Camp Activities

There was a lot for the kids to do out on Afognak.  Matt set up a buoy swing with the float he painted and gave Nora for her birthday - we brought that one back at the end of the trip - Lisa went snorkling, and if you look carefully in the photo below you can see that Stuey learned to saw wood.  But most of the activities centered around camp life - splitting wood, tending the fire, stacking wood in the teepee, cooking hot dogs on the fire, toting water, cleaning dishes etc.  Stuey loved stacking wood in the teepee.  Patrick

Teepee Time

The 12 person cook teepee got lots of use in Afognak. We are all fans of sitting around the warm woodstove and stocking the fire (especially Stuey!!). 

Below, Lisa prepared an appetizer of smoked salmon she had made atop crackers and cream cheese. The smoked salmon was  sweet and soft. 

Stuey was particularly attached to two small rocks, which he used as a plate. He would put his small piece of sausages on it and savor every morsel.

On a rainy Sunday morning, Rachel brought out a card game called  "Tell Tale". It was composed of lots of pictures on round cards and each of us would take a turn telling a story with the pictures.

One shuffle later, it would be the next persons turn. It was quite funny to see what stories transpired from the interpertations of the cards! Nora especially got into it and told probably 5 stories with the cards. Stuey watched.

On the trip we learned that Rachel is a Golden Scout (Female version of eagle scout!). She shared one of her girl scout songs, "the Beaver song" (with cool hand movements to go along). We had a hoot singing it throughout the weekend.

On that same blustery Sunday morning, Patrick and Gregg cooked up a breakfast of hash browns and corned beef has as well as many rounds of coffee and tea. There was a small mishap with the Coleman stove before everyone arose; a gas leak which lead to large uncontrollable flames coming from the small cook stove. Luckily the game bags were nearby, which Patrick threw on the flames to smother it. Quick thinking on his part. (I, on the otherhand, was outside slightly panicking and about to wake the entire camp to help.) Alls well that ends well. And I'm hoping that coleman stove is retired soon.

Rachel and Nora curled up on the floor of the tent. Good times on 'Fognak!

Zoya

Family Subsistence Hunt

While out on Afognak we hiked up the mountain one day and shot a deer.  On the other day we set a longline and caught some fish.  I REALLY hope this is the start a new annual family tradition - the Afognak subsistence hunt.  As Nora put it when I came back to camp with part of a deer on my back, 'Daddy this is the first time we go hunting with you'.  It turns out that everyone in camp even heard the shot that killed the deer (pretty unbelievable considering we were 3 miles away).  I can see the day when Nora and Stuey climb up the mountain with us to go deer hunting.  I hope they also learn how to pick a net for salmon and catch halibut and cod on a longline.

It was really windy up on top and most of the deer were down in the trees to avoid the wind.  We were happy just to find a legal deer to harvest.  Below we start the hike for home with packs full of deer.

Nora greets us as we get back to the beach by camp.  They had a fire going and were cooking hotdogs for lunch.

We hung the deer meat in a tree to cool it off and keep it away from prowling bears.

Unfortunately there are no fishing pictures - it was a really nasty day. But I'm sure we'll have 'Fognak fishing pictures in the future.  Patrick

Afognak

This Labor day weekend we went out to Afognak Island for 2 nights. We went with our friends, Matt and Rachel and Lisa and Gregg.  Matt and Patrick took a skiff out to Afognak (many thanks to our friend John S. for loaning it to Matt!) and the rest of us took a float plane out. 

 The moon was full our first night there and it was so  beautiful on the water.

 Each time we go to Afognak, I fall more and more and more in love with it. I love washing the dishes in the ocean and sand. I love the sounds the sea otters and loons make on the ocean. I love the sound of the wind going through the trees on the point. I love how the kids are at an age where they can run and explore on the beach and play on their own.  

Each time we go, I think we each learn something new, and something about ourselves. The kids become a little more self-reliant, as do I at camp life. And we have such a fun time together as a family, exploring, cooking, etc.

The camp site. The cook tent is the white one on the left, red tent is for Patrick and I and the ones on the right are the kids. 

Arriving on Afognak.

