It is an annual ritual of Yukon first nations peoples to go to their fish camps on the Yukon River and net salmon. Last year my dear husband went to a number of fish camps for his work. This year he is visiting and helping out at May's fish camp. May is his favourite elder and a real sweat heart. I went down for only an over night and helped out a little bit with the whole fish smoking and drying. May's first language is Northern Tutchone, not English. To be able to interact with May I had to really tune my ears and put myself in her shoes. Entirely new converations would be started quitely and accelerate rapidly into fascinatingly brief stories of life on the Yukon River.
May said to me, as she was slicing a large slamon into stips; "Tourist would get off here, and run into town... when steamboats ran". And that was the story. All of it. i was left on my own to imagine how fast, how hard, how hard those tourists would run to get into Carmacks. Even my own husband begins to tell stories this way. "Japanese tourist ate Chinook eggs like candy. Last year they stopped at the camp and May told them with hand motions that the eggs were food". My imagination fills in the details.
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