On the Tanana…. Week 1

WOW! I’ve been out on my friend Jenna & David’s land on the Tanana River, outside of Fairbanks. Their property is somewhere (loosely) with in the circled area. It is boat or hike in.

The land is lovely… and as fall really settles in the Aspens are turning yellow. The aspen bark is a green color and the birches get some funky coloring when they are stripped. My hike in was lovely! I let town and traffic slip away as I hiked in.

Jenna and David live a sustainable lifestyle. It is a mix of primitive skills and traditional ways along with the merits of chainsaws and tools where and when needed. They harvest most of what they need from the land (like fish and game meat and berries) and they supplement with things they can’t grow out there. We are eating like kings and queens with veggies from the garden and salmon from the river! 

That is a birch bark bowl I am eating out of. I have just started the project of carving my own. It’s quite fun. (MB – I am ready to try out that wood lathe when I get back.)

Jenna and David make most of what they use. They eat from wooden bowls and spoons, they built the earth lodge that they live in out here and it is BEAUTIFUL! (I am missing photos of the inside but here are a few quick shots of the outside.

The big thing we are doing this fall is fish camp. They smoke and dry fish – enough to feed their dogs all winter. They have 7 dogs (who are lovely and I will highlight them with photos in another post!) We also smoke fish for human consumption as well as eat wildly at this time of year. I’m learning A LOT about fish processing. There is “hot smoke” and “dry smoke” – Hot smoke basically cooks the fish – and it’s what we do for human consumption. Dry smoke is what you do to keep flies off the fish while it is drying. Once the fish has a outer “tough” layer on it the flies can’t penetrate it and you let it fully dry out. These are dry smoke fish and the fish house.

Processing fish is fun. It seems this year I am having a love affair with fish. From the tender now to fish camp. I am seeing salmon at the other end of their life cycle. Salmon in the Tanana have swam over 900 miles to spawn. The male chum have a huge kype (that hooked jaw) with very bright markings (thank you to Bailey and Ruby for my identification skills!) the coho are bright red. All the fish are quite large.

We are also catching white fish. These have large scales in comparison to the salmon whose skin feels smooth. We fillet the white fish with plans to eat them. They get hung by their tails till we cut them all, then brined and then put in the hot smoker.

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All in all my first week on the land has been AWESOME! Beyond fish I’ve been chopping firewood, felling some trees with the chainsaw, working with my hands and being fully present in my body. More to come…..