9/23/12 -- Forks and La Push

Kimm is ready to smoke more fish

We left Cape Flattery only because we knew that there were more adventures ahead.  We stopped back at the You Take Home Fish Company in Neah Bay where Kimm was at work on the smoker.  His fish really is wonderful.

He and his assistant Chaz were making salmon jerky so we got some of that.  It keeps a long time.  If you have any questions about smoked salmon, Kimm said you could call him.

We left Neah Bay on the winding, twisty road that limits travelers to about 30 mph.  About three miles out of town on a steep hill (with lots of curves) we heard the ominous sound of metal scraping loudly.  I pulled over as soon as I could to check it out.  I thought maybe we'd picked up a hitchiker, like some fencing wire, or something.

It was worse than that.  Our equalizer hitch has two iron bars that share the job of keeping the sway down.  Without them, the trailer wags the car like a happy dog.  One of them was dragging on the ground.  I thought maybe I'd forgotten one of the clamps or cotter pins.  No.  The steel bar had snapped itself loose from the hitch and it took part of the hitch with it.  I can't see any way it can be mended. 

We were pretty shook.  The nearest town was Forks, and we didn't expect to find Camping World there.  So we kept driving as we considered our options.

We decided that, since we used our old sway bar, a pretty light-weight affair, for years that only held one side of the hitch, we'd probably be okay.  So we're continuing our journey, trusting our fate to the winds.

Our next stop was Mora Campground in the Olympic National Park near Forks.  We made camp among gorgous red cedar and fir trees.  Some of the stumps from the first loggers still stand.  Their bodies have become nurse stumps for other plants.


This old stump birthed several trees. 
All that is left of the original stump is a woodfall of tree-bits.
The younger trees still surround their mother and hug her.

We made camp.  It's colder here and we bundle up and enjoy it.  Our flower pot furnace keeps us moderately toasty and we have campfires at night.  The trees around us are huge and the ferns are taller than my waist.

Carole and old stump in our campsite

There is a fallen tree behind our campsite.  It isn't as big as some of the trees but it will give you an idea of how big the trees are.  The area is lush because, in spite of the drought, it still gets a lot of rain. 


Adina sitting on a fallen log in our campsite

 As soon as we got camp sort of set up, we went the two miles farther to Rialto Beach.  Our campsite is close enought to the sea that we are lulled to sleep at night with the sound of it.  Rialto is one of our favorite beaches along WA's coast where every beach is unique.  Imagine our surprise when we found that the stone sculptors had been here too!



Six stone scultpure people climbing on a giant driftwood tree root

The beach here is made up of pebbles and round, flat rocks.  The drop-off into the sea is sharp, so the waves really crash.  The waves come in, sometimes 3 and 4 waves at a time.  When the wave slides back under the next one incoming, you can hear the pebbles and stones rattle as the sea rolls them beneath the waves. 


Like rolling thunder
The sounds of songs and drumming
Ocean waves crashing

 Rialto Beach has been one of my "quiet places" for years.  When I need solace and renewal, Rialto is one of the places my memory takes me.  In 2011, I was thinking about the beauty here and wrote a poem about this beach.

Grandmother Ocean

she reaches for the shore

her open palm
 slides across the beach
 with a rain of pebbles

like a casino of craps shooters

an all night game
rolling the bones
across her palms clicking them back and forth
as she rubs her palms
on the pebbly beach
stones brought up
from Oceans’ floor
all day and night
she rolls the bones
rains of pebbles
cousins of castenets

gifts of the sea 
warm on my palms
dusty smooth
the tides turn
but the stones
and Grandmother Ocean
remain

Years ago I took a picture of this piece of driftwood.  Adina posed on it for me.  The driftwood is still there, and, now, so are we. 
 

We headed over to La Push, a Quileute (Quill' ee yute) Indian village.  La Push was a haven for us for years.  We loved it in the summer when the sun sometimes shone.   We loved it in the winter when the storms turned the waves wild, the wind pushes you around.  It's as exciting as any ride at the state fair's midway.  There's a resort there where you can rent cabins or rooms and they have camping facilities available.  The ocean at La Push is splended, great waves on a gentle arc of sand and years of piled driftwood.

