Our Camp

Woodstove roaring with dinner bubbling away away on top - everybody crowded close in their chairs.  Nora reading and Stuey and I doing ColorKu.  Kids drinking hot cocoa. That's the cook tent - the focus of camp life while on Afognak.  It's where we go first when we get up in the morning and where we hang out prior to going to bed.

We have always set up the big teepee in the exact same spot, and there is a ring on the ground so clear that on arrival I just stretch it out, peg, and put the pole in raising the roof.  The first few years it was mossy inside, but with time it got trampled and we have had to carry up gravel from the beach to make a floor.  I've noticed that the area outside the teepee door is beginning to get mucky, and next year we will have to put gravel down out there.  Soon there will be a ring of gravel outside around the floor of gravel inside.

As an archaeologist I've excavated beach gravel floors, but had never thought that 'gravel floors' might also exist outside structures.    Patrick

Brewster on sentry duty over the isthmus - defending camp