When I picked up lobsters at the bait barge for my roommates, I talked to the lobsterman and they agreed to keep and hold some large crabs for me. We agreed that I'd drop by again in a few days and they would have the crabs. Amazingly enough in Maine it is incredibly difficult to purchase live crabs. Anyway, I showed up a few days later and none of the lobstermen had kept any crabs for me. So instead of crabs I grabbed some hard shells for Stuey, my mom and I. Stuey got 2 big lobsters just for himself. With my roommates we had purchased soft shell and it is amazing how different they are from Hard shells. Soft shells taste sweeter but Hard shells have much more meat and the body and legs are meaty enough to be worth eating.
On a gloomy afternoon Stuey and I went exploring up Perry's Creek by kayak. I had flashbacks to my archaeological surveys on Kodiak by kayak. And I even found a shell midden - Just like when I was back in Uyak Bay this past May (click here for post). I took pictures and recorded what I saw and will try and report them to an archaeologist in Maine. But I don't know the archaeological scene in Maine so it might be difficult to find anyone interested in I found.
Stuey and I went on 2 picnics with Stewart. On the second picnic Anne joined us and we went to Sloop Island. I had never been to this island before. The tide was high and the whole beach was practically under water. We nosed up to the steep beach and then pulled the boat back off shore with the anchor line.
We had our lunch and then I went around exploring. Even on vacation I can't help but look for archaeological sites, and, just like on the first picnic, I found another eroding shell midden. This one had more bones in it and I wondered what people were doing on that island in the distant past - Hunting seals and birds? The bones did mostly look like bird bones - and so that would be my guess. Maybe they went out there in the spring to collect eggs and harvest the nesting birds?
Near the end of the picnic we saw thunderheads and approaching rain in the far distance. We left a bit early to try and beat the storm. And it looked like we were going to make before it caught us about 500 meters shy of the entrance to Pulpit Harbor. It was an insane squall and the wind was whipping water like smoke along the surface of the sea. Stewart had to turn the boat into the wind and we tried to shelter behind the steering tower. We all got soaked with salt spray and rain.
In Pulpit Harbor we saw a collapsed shack that got blown over by the wind and even a flipped over row boat on a mooring. It was quite the little squall.
On our first full day in Maine we went on a picnic to the Barred Islands. Stuey and I were a little sleep deprived but our friend Stewart was in town and has the boat that is capable of such picnics. Without Stewart our picnics tend to be closer to home and much less exotic.
Over the last few years a Barred Island picnic with Stewart has become a Maine vacation tradition. And, every year, we tend to go to the same little island. Stewart even remarked that he rarely goes to that particular island unless he is with us.
Same little beach - same glorious view. We also have a tradition of taking a picture of Stuey and Stewy together. This tradition goes back to when Stuey was a baby on Stewy's knee (click here for photo of Stuey on Stewy knee).
This year when we walked around the island I could not help but look for archaeological sites. And I found one - a small eroding shell midden. Last year I found a utilized flake on the nearby beach but not the site. This year I found the site where the artifact had come from.
This is my final Aiaktalik survey post - the archaeology of Aiaktalik Island. As I posted earlier we found 9 new sites and documented another 4 already know sites. But what stands out, particularly as compared to my inner Uyak Bay survey back in May (click here for post), is how many of the sites were large 'winter' villages. Five of the 13 sites represented substantial villages where maybe 100 or more people lived in the past. At Russian contact Aiaktalik village was the largest village on the archipelago and 450 people lived there. It seems that maybe it has always been the location of a big village. Three of the big villages we found were over 1000 years old.
Another surprise is that the big villages are all in fairly good condition - none of them are eroding into the sea. Fully a third or more of the coastline on Aiaktalik Island - most of the south and east side - is getting cut back dramatically by coastal erosion. It is clear that a great many sites have probably completely eroded away, but where all the big villages are located the coastline is stable.
We only found 5 small sites - sites that lacked a lot of house depressions. These were seasonal camps or places people where went to catch and process some sort of subsistence food. These are the sorts of sites I mostly found on the Inner Uyak Bay survey, and I have a feeling that these are the types of sites that have been dis-proportionally lost to coastal erosion on Aiaktalik Island. The other 3 sites we documented are the Russian Orthodox Church, a rock cairn, and a 20th century shack.
One of the cool survey finds was the church foundation at the end of Old Aiaktalik village. The church was still standing in the 1950's. The village had been abandoned immediately prior to WWII. We carefully matched up a photo of the church from the 1950s with the modern landscape (But I should have backed up just a bit and moved a little to the west!). In the 1950s the photographer was probably using a 50 mm lens while I was using a 28 mm lens. You can see that in his/her photo that the cliffs in the background seem a lot closer.
We also found a large village on top of a high cliff. In an 18th century account about the first Russian expedition to winter over on Kodiak Island they parked their boat in Russian Harbor just to the North of Aiaktalik Island. This account mentions visiting a big Alutiiq village on top of a high cliff. I think we found and mapped that very village!
Patrick
Same view as below 70 years later (but needed to be a bit more to the right)
To save weight and space we used titanium wood stoves for cooking. They roll up into packages the size of a book and weigh less than 2 pounds. Our small teepee and woodstove weighs 3-4 pounds combined. The pots and pans and other stuff weigh more than the wood stoves. Woodstoves also provide heat and comfort. They serve the purpose of a campfire that we can gather around. The afternoon we had a rain and windstorm - it was nasty outside - cooking quesadillas on the woodstove saved the day.
Woodstoves are great to cook on - you can cook things a little slower without fearing of burning the food on the 'hot spot' typical of camp propane burner stoves. We typically cook red beans and rice and pasta type meals. We do use a jet boil type stove to boil water that we add to the dishes to save time. We do not eat the freeze dried meals that a lot of lightweight campers use in the field. Our food is far, far better. We eat real food and even add fresh vegetables like nettles to them.
Our trick to cooking pasta in the field is to add just enough water that the pasta can absorb it all. I typically pour the boiling water in to just below the tops of the pasta - and only to pasta with 'structure' like bowties etc. Then there is no need to pour off the water at the end and create a bear attracting mess near camp.
