The Midnight Sun
((Point Lay, Alaska: the Find)(Reedited and Revised, 1-2009))
By Author: Dennis Siluk
Point Lay Alaska is located at 69°44'28" North, 163°0'31" West (69.741023, -163.008613) GR1. According to the United States Census Bureau, the CDP has a total area of 89.3 km 2 (34.5 mi 2). 78.9 km² (30.5 mi²) of it is land and 10.4 km² (4.0 mi²) of it is water. The total area is 11.66% water.
I was sitting in a U. S. Mail cargo plane, small in size, and we landed quickly and quietly at Point Lay Alaska; we had picked up the mail from Barrow, Alaska, it was 1996, June, and the weather was beautiful for this rough country—; we had landed and perhaps the whole village showed up seemingly out of nowhere, some twenty-feet in front of our plane, there couldn’t have been more than two-hundred in the whole village, and it appeared most of them were here, yes indeed, standing by the plane to see the new passenger, namely me (to my understanding in the year AD 2000 there were only 247-inhabitants at Point Lay, and as I looked about, I reconfirmed, my first assertion, that I doubted, there was over two-hundred in the whole village, and most were here standing at the side of the plane).
The American Indian race accounted for about 85% of the population, a few whites, a few other races I couldn’t tell, perhaps Russian related, because my pilot was Russian, and they looked a bit like my pilot; and a family or two of Hispanics. So there was a cross-cultural list of people here.
The weather was cloudy, isolated snow showers were forecasted for the evening, it was 15 to 20 degrees (colder than Barrow), some Northeast winds.
My Russian pilot, whom I paid to fly me on his route, down to Point Lay that is, was taking the cargo off now; Barrow was to the North and Kotzebue to my south, the Sea to the West of me. I had been talking to an archeologist on the plane to Barrow a few days ago, he and his fellow comrades made a discovery in the area—the Point Lay area, he had told me whereabouts of his discovery, but was reluctant to pinpoint it. They had found a mummy, taken a few hundred pictures of it, in its abode, a cave like abode (and nearby I would discover an underground cave as well with old whalebones holding the tundra in place, one not related to their find).
Perhaps the abode was a dwelling, or grave, he didn’t tell me at the time exactly, only showed me a few pictures of the mummy, more like a frozen body wrapped in old furs.
As I stepped out of the plane, and got into the village, there was a family that helped me on my voyage, or call it exploits to be. His wife had one older child (perhaps three years old), and she had an infant in her amaaq, she was small, and very cut, young Eskimo, or as they are called in this area Inuit’s.
I had arrived on a whim, I was going to stay in Barrow for my whole trip, at least those were my original plans, but this story intrigued me so, to the point I had to take this to its end. I had done some extensive traveling, and archeology was a hobby of mine, so it all fell quite smoothly into my mental forte (in essence, it was as if a golden egg, a gift you might say, was handed to me, and all I needed to do was to crack the egg, and inside the yoke, was my prize. And I was willing to do that.)
I had quickly learned Toornag; some kind of evil spirit had to be taken into consideration, as they, meaning the Inuit’s are sensitive to certain things, and this being one. They do believe there was some kind of a local flood that took place; thus, some principles, or fundamentals of Christianity were superimposed on the older ancestral beliefs here.
I paid the family I stayed with, what they wanted, for room and board, for me to live in their shack of a house, getting acclimated, and revitalizing myself for my journey, more likened to exploration to be. I had stayed at the Top of the World Hotel, in Barrow for a few days before I had walked down to the airstrip, along side the Chukchi Sea, and ventured to make a deal with the pilot.
(Let me insert this before I go on with my trip: it’s amazing to stand at the end of Point Barrow, and on one side you see the Beaufort Sea all frozen, and on the other side the Chukchi Sea, unfrozen, at least for six weeks out of the year anyway, and I was within that time period.)
I didn’t really care to jump into this new adventure so quickly, so suddenly without rigorous planning, it’s no longer my style, when I was young I was careless in my adventures, and got pretty hungry, and dependent on others; it just kind of took root though, as if it had a course of its own, slow paced it was, but not too slow, as it seeped into my attention and as we all know, : one thing leads into another, does it not.
The family I was staying with, went bear hunting with the elders on a few occasions when I was there, and I went once with them, in my six weeks, and found they felt the bears liked to smoke, yes I said smoke, it troubled me at first, but I had learned many things from the folks I lived with, and they believed the bear assumed human shape, or could, was capable of it doing so.