This time, we went to La Push for a different reason.  To tell you about it, I have to tell you a story from Adina's past.

Around 1981 Adina was very sick and western medicine could not help her.  Our friend, Vicki Sears, who was an east band Cherokee medicine woman, introduced Adina to David Fourlines.  He was able to help her heal and then they condinued their conversations and became friends.

David was connected to four tribes and so got his name of "Fourlines."  At that time, many of the tribes were losing their languages because of European efforts to "civilize" them, an ironic term for people who had a civilization here for 6-8 thousand years.  Many of their traditional tribal treasures lay in the Smithsonian Institute.  It was had for the younger generation to understand and carry on their traditions without these objects. 

David Fourlines made it his mission to re-energize interest in the traditions of the People.  He had the ancient knowledge of how to make the sacred objects and gathered materials in the traditional ways.  He knew how to weave baskets.  He knew how to carve totems, masks and canoes.  He could make bent cedar boxes.  He also made sacred things of copper, an expensive commodity.

He taught his skills to the young people and made replicas of all the traditional objects.  Then he held a Potlatch for his 40th birthday party.  He invited Adina to attend, one of the few non-tribal members.

A word about the Potlatch:  This is a party in which foods are presented in a particular order and then shared.  At this point it looks a little like the potlucks that we grew up with.  Then people sing their songs.  They dance the traditional dances.  Finally, the person giving the Potlatch gives away all his possessions.

That's what David did.  He gave away all the things he had gathered.  He gave away all the things he had made.  Each object was given to a particular person, the person he had made it for.  It was very moving.

Another dream David had was to find a way to bring the canoe back into focus.  He started an event inviting the tribes to bring their traditional canoes and paddle down Puget Sound to Seattle.  Pacific Northwest tribes' canoes have a raised prow as you see in the picture below.   


I don't have a picture of this event -- yet.
This is a boat from Fort Rupert CA, but the basic design is similar.
(public domain picture)

At that first one, back in the 80's, seven canoes participated.  This annual event has endured and grown.  Now many tribes participate.  Last year, over 100 canoes made the paddle. 

David passed in 1991.  He left a powful legacy.  We came to La Push to visit his grave and honor him.  Then we had a problem.

When we asked about going up to the cemetary, we were told that the Tribal Council was restricting access to Tribal members because some Twilight Fans had gone up there, made a video, put it to spooky music and posted it on U-Tube.  This was very disrespectful to the Tribe.

A word about Twilight Fans and Twilight Madness:  Most of you will have heard about the Twilight books and movies.  They are set in Forks and in La Push.  The author, as I understand it, had never visited either place, but chose them because they had a lot of days without sun, a lot of fog, and were close together.  Forks was a relatively depressed logging town.  I always just drove through it.  They have jumped on the Twilight Tourism bandwagon.  If they can make some money from the movies, more power to them.  Last week they had Twilight Madness Days.  At a party, they had a reinactment of "the wedding."  Over 750 people descended on Forks for the event.  Stores sell Twilight memorabilia.  I am sitting in a Pizza joint to blog and it has a Twilight menu and Twilight drinks on request.  The resort store in Mora posted this sign:


This picture needs no explanation

The folks in La Push have not joined this bandwagon.  I started to read the Twilight books but felt so uncomfortable about them that I quit.  Here's the deal:  in the Twilight books, the vampires live in Forks.  Their enemies, the werewolves, live in La Push.  It may be a good story, but placing the werewolves in La Push was pretty disrespectful to the tribe and that's what made me uncomfortable.  You see, the Quileute people who live in La Push hold the wolf as one of their tribal symbols, one of the spirits that watch over them.  There is no love for a set of books that twists that symbol in this way. 
 
So we went to La Push to find David's grave, ignoring the women having their picture taken by a road sign that listed both Forks and La Push.  When we were told we couldn't go there, we went to the Tribal Center, the same place where David held his potlatch over 20 years ago. 


Quileute Tribal Center

Miss Renee came out to help us.  She got permission for us to go up to find David's grave and we were on our way.  When we got up to the cemetary, we found it had changed in 12 years.  David never wanted to be the center nor did he need to be credited with things.  He asked that his grave be unmarked, however, someone did put up a small post with a face on each side -- four faces, Fourlines. 

