Linda Berry
author of
Death and the Easter Bunny
Death and the Hubcap

Leaving Anchorage and Left Coast Crime, I flew to the bustling town of Bethel, carrying gifts and a suitcase full of lesson plans for my visits in schools in three Yup'ik villages. I was met by the people who took care of me for the next three days: Ralph, driver, expediter, man-of-all-talents; Eleanor, cook and teacher; Sharon, guide and mentor, who had made arrangements with the schools and communities, and lined up accommodations that did not include a single honey bucket.

I offer some snapshots of this wonderful adventure, beginning with our drive to Kuluksak up the mostly frozen but somewhat splashy highway--the Kuskokwim River. I'd come well prepared with cold-weather gear, but the weather was unseasonably warm and in each village we joked about the warm Alaskan weather, comparing it to the cold Colorado climate I left behind.

The days whipped by, following the same pattern in each place: I packed my bag of writings tricks from classroom to classroom during the day and enjoyed a community gathering after school.

Special events in Tuluksak included attending the Moravian church on Sunday night, where singing and sermon were offered in both Yup'ik and English, and witnessing a dance performance in the library after school on Monday. I was delighted with the drumming, the singing, and the humor in the story-telling of the dances.

In Akiak, kindergartners laughed at my attempts to learn to count in Yup'ik, and they told me how to make akutaq, the so-called Eskimo ice cream, made with shortening, sugar, water, oil, and berries. After school, Ralph had arranged with a fisherman for me to go on the ice with him when he pulled in his nets full of whitefish. My souvenir of Akiak came from the trash can at the school, where a student had skinned a rabbit. Ralph presented the feet to me in a sealed plastic bag. That night I was treated to a sample of real akutaq at a community party in the library.

In Akiachak, the largest of my villages, with a population of about 600, as I sat in the library and sorted through the dwindling supply of pencils I'd brought from the City of Aurora, Colorado, to give to the children, I asked the women to help me decide what to do with my souvenir rabbit's feet. They laughed when I suggested making earrings, and said I should make a yo-yo. (In a Yup'ik yo-yo two objects are attached to uneven lengths of string, and set twirling in opposite directions. It's harder than it sounds. I'll make a yo-yo with my rabbits' feet when they've dried even though Sharon later gave me one with beautiful handmade Eskimo dolls as weights. I was kidding about the earrings, anyway.) When I asked the women to tell me how to make akutaq so that I could give it to my friends when I got back home, one woman, apparently not trusting my understanding of the process, said she didn't think I should. "You'll embarrass Alaska," she told me.

What did I do in return for all the laughter and kindness? I had several activities in my bag of tricks, but in most classes, we reviewed the story of the three little pigs. We talked about how different it was for The Three Little Javelinas (who live in the Sonoran Desert, as told in the book by Susan Lowell), and created our own Kuskokwim version of the story, with little rabbits or puppies or caribou building houses of grass, willow, mud, or ice to protect them from foxes, bears, or wolves. As a professional writer, I told them that good stories have the three little "p's": people (or pigs), a problem (or plot), and a particular place.

The experience was so rich for me that I could start again and highlight entirely different memories. I know my spelling of Yup'ik words is likely to be as hilarious as my pronunciation, but I want to say, to my hosts and to those who imagined this great project, quyana. Thank you.

*** Like you, like me
Yup'ik words ripple and click
like water on stones in the river.
Even in stiff kass'aq throats
they laugh and dance gently
like the people of Tuluksak,
Akiak, and Akiachak.
Their beauty hides when I write them down.
They must be met face to face,
like you, like me,
to be known.
Quyana.
Thank you.