In a like manner, the folks I lived with, believed, the bear believed in a kind of hospitality thing, I mean, a generosity they had toward captured animals; they believed the animals let themselves be killed for the sake of their human brothers, to help them. A kindness I had a hard time digesting.
I do not remember how to spell my host’s name correctly, but I will try and leave it at the best I can, for this story: Umanaq and her husband, I shall call him as I can only remember the sounds of his name, and Qaviangaq.
The midnight sun came out each night, and other than that, life was great, no igloo stuff, just huts. Completely different than Barrow who had a population of some 3000-inhabitants, a metropolis you might say in the icy wilderness, a wilderness that was all white, blinding white, no trees, only tundra to let humans know, there was something more than ice in this land, and wild caribou, and big white bears, in the sterile arctic; and luxuries, were not plentiful, actually a pear in the store was $4.00, in Barrow, and here at Point Lay, you ate what they had available, and pray it didn’t have energy to walk away after you sat down at the dinner table.
I had learned they even had a High School in Barrow, a few folks with Bachelor Degrees, and perhaps I was the highest at the Graduate level, but no one paid much attention. In Barrow they wanted to hire me for a Chemical Dependency Director of a clinic, I had to turn it down, but it was getting my attention, until I started thinking about those long nights, and questioned my ability to remain sober under such isolation. Furthermore, employment seemed to be fine during my stay, a few drunks not working—but that was more self imposed I would think than no work available, and I do remember it was a dry area for alcohol, during those days, but the black market was booming, $250-dollars for a fifty, and a quart would cost you fifty dollars more, and a half gallon, at $400, was a bargain. I’m not going to tell you how they got that alcohol from one point to the next, or to the consumer, lest I lose my standing in the great state of Alaska, but they got it with a little ingenuity.
It also seemed to me, almost half the folks were not married, a few divorced; (Just observations, no more.)
Assut was the little boy’s name, a deep dark-eyed lad, and a face that always had a clammy smile on it; he was always looking for small holes it seemed, to see if any creatures would pop out I think.
On another observation, the weather got to be—at the end of the month—in the 30s to 40s, and it was warm compared to my first few days there, I suppose summer was breaking into the land.
The Find
I had drawn a map from the conversation I had with the assistant young archeologist (in my mind at first, and at the hotel in Barrow later on that is).
It was now July, and I knew him and his team would be gone from the site, he had told me so during that loose conversation we had, it was just a matter of days he said, at that time, and thus, I had give him all of twenty-five days; my senses told me: I‘d find something if I’d peruse this quest, but not quite to the extent of what I did find; matter-of-fact, I now understand why he wanted to hide the site from me, and the whole world beyond me, for safe keeping. But Qaviangaq and Umanaq would be the best-gifted hunters any explorer could ask for, better guides than official guides that is, to include their happy but pest-like, two little children, whom of course came along.
The trip was hard, and enduring, and I could—and may at a later date, get into that more, but I wish to get to the premise of this story, and it is a story indeed worth its salt. I have shared many of my trips, and exploits with people, and found many things, such as footprints in stone on islands off the coast of Brazil, human footprints, with animal prints beside them, and stones carved in the image of bulls, fish and other animals, at other sites, in addition to rock art found on farms in Maui, and giant stones on top of mountains, cared into bears and elephant images, and never told a person until now, it will be for them to find although (one in New Hampshire, many near Cerro de Pasco, one stone image in particular in Malta, and so forth…) but this was even more of a find.
We had found the spot that the team had excavated, I guess Americans and Venezuelan scientists is what the team was made up of, and it was a primitive site indeed. I am not sure what to call them, but apemen might do; the find was not the mummy the young lad had showed me a picture of, the mummy we did find, and it was put back into its original place inside the cave (I saw it), and the bones of the whales were sticking out a foot when I got to the site—as I expected, below the cave.
But the surprise was that, what I was now looking at, was a different site, not sure if they had even saw it or not—most likely not, but it wasn’t far from theirs: ‘maybe’ I thought ‘they were so engrossed at their find, and covering it backup, they didn’t see the other one; everything seemed to be unmoved for ages. If indeed they did find this site, I was not as careful as they, I moved much of it here and there, took nothing, but moved almost everything, touched it, examined it: almost made love to it—just kidding.
I told myself: I found a Galapagos of bone, of strange creatures in a cave; artwork on the walls; one species was of a frog, the bones were small, a carving was of that on the wall; perhaps some of these bones dated back when South America, North America and Alaska were all solidly embedded with Asia/Europe and Africa, also on the other side fused together as one continent. Look at any map, it shows a ripping apart of the continents on the Atlantic side anyhow and this somewhat proved it.