View from the beach up into Litnik Bay. With Gregg sitting on a log doing a crossword puzzle.

Stuey helps Rachel with the fire.

Matt cuts up a watermelon.

We enjoyed a lovely fire on the beach on which we cooked hot dogs!

Stuey is the FIRE guy. He sat by the fire all the time and loved putting logs in. It was hard to peel him away from the fire he enjoyed it so much!

Zoya

Kindergarten Adjustment

Today Stuey cried his first tears when I dropped him off at kindergarten.

Since school started, I walk him out to the recess on the playground and he stands to the side watching all the kids.  He asks me to stay with him ("don't leave mommy") and I walk him up to his class line when the bell rings. He is the last one to join his kindergarten  line (5 students!).  Fortunately the teachers are ok with me walking in the building with him and off I go, sneaking out to my car.

Today I was walking down the steps outside the school when someone said, "Zoya, your son is coming behind you". Stuey had raced after me and was crying. He didn't want me to go.

Two teachers were close behind him.  Stuey asked, "When will you come back?".
I told him, "at 3 o'clock. After PE". This helped him a little bit, but not really. The tears continued. He said, "Mom, I want to give you a hug and a kiss." I gave him a hug and kiss and then he said, "Mom, I want to watch you leave."

At home we have a routine where when I leave, Stuey says, "I give you hug and kiss and I'll watch you leave." This involves a hug and kiss and then he goes outside to watch me get in my car and drive away. He is VERY routine about it, almost always doing it.

I explained to him that today I would watch him leave, and he wouldn't be able to watch me leave because he had to go into school.  Eventually we got him calmed down enough and he went inside with his teacher.

Fortunately I didn't have a client for the first few minutes at work, as I felt a bit frazzled inside. Not because I was worried about him, but because when I saw his tears on his cheeks, I thought, "My little Stuey. He is often such a brave little guy. He is somehow scared in his new setting."He was trying to take his routines with me into his school setting.

I got through work just fine, but was eager to pick him up. I looked at the teacher and raised my eye brows in a question type of look, asking "how'd it go?". Mrs. N said she had Stuey sit in the office with the office manager for the prayer routine that the kids do in the gym and then he joined his class after. The other teacher, Ms. S, said that Stuey doesn't yet play with other kids on the playground during morning recess. To this Stuey shrugged his shoulders several time and said, "I'm just shy." We all smiled.


Tonight was parent night at St. Marys. When I came home, Nora said, "Mom, Stuey is asleep on the couch!!"

I carried him to bed and laid with him until he fell back asleep. Then as I was crawling out, Stuey awoke and said, "Thank you for laying with me mommy".

Zoya

Processing

This past month there has been quite a bit of meat processing going on at the Saltonstalls. Between deer and a goat, many white packages of meat have been put away in freezers. 

This week Lisa and Gregg came over to process the goat from last weekends hunt. 

Here Lisa and Patrick are cutting apart goat ribs with hedge trimmers. That goat had some serious bones! Them people have some serious muscles!

 The kids, especially Nora, have really gotten into helping with writing on the packages. Below, is a drawing that Lisa did last winter of the sheep meat.

 ...and below,  Nora's version!

This week Nora got even more extravagant in her drawing. She drew Lisa, the deer, sun and mountain (and even Lisa shooting the deer. How cool is it that Nora has a cool Kodiak female hunting "Auntie"?!)

Zoya

7th Birthday Party

Nora's cough finally improved enough for us to host her 7th birthday party yesterday. 8 of her friends and their parents came over to enjoy hot dogs, salad, pinata and cake. The weather cooperated with 60+ temperatures and a warm breeze. 

Nora got her first Barbie from Auntie Ella...complete with 2 outfits!

Zoya

Goat Hunt Gone Bad

Yesterday I spent the day hunting mountain goats with Gregg.  We hiked up Friday night and did our usual pre hunt camp out.  On the way up it was raining and we were soaked so a blazing woodstove proved its worth drying out all our gear.  In the morning since we were hunting goats we slept in a bit.  For deer you have to be glassing at dawn because they bed down early and get difficult to find.  But goats are white and generally easy to find.  Hence we did not feel the need to start hiking in the dark.  Still we did get up at 5:30 and were hiking by 7 AM.

