It looks like I'll be heading up an archaeological survey again this year on the South End of Kodiak. The last few years the Alutiiq Museum has been conducting archaeological surveys for the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. The USF&WS needs to know where all the archaeological sites on the Kodiak National Wildlife Rufuge are located and their current condition for management purposes. This means the museum gets to do some cutting edge archaeological research and I get to go to some cool places. Over the last couple years we've surveyed the Uganik River, Ayakulik and Red Rivers, Paramonoff Bay, Chirikof Island, and the Olga Lakes.
These photos are from our survey last spring on Upper Olga Lake and River. It looks like we'll be returning to survey Lower Olga Lake and River this coming May!. Incredible place. Lots of archaeological sites to map - the old house pits are very clear and we map them all - and beautiful scenery. The fishing is not bad either.
The top photo is of me with a Steelhead - a rainbow trout that migrates every spring back from the lake out to the ocean. The next photo is of Mark and Catherine on survey looking for sites on Upper Olga Lake. The next two show what our living conditions are like back at camp. Our cook tent is a teepee with a wood stove (tent and stove weigh around 12 pounds total). For greens we eat nettles and fireweed cooked with SPAM, and we also fry up the occasional rainbow trout. Finally the last one shows the landscape down there - that's the Olga Lakes down below.
Beautiful - I can't wait to get back!
Patrick
3 comments:
Hi, I have done some work on the south end of Kodiak too - linked through to your blog from my friend at the post office. Wondering what part of the fireweed you eat? Thanks for the great photos of Rose Tead - I've actually never been to Kodiak in the winter.
Thanks,
Christie
You eat the fireweed shoots when they first come up in the spring. They look like small, red asperigus. Cook like asperigus too. Not a huge wondow of opportunity to harvest them because they get big, woody and bitter pretty quick.
Patrick
Fault rocks - I gather you are a geologist. I dabble in geology a bit myself and even co-wrote a paper with a paeleoseismologist about the effects periodic subsidence events have had on the Alutiiq and the archaeological record. What I love about the south end though - is all the glacial and river geomorphology. Amazing what the glaciers did to the place.
Patrick
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