I had no scientific facts for anything, but there was volcanic dust in the cave, perhaps from the Ordovician age I surmised, when life emerged from the sea as they (the so called experts) articulated, to gradually developing into amphibians, as they say.
These bones were old, as others were perhaps somewhere around five million year old. I find most anthropologist are narrow-minded (I’ve known a few, and then a few too many), or fixed on their own concepts, or too much wedged into a book, with no room for compromise, but be that as it may, the question arises, nonetheless, ‘…when did the lineages of ape and humankind diverge?’ an unanswerable question indeed.
As a Christian I do not have a hard time with that, simply read my story on pre humans ((‘Before Eve’) (an Epic poem)); but here I was faced with fact in front of me; not evolutionary fact (I do not believe a banana will ever make a monkey into a larger primate and then onto mankind), but species fact. I, not like the so many scientist who try, and try and then fit a jaw bone part into a skull, and call it Peking Man, or Java Man, and link it to mankind in particular (reconstructing a scene they never saw), hence, my guess work was as good as theirs: although with this find and the hundreds of bones I saw, and skulls, and bear bones, and so for and so on, and carvings on the wall, it would not be hard to do, I could have according to their standards, recreated the Garden of Eden.
Consequently, I have to take modern scientists beliefs that species eventually developed into whatever they feel like theorizing in five to ten-million years, and break it down to a more sensible concept. These bones were real, fossil looking were some, old sediments, very primitive; but I did not see anything in the world that tells me people turned into fossils, not even buried by mudslides. So I must assume these species were from a time before humanity existed. A pre human stage was developed perhaps, and in the process devoured by superhuman beings, and a lower species survived the age somehow.
Here, I found mysterious ear holes in skulls, and small nostril holes in skulls. I couldn’t do any scientific dating, so I will never know. Whatever the bones were, and from what era, they were not of my God’s human creation I assure you, it was perhaps on some creation prior to that which man seems to have so prophetic, profound negative concepts against.
Written at home, Lima, Peru May 8, 2006 (Reedited 1-8-2009) Part one of two parts (see: “Whale Bone Graveyard”)
Whale Bone Graveyard
(Haunting of the Bones)
I must at this time, add this little brief to my previous story called “The Midnight Sun,” done some three-years ago; not that I am proud to do so, for I have never mentioned it in any of my former writings, but perhaps I should now. You know kind of wipe the slate clean.
When I returned to Barrow, Alaska, from Point Lay, where I had spent six-weeks, I was quite happy with my experience, perchance too happy, I walked around the town like a peacock, and pride comes before destruction, so they say—: remember this is back in June and July, of 1996, and I walked to a café down along the beach area, well there is a sea, to be exact, so it would be more like the banks of the sea I walked. Matter-of-fact, I walked it a few days in a row, and discovered there was a cemetery of sorts there. It is an open kind of cemetery, in that it is not guarded by anything, nor is there a fence. And large whale bones, perhaps a few hundred years old, were sticking out and above ground, from their entrenched environment, out above the ground four to five feet some, others a few feet, and still others just barely. It is where—in years past, folks lived, there was no wood, so they used whale bones to construct the insides of their abodes, like dugouts, which were used along the Mississippi river a hundred and twenty-five years ago.
I walked among this whalebone, graveyard, looked about, it haunted me, I wanted a piece of a whale bone, a reminder, souvenir, something along those lines, and I did not ask the ancestors for permission, as I had done on Easter Island, and in the Killing Fields, in Cambodia, and other such places, I just took a small, very small piece off the top of a bone, it was loose, and I help it become looser you might say, and I do not mean this fancily, I am sorry I did it (and apologize to the ancestors for doing it, and to the people of Barrow for having done it): anyhow, I took it, went back to the hotel, and went to sleep, I had three more days in Barrow before I’d leave, and for two of them, the ancestors haunted me, like white on rice: “Bring it back, bring it back….” It was almost a nightly hum for hours on end, in my ears, in my bones, in my stomach.
Thus, I returned the little piece of bone to its original spot, placed it where I took it off, wish I could have glued it back on, but that was not possible—and I’m not kidding.
In any event, while at the site I had asked the ancestors to forgive me, aloud, and let me say, I do believe they know if a person is serious or not. It was a humbling experience, but once back at the hotel, I got a very good Midnight Sun, sleep, and that was appreciated.
The story, “Whale Bone Graveyard,” was written, 1-10-2009, as part two, to the short story, written May 8, 2006 called, “The Midnight Sun.”
Labels: Poet and writer of the Year for the Mantaro Valley of Peru, The Council of Continental Univrsity