Beautiful country and lots of goats - we saw 3 different herds and maybe 75 goats total.  But the country was also VERY scary with lots of cliffs and very steep, slippery slopes - often with cliffs at the bottom.  We did a lot of side-hilling on slopes where you did NOT want to fall down.  I was glad I had brought some crampons for my Xtra Tuffs.

Anyway we found a herd of goats in an accessible spot and snuck up on them perfectly.  It was a beautiful spot.  And that's where the goat hunt went bad.  I made a poor shot on the goat and he ran around the corner and into some ravines and cliffs - not an ideal spot.  But we had to follow him and to do so we had to leave my 'comfort zone' in terms of steep slopes and cliffs.

We finally got to him and cut him up on a very steep slope.  We braced him on the slope by wedging rocks under his downslope side. And then came the hike home.  It was so bad that I did not even take any photos. With the hide and camping gear my pack was in the 140 pound range.  Normally it takes a while for a pack to start weighing on you - but that pack was awful pretty much right away (I probably should have dumped the hide).

 At first we tried going directly downslope and it was looking good until we ran into a band of cliffs.  No way down - so we had to go back upslope and back home the way we came. This entailed a REALLY scary sidehill on a steep slope above a cliff.   Soon after that we got back to where we originally had shot at the goat.  We figure the side excursion cost us 3 hours of extra labor.

From there the hiking was exhausting but not life threatening. Lots of sidehills and steep slopes. It was a long way to the car.  We finally stumbled to the truck at just about dusk.  I had the goat chilling out in the freezer by 11 PM.

On the hike home Gregg and I ruminated on how often goat hunts do 'go bad'.  I think from now on I am only going to attempt 'easy' goat hunts.  Patrick

First Day of School

 The first day of school went fabulously. I took the kids to their St. Mary's classrooms to discover Stuey's kindergarten class has 6 kids and Nora's 1st/2nd grade class has 13 students! I'm really liking that student teacher ratio!

I took Stuey out to the playground and  watched things from the side of the playground together. When I made an indication to leave, he requested, "Don't leave yet mom".

I was the only parent out there and he and I just stood together watching the scene. Kids reconnecting after a summer apart. A few kids on the swings by themselves.  Nora ran over to her girlfriends and they played on the parallel bars. A few hugs were exchanged. The bell rang and it was time to proceed into St. Mary's. I walked with Stuey up into the building, gave him a kiss and hug and left. No tears this year with kindergarten drop off.

Pictures are from posed "first day" photo, straight to some sibling love before the kids got into the car.

 At the end of the school day, I went into the building shortly before dismissal and sat on the entry way bench. I could hear  a chorus of tiny voices singing, "Head, shoulders, knees and toes..." in the distance. I could tell it was the kindergarten class and was so glad that Stuey was singing such a fun song with his friends.

The class was brought out behind his teacher and the kids raced over and told me about their day. I took them for an ice cream cone and bed time was easy tonight, as they were both tired from their first day. And there was no homework today-yeah!

Zoya

Lisa's Deer

On Tuesday night I went up into the mountains with Lisa and Gregg to help Lisa get her deer.  It was a beautiful evening and we were a little worried that the weather not would hold until morning.  We gathered wood and cooked dinner on the woodstove and did some glassing for deer before bed.

I got up at 4:30 AM to cook breakfast and warm the tent up with the wood stove. The woodstove may seem like a needless luxury but it only weighs 1 1/2 pounds.  Less than my SAT phone!  Tent and stove together with pole weigh less than 5 pounds and all 3 of us fit inside with room to spare.

By 6 AM we were up on top glassing for deer.  The sun was still a little too far below the horizon and it was hard to see the deer.

The light was spectacular.  We were VERY happy that the good weather had held and that it was not raining.

We found a group of deer and while I watched from afar Lisa and Gregg snuck up closer and Lisa took the shot.

Success!  Lisa has her deer by 7 AM.  It looks like Mr Deer (or Billy the Buck as we called him) was grazing on arnica when we found him.  He will be very tasty.  Thank you Mr Deer.
Patrick