river names

when we hear a person's name. it's possible to tell which village they come from.  in some cases it's possible

to guess a person's home by the way they walk.

really..........

like accents revealing if you are from the koyukon or innoko,

river names keep a record of  life, home, and family.

there is a sandbar on the tanana river at the mouth of the wood river.=35miles^above nenana.

i call this sandbar, missy island.  it's a sandbar that builds up and washes out from time to time...probably why it's not on any map and has no name.  it never stays around long enough.

 i call it missy island, because i did something there,

 was the first place i took my new pound dog. a blond lab named missy.

 on the river i need a good dog.

 i sprung her from death row.

 her time was up and we found each other.

absolutely nothing wrong with that dog. think it was the loser who dropped her off.

discarded......poor!

but good for me and missy.

after bringing  her home to nenana. i brought her into town and to the river bank,
introducing her to her new home. all low key, no excitement.

just..matter of fact. here we are. no need to run! you're home now.

missy took her first boat ride up river after a couple days of peace and quiet.

no destination in particular.  just needed a good drift pile to make a dandy fire.

 locked up dog. now free!

the sandbar at the mouth of the woodriver just happn' to come along. and we gave the place a name.

maybe the name will stick.  probably not, the island will be gone again in time.

the river returning it years later. with more firewood for others to come along and have a picnic. give it a name. a temporary label to recall memories.

she ruuunnnn!!  above^, missy prefers riding inside the boat. watches my every move.  are we there yet? she's now my constant companion. i have no privacy.

found out she could swim. it may be a natural instinct.but  missy did not know it yet.
till i dropped her over board while tied up on the bar.
shaaake...then rrruun..... again.

couldn't keep her out of the water after that.

the island i call missy was largely unknown till now. after all it's not really an official island on any maps, and certainly doesn't have a name.

it's a sandbar! comes and goes.
sandbars by their very nature remain anonymous. until someone comes along and gives the place a name.

a tanana river picnic on a warm summer day,  free of mosquitoes watching a water dog discover water. occasionally checked out by a passing seagull.

building memories to recall...

saying, remember that summer going to missy island? everyone say Ya!

the island finally had a name, at least for now, at least in this one short life.

and there is no mistaking where it was, or what we did.
our homeland is filled with stories such as this, many for every family.

i also have a rabbit point and egg island on the yukon.

i'm pretty sure everyone has place they've named. it's how people begin to say.  "oh, that's  bennie's, gopher's, or whoever.  it's their place and ours together. passing on stories and names to keep our balance.

now if i were to tell my bro', duke that the channel is moving back behind missy island, he wouldn't know immediately where i was talking about. until i mention another story....when the wood river becomes a little easier or harder to get into.  then he would know exactly which sandbar was missy island. or may be it was gone, nameless again.

when someone asks me,
do you know where 9 mile is? i say.....YA!

even if i'm really not sure if he/she means 9 mile point or camp, or could be a lake.

i get my bearings, by following their story, and  i will  know exactly where they mean by the time they're done telling.

it's important for them that i know exactly where they mean.

that way i learn new places all the time.

at these times when people approach and ask if i know a place,

mostly i have no clue as to where they mean, our river experiences are so vastly different.

makes no difference............

time to scratch lines on the ground and point it out.

names display the life of our river.

and usually when drawing the map the story of this unknown place comes out.  they can become quite animated.

so much joy in this connection with our river. what happen there and it's name.

 river names meaning only one thing in nenana,  might not be understood by those in the city or other villages.

 i can say," i going to hee hee haa haa's.

where's that?

for nenana river rats.

it's 17 mile's from nenana on the way to minto, near half way. most everyone in our village knows 17 mile.

a beautiful small point at the head of a cut-off,  a small eddie with snags waving in the water. and good place to tie up, easy climb up the bank to a level, brush free fish camp.  tip of a spruce stand.
minto also called it 17 mile.  whether coming from down or up river, it's still 17 mile.
could be 18 miles i guess, but it's already close enough to precise.

and where is................hee hee ha ha's?........

where it's been all this time,

it's auther and ellen frank's camp at 17 mile.

he could laugh so hard.

HEE...HEE..... HA HA.. till we split a gut!!

it's how we knew where we were. he and ellen could always make one feel at home.

laughing at your corny jokes, and telling river stories.

rip art....god bless you ga na',

every one knew aurther frank, 17 mile.or so. below nenana,..they say.

about an hour for me on a barge.

now it's 1/2 hour in the boat i use today.

still arther's place.

and i think of him each time i go by.

god bless bless his soul. could laugh so hard!!! 

17 mile turns out now to be one of my favorite spots to watch the yukon 800. they have to pass close there in order to hit a short cut just across the river. and arthur is still there.  watching the race with me.

we make a fire and pull up one of  the old rickety folding chairs left there.

ask a map a name?  it'll say...where?

ask our locals a river name and  you can't just hear it...you have to listen.

then you'll know where you are..maybe where you're going.

it's the river and who we are.

makes no diference what those places are called now, just as long as we know how you mean.

still gonna be hee hee ha ha's place. till a new experience is found by a new generation.

they won't get lost there.  it's hee hee's home and they'll be safe.

i don't know know the origin of nenana's name, will rewrite jack coghill's recollection here from his book, growing up in alaska,

i can only guess that the original name comes from toghetelle ( tog..geh'. tea..lee),name of the hill across the river.  the nenana river comes out of the alaska range and meets the tanana river here.
but it eludes me where ne..na..na came from.
toghetelle hill can be seen for miles below our village.  the confluence with the nenana river marks a change in the tanana.  there is a small step in the river here,  the river to fairbanks changes. the current picks up, channels get narrow, more gravel. until the next step in the river at the mouth of the chena. changes again above there. much more gravel, swift, many small channels none very deep cause the water is divided up many times.

what follows is from jack coghill's book, growing up in alaska, a description rich with other local place names,  i cannot verify it's accuracy, nor do i need to.  it's part of the local lore...part of our river story.

i quote:

"it takes it's name from an actual athabascan gathering place called nenashana on the otherside of the Tanana River.  nenana was never a home community of the athabascan people.  they traveled from wood river, upriver from salcha, and down river from minto.  many of the native alaskans lived in a place called tolovana and there were also large communities at Toklat and Bear Paw up in the Kantisna River area, over into the Tolite Area, which is the headwater of the Kuskokwim River.  downriver people from the Yukon River came up as far as Cross-chak.  this was long before Chena and Fairbanks or any other Interior Alaska town established by the gold miners."

there must be hundreds of stories and place names showing how we all got together here, all along the journey to nenana.

but i think it boils down to basics.

we're here because

it's a good spot.  the confluence of two rivers. a hill close by...and fairbanks just far enough away.

still connected with our yukon river neighbors and families.

it's called our home

and it's name is nenana