Today I walked down to the Weary River. We started off through the tundra around noon and arrived at the river a few hours later. On the way we ran into two men who were looking for “chocolate lilies.” One guy held out his hand with a dirty white root in it for me to taste. My eyes wide, chocolate on my mind, I sunk my teeth in. Definitely not chocolate. Being me, sometimes a little too eager and interested, I asked a lot of questions about the process, it’s something I’m working on NOT doing quite as much here. The Yup’ik culture is one of few words, showing, not so much telling. Instead of describing the process in depth as I might have myself, he just pointed to the fireweed, then to the dead “bell shaped” plant next to it, pulled it up and sure enough, three little chocolate lily bulbs. It tasted more like a really strong radish that left a little bit of a film in my mouth. Fifteen minutes later I could still taste it. He was making a soup with his bulbs. He also said that it could be dried and ground up into a powder for seasoning. As we parted ways he smiled and said, “learn something new everyday, don’t we?”
Weary River at low tide. When it's high tide in the evening this river is swells several feet higher. The boat in the photo is about 15 or 20 feet out of the water. Within hours of this photo, the boat would have been floating.
2 comments:
Since when do you ask a lot of questions?
How many questions do you usually ask?
Do you wait for answers before asking the next question or do you just fire them off, one after another?
Do you flail your arms wildly while asking questions?
If so, does this usually yield a better response?
Are your questions true/false, multiple choice or essay?
If you were trapped on an island with only three questions to have answered, what would they be and why?
Wait...you live in Alaska now? huh?
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