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

our changing river>gives life to everything

 the tanana river changes are much more than just the norm.  with it's heavy silt there are some crossings where the channel can move completely across the river in a day and night. that's the nature of the tanana. occasionally makes for some difficult barge navigation with the eb and flow of the season.

provides  the river pilot, the challenge and excitement of work.

and nenana Riverrats, the opportunity to explore new sloughs and by-ways.

.

on a trip from fairbanks to tanana and return in 2003 i followed the usual channel wth my small fiber glass boat, I've named the miss behavin'.  going down, nothing was noteworthy in a spot called devil's elbow, just above the mouth of the wood river.

i have been going through this narrow sharp bend for as long as i can remember.  always there's plenty of water, at least 20 feet deep and 100 yards wide.

on the return 3 days later i came around the bend and the entire channel was shut off with not just a silt bar but with heavy gravel.   i could of walked across the old channel.

this told me that there had been a heavy runoff from the alaska range and many changes from delta junction on down.  having to have to now go around the island. i stopped at the head of the bend and was astonished to find this new bar higher than the cabin on my boat!  amazed at the power in the river to move so much material in such a short period of time.

i returned to the same place a year later.~~~ 

devils elbow is no more.  from the signs i see, this has happened before. part of the normal movement of the river as it whips back and forth across the tanana valley floor.  while i initially thought of global warming and changes in the mountains, i do not think the larger questions are not what happened to devil's elbow.  part of it? yes. cause of it? no.
fly over the tanana valley and it's pretty obvious the river has made hundreds of lakes and sloughs. we've always called, these dead bends.  someday the river will return there. a cycle of life.

water finding it's path of least resistance, gives birth to cut banks, when in a heavy flow  can be read like the water.

heavy caving of the banks adds more silt,drift, and makes foam sail boats.  see lots of foam comming down is the clue that changes can be found above.

the Tanana River walking back and forth across the valley giving life to our lakes and sloughs are not the only changes in constant motion in our homeland.

at one time there was no parks highway. 
the village of minto was 30-40 miles closer.
the railroad made nenana one of it's scheduled stops.

while the river takes it's good ol' time~~~

~~~~we here in nenana have sped up.  where a trip to fairbanks was an entire one day affair, now it's an hour away.  run to town, then get the heck out is how most people talk of city errands.

in time, river commerce and barging will be a primary reason to dredge the area in front of our dock.  the river has always been trying to reclaim or fill it in over the years.  such work will bring more change to our town.

people will welcome new opportunities and yes the river will keep filling it back in. and nenana will adapt as a community.

tough people we are, external and internal pressure to keep what we have...tradition!, the rivers of change eroding the banks of our culture are unknowns, only thing for sure is change. a familiar consistant struggle to keep our culture. there will be new channels to find. new sweepers and snags to remember.

it's always the same challenge for us. same big questions posed to a culture that have survived for thousands of years....
we'll cut a new channel. but why are we always the ones having to have to change?

the familiarity gives me comfort,  been there, done that!  i'm especially encouraged when i see young people talk openingly about carrying on.

i think we will survive. 
changed for sure.
but still here................ like our river.

river images from around, near, and far. what we see. maybe not every day but it's here and over there.

these are a few pictures of our tanana river.  Yukon river images also included, since we are all connected to this vast water network of travel, communication, and support. village and city, highway and railroad, white and native, young and old.  the weave of it's sloughs, hidden shotcuts, main channel, and lakes makes the cord binding all of us together that much stronger.

all river photos here courtesy doug sturm unless otherwise indicated.  all rights reserved.  the above is a shot from the upper end of McKinley crossing, a stretch of about 5 miles with 4 major crossings within.  one of the few places that mt. Denali can be seen from the tanana r. on a good day.  definately a tricky spot when there's a couple hundred tons in front of you especially in the fall time low water.  this water looks to be mid to late summer, normal level.

close to nenana this bridge sits on the northern approach to the main river crossing. named after a local woman who became a prominent community activist in nenana, fairbanks, and statewide.  my cousin shirley was taken by cancer before her time.  a much loved and respected native leader.

locally built by ted suckling this race boat, the annual nail, crewed by locals, wes and mary alexander, and yours truly.  won the 800 mile race from fairbanks to galena and return for 5 consecutive years 1990-95.  now on display in nenana's alfred starr cultural center.  was a local favorite making the 800 mile run in 12 hours.  this picture was taken just below nenana by the Fairbanks daily news miner.  on step and hitting about 60 mph  she needs at least 6 inches of water and a steady hand.  stock 50 hp maximum outboard motor hung on a 24', 250 lb. boat, it wants to fly, see air traps along the hull.  can be a tricky job keeping the bow down on turns and with wind gusts. it wants to leave the water.  village race boat construction up and down the river can be a passion. with the yukon 800 as the ultimate test for everyone's craftsmanship and ingenuity. it's a healthy friendly competition in the shop and on the river.

crowley marine is the largest  river freight operation on the river.  here is their flagship the MV tanana resting in dock, while it's 2-300 ton barges are  loaded for it's next trip down the tanana to the yukon.

the tanana with light load, mostly fuel,heading down to the yukon. 8 miles below nenana, one of the few places that denali can be seen from the river.

crowley's rampart.  returning to nenana empty, for another load.  appears to be in a stretch of the river just above squaw point, but it's hard to be certain from this shot.

this unknown tug and barge not ideally suited for interior river navigation is typical of numerous entrepreneurs who get it in their mind that they can come up here to our river system, take equipment best suited for other waters, and make their fortune.  a rude awakening awaits them as they see their dreams fade in the wake of heavy silt, underpowered motors, and confusing channels.  it takes a special breed and equipment to navigate these waters.  yet some still try.  nenana sits across from the base of the hill in the background.  heading up river very slowly, there is still another 25 miles to go.  probably took him 2 days to reach that hill.

the old tolovana road house 65 miles below nenana.  was part of the winter dog team mail route to nome.  this picture was taken before the roadhouse was restored by doug bowers and his wife.  mostly restored now, although such work is never done. the bowers take in guests and give tours of the surrounding area.  this roadhouse played an instrumental role in the 1925 diphtheria serum run to nome as a relay station for dog teams and their drivers.

old cabin about to be recycled. a place called trappers crossing, 20 miles or so above manley hot springs.

my old tug, the MV ramona, landing with a load at the lower end of tanana on the yukon river.  depending on water levels, each community has several slips making freight transfer easier.  two barges here, very light load just for tanana.  quick turn around then back to nenana for another load.  nenana --tanana--and return is 400 miles.  taking 4-5 days depending on water levels, weather, and turn around time.

new load for the ramona heading to village construction sites unknown.  point in the distance is 18 miles below tanana on the yukon.  looks like early fall from the color of the sky and island 

the new ramona in port prepared for a trip to galena. summer '09

 

 c. demientieff photo

early fall ice just staring to run near nenana, '09

c. demientieff photo

more '09 fall ice early in the run

c. demientieff photo

'09 fall beach.  looking up river from the dock to the railroad bridge

c. demientieff photo

one of our many neighbors the village of ruby on the yukon river from the wheel house of my boat, the miss behavin', 2005.  350 miles below nenana.

c.demientieff photos

that's it or now.   i will post more photos in a future blog called around town.  guess i better charge an extra camera battery and head to town, 5 miles from my home. I'll try not to embarrass any one.  but they will get self conscious as i record our village for you.  news travels fast here, and there are few secrets in our little village.  many will be watching, so will do it right and bring you images of daily life here as it's appropriate.