26 we drove down to Portland for the bimonthly CT scans. I'm still stable, still in the clinical trial, still a science project. We did it as a day trip, left at 4:50 AM and made it home in time to put him on the 9:30 PM ferry.

Yet another ferry view, June 26, and the pylons for the new MAX light rail line, Portland, June 27, 2013. (Click for larger image.)

June 28, the canoes were out of the storage shed and arrayed on the lawn between the Education Building and the Tribal Center. Canoe journey is less than a month away, there must be practicing and preparation and cold-water training and all for the pullers.

Three of Elwha's four canoes. June 28, 2013 (Click for larger image.)

I never got to the ocean at all.

On the whole, every picture in the camera is as flat as my spirits these days. This is a beachbunny blog, supposed to be a mostly effortless, nearly chirpy picture of places gone and things seen. I don't much want to change the ground rules I set for myself and start posting lugubrious paragraphs about my state of mind. I also don't want it to be drudgery to post. Yet I don't want to lose three weeks at a time out of the record I have kept of my life since I decided to move up here, even if all I really want to do is read, not write. It's a puzzle.

Meanwhile, here is a picture showing the Elwha River's east and west shores and the shifting channels, taken by Mike McHenry of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe on June 11, 2013.

Elwha River overflight, June 11, 2013. Thanks to Mike McHenry and the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe for this photo. (Click for larger image.)

Sorry. The image template changed, and I don't have time to deal with it. Am packing to leave for Santa Fe and then Florida at impossible AM. It will just have to be what it is until I get home.

This post is for KL and RC, who were worrying about my silence.

Pleasures of the Harbor

The canoes landed on Monday, while we were gone. First landing I've missed since I began working for the Tribe. Not so many canoes this time, only the ones from the outer coast, as everyone from inside the Salish Sea is heading straight down the inside waters to Squaxin Island. Elwha is always a two night layover, a rest day for the pullers, so there the canoes were on Tuesday afternoon, right on the downtown waterfront: the tribes' annual reminder to the City that this harbor (and indeed this whole Olympic Peninsula) quite recently was theirs.

The ferry came in while I was sitting on a log talking to some Dutch tourists. Later I paid a visit to the log ship presently loading at the T-pier, the POS Jade.

Paddle to Squaxin Island Stops Over in Port Angeles, July 17, 2012 (Click for larger image.)

It's a Tufted Puffin, Absolutely It Is (Click for larger image.)

Canoes Arrived Yesterday

They will have paddled away east at first light this morning. Story from this morning's paper.

The first canoe to land was from Quinault (Click for larger image.)

I almost didn't go to watch the landing. Since I was planning not to help out in the kitchen, I didn't feel that I ought to. But when the landing time began to approach, I couldn't stay away. I love the scripted ceremonial. I could listen a dozen times over (and get to do so) to, roughly, 'we have come from far away and are tired and hungry, may we land and share stories and songs with you' to which someone, perhaps a barely audible tiny child, replies in English and Klallam, 'Thankyou for coming to our territory. Come ashore, come ashore.' I thought on and off all afternoon about the other scripted ceremonial I am familiar with, the shuso ceremony at Tassajara and at Crestone, like this one no less moving for being prewritten.

Tlingit canoe, from Juneau, Alaska (Click for larger image.)Ahousat (Click for larger image.)

This all happens not out on the rez but right in Port Angeles Harbor on the beach in front of the Red Lion Inn. It is the tribe's annual reminder to the town that the last Klallam were displaced from the townsite and moved out to the present rez only about 80 years ago, and it was once all theirs. (The temptation is great to try to frame the photos to leave out the city dock, the motel, and so on. It's hard not to romanticize. But it ain't romantic. It is the restoration of the continuity of culture.)

On the beach (Click for larger image.)

The canoes spend the night on the beach below the motel, and everyone goes by van and car out to Elwha, where their support crews have set up camp and the festivities begin. They dance and sing much of the night, then climb back into the canoes in the morning, early if the tide says so, and pull away to the next landing. Day after day. A hundred canoes will arrive at Swinomish, this year's host, on July 27.

The landing schedule map. It's really complicated this year. (Click for larger image.)

PS It was warm mild and foggy, later colder and came on to drizzling...

PPS Mural on the Feiro Marine Life Center, showing the very same beach some time before about 1860. HistoryLink tells about the early days around 1850 when settlers first arrived to live among the Klallam, and descriptions of the village of I'e'nis.

Come Ashore, Come Ashore (again)

Peninsula Daily News has a nice story and a wonderful photo gallery on the canoe landing. Be sure to click on the link for related photos. They got images I only hoped for, and the names of the canoe families...

I don't usually write about the tribe, you may have noticed, feeling that it's not mine to tell about. Happily, the Canoe Journey is a public-is-welcome occasion.

I did my bit to help out yesterday morning, turned up at 4AM to be on the breakfast crew. We fed a lot of people.

Come Ashore, Come Ashore

The canoe journey reached Elwha today. They land right in downtown Port Angeles, east of the city pier on the beach in front of the Red Lion Hotel. This is where the village of Y'Innis was. The whole shore of the Strait belonged to the Klallam then. (1)

Each canoe circles past the greeters on the beach before coming ashore.

Then a speaker in the arriving canoe says who they are and what a long way they've come, that they are tired and hungry, and would like to share songs and stories and fellowship, and requesting permission to come ashore. And the people on shore say who they are, and that the visitors are welcome.

It was still grey and foggy while most of the canoes from the north and south of Puget Sound, and along the shore, came in; by the time the canoes from Canada crossed the Strait the sun was shining. I think there were about 30 canoes, over the course of nearly four hours. Shuttles, and vans, and their own support vehicles were carrying them to the camping areas out on the Rez at Elwha. It's a 2-night stop. The canoes will rest on the beach there in the harbor until Sunday morning.

They're feeding 4,500 people tonight and again tomorrow at Elwha—pullers, support boat crews, the people who break down camp each morning and then drive ahead and have it waiting at the next stop, families, grannies, babies and all. I'm helping cook breakfast, and the breakfast cook said to come at 2AM. I think he meant it, but I'm shooting for 4AM, that will be the best I can do.

This is my favorite part: carrying the canoes up the beach.

Come Ashore, Come Ashore

The canoes landed. Lots of ceremony.

Port Angeles Harbor (Click for larger images.)

They left yesterday at 5 AM in a thick fog, and crossed the Strait to the Songhees Reserve on Victoria Harbor.

Today they paddle on to Tsawout in East Saanich.

Canoes on the Move

My work email is filling up with messages about the movement of the canoes coming from the southeast corner of Puget Sound, already on the water. They're at Suquamish tonight. Port Gamble Sunday, Port Townsend Monday, Jamestown Tuesday, gathering more canoes as they go. We are expecting about 25 canoes, maybe 1100 guests including the support vehicles and families and elders associated with each canoe of pullers, on Wednesday evening. Protocol and drumming and dancing at the Tribal Center into the wee hours, but they will first land in front of the Red Lion Motel on Port Angeles Harbor, the stretch of shore called Hollywood Beach, where the village of Y'Innis was. It's the tribe's annual reminder to the town that once the whole shore, as far west as Hoko, was theirs...

All the canoes staging here cross the Strait and land at Songhees on Friday the 25th; paddle onward; and join all the canoes coming along four other routes for the grand landing at Cowichan on Monday, the 28th....

I usually keep work out of this blog as being mostly not mine to write about. Still not mine, but you bet I will be on the beach on Wednesday, helping to welcome the canoes... Canoe Journey link. Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe.

Canoe Journey Map (Click for larger image.)