We couldn't find it.  The cemetary had changed, was larger and we couldn't remember where David's grave was.  We went back to the Tribal Center and told Miss Renee our problem.  She said that even though it was payday Friday, she'd make it her project to find someone who knew where he was buried.

The very next day, she called us and said that we could meet them at the cemetary and she thought they could find his grave.  We drove back to La Push, up the steep, steep hill to the cemetary and met Renee (somehow by this time we were dropping "Miss"), her husband Chaz (a member of the Tribal Council), and Chaz's father, Russell (who served on the Council for 30 years or so).  Russell's father also served on the Tribal Council for 30 years.  Chaz is following a strong family tradition. 

I don't have any pictures from this event because it is disrespectful to take pictures in the cemetary.  I was pastor at a church with the Nooksack tribe for several years.  They taught me how to be a pastor.  I learned so much from them, and will not disrespect them, or any other tribe, now.  Adina had her connections through Vickie and David.  Word pictures will have to suffice.

They were able to find the grave for us and we stood around it.  Russell told how he knew David and about the good things David had done for the Tribe.  Chaz told what he knew.  Then Russell asked Adina how she knew David and she told her story.  Then the men stepped away and Adina knew she had permission to pay her respects.  We invited Renee to stay with us.

Adina spent time in silence, then scattered new tobacco to the four directions honoring the ancestors.  She hung a special medicine bag on the post as a gift, a thank you for David's friendship to her, for his help in her healing and for all he did for the tribe.

Afterwards, we all stood and talked for a long time.  By the time we left, we were good friends.  I mentioned that my camera was dead and Renee said that they would stop by later and pick it and the carger up and charge it for us.  That was great!

Then Russell invited us to stop at his place.  He showed us treasured pictures.  He had a picture of his father, his hero.  One picture showed David, part of the crew in one of the canoes he carved.  Other pictures showed La Push from years ago.  He had so many stories and we finally felt like we had taken up too much of his time so we said we had to leave. 

We went to Rialto for the rest of the day, a bright sunny day.  I missed my camera so looked for alternatives.  I took some great pictures with my Toshiba Thrive tablet but I can't figure out how to transfer them to my pc.  Any ideas out thereof how to move files from an Andriod system to a Windows system?  I suppose that sounds a little like a fish story ... I've got these great pictures but I can't show them to you!

We watched pelicans.  They came in like a squadron of blue angels and skimmed a breaking wake as if they were skating along it, then, just before the wave crested, they'd swoop up in full precision. 


Three pelicans skimming a wave about to break
They look like they are walking on water

Last night as we sat around the fire, we were watching for Renee and Chaz to come by to pick up the battery when a blue pickup drove up.  Russell got out with another fellow. 

This was Jay, a retired professor from University of British Columbia, CA.  He did his first placement in La Push many years ago, working on learning the Quileute language and has returned at least once a year every since.  He knew David Fourlines and had worked with him so he had lots of stories to tell.  He brought a book that he and David had worked on, a book to teach the language to the new generations.  He also brought a book that had some pictures of David. 

Then Renee and Chaz pulled up in their pickup with their daughter and her friend.  We sat around the campfire and visited until late.  They invited us to come back to La Push in late July.  This year the last stop on the Seattle Paddle will be La Push.  We're going to come!  That'll be something to see. 

Chaz said we should come in the winter for the excitement of the winter storms.  We told him we used to come all the time so we have a date for that for January.  We're going to coordinate our visit so that both Chaz and Renee will be there as they both travel for their work.  They took my camera battery/charger with them when they went home, sometime after dark. 

We are so honored and happy to have met them.  A real gift!  They are warm and generous people and they are going to come and visit us in Vancouver!

This morning was laundry and blog day.  Renee met us at the Laundromat with my (charged) camera battery.  Then Haley, their daughter, snapped this picture of the three of us (Chaz had to leave early this morning for work). 

Carole, Renee and Adina
I'm wearing my new Quileute sweatshirt
Two Quileute wolves (not Twilight werewolves) and a bear on it

How fortunate we are!  What a wonderful trip we are having.  It is amazing to wander and discover great friends, like family, along the way.  It's a little like meeting somebody you already knew.  That's good stuff, folks.