I heard about Clarence Wood passing the other day. I was sharpening my machete on my parents’ porch in Honaunau, Hawaii, of all places. Leaves were green overhead, birds singing and bugs buzzing, and chickens scratching under the steps, and it was tough to get my bearings in the sudden storm of memories swirling in my head. A lifetime of memories of my friend, a world away in the Arctic — but also a place that feels even further away: the past.
Nothing about the news was the way I wanted it to be. Clarence was in his 80s and has been in a lot of pain the last years, suffering, and this fall his house caught fire and burned; then a dog attacked him, and finally on Christmas Day, in an opioid stupor, he was terribly scalded and medevacked to Anchorage. No, no part of that was how I wanted to remember this man.
Instead, I traveled back to my first memories, along the Kobuk River in the 1960s — cold winters then, with folks hunkered down in small cabins and sod igloos, eating from their caches and sigluaqs, meat and fish and berries they had gathered earlier in the season. My family lived in the dimness of our tiny sod home, buried in the ground and drifted under snow, with mice and shrews for company, Kerosene lamps for light, caribou most meals, and the only surge of excitement in our day was if a human visitor appeared.
On those rare times that my brother and I spotted a dot moving on the ice — a dot that wasn’t an animal — we’d shout, “Travelers! Travelers coming!” That’s what folks called people who came off the country. When you’re alone for weeks or months almost nothing is a bigger deal than seeing another human out there on the land.
The traveler who showed up most often at our place there at the lower end of Paugnautaugruk was an Inupiaq hunter from Ambler, a man in his mid-30s, lanky and friendly, with cropped black hair and a handsome face already scarred by frostbite. The young man’s name was Clarence Wood.
My parents were new to the Kobuk then, and attempting to live some of the old ways: hunting and gathering food and furs, drying sinew to use for thread to sew skins into clothing, stuff like that. Life wasn’t like today; our connections to each other were shared stories, and memories — there was no electricity in the villages yet, no telephones, no TV, definitely no clicking on Amazon and, poof!, here comes your new ax or snowshoes. People lived by their own skills and few had jobs. Nearly everyone hunted, and back then Clarence was already a hunter that others talked about.
I wouldn’t say everyone liked him. He was young and relentless, constantly out on the land no matter the conditions, and maybe already a bit too successful at it. And he wasn’t from the upriver villages. He was prone to bragging, too.
His stories were plenty amazing, but he liked to improve them. And who can say, maybe he did get that wolverine with a screwdriver, and that swimming bull moose with his knife. After all, he could find his way across the Brooks Range in winter without a map, and certainly the wolves, bears and caribou he brought home grew to be beyond counting.
Times were changing fast. Dog teams were being replaced by the first snowmobiles — Snow-Travelers, we called them — and traversing this country back then was serious, at times deadly. Nearly everyone passing our place would stop in to warm up and visit and ask about the trail. Many a friend and stranger alike would spend the night on a caribou hide on the floor and get a fresh start in the morning. People didn’t rush like we do now. The one thing everyone had plenty of was time.
Over the years, Clarence spent countless nights on our floor, countless days on our bearskin couch, drinking coffee and telling stories, teasing us boys, watching my dad bend sled runners, waiting to see what my mom would pull out of the wood oven. He’d peer over his shoulder out our Visqueen window that flapped in the wind, checking the weather. He never appeared to be in a hurry but usually didn’t stay long. “Well,” he’d announce, put down his cup, and rise. “Thank you much!” Outside, he’d shoulder into his parka, big hands reaching in his pockets for cigarettes. I can still hear the clink of his metal lighter. And out he’d head, disappearing again into the land. (...)
Now, so many years later, it almost doesn’t matter which of a thousand stories I tell, or what season, what year, Clarence was usually there, or passing by, or had just left. In January 1970, when three men were murdered below our place, Clarence was the last one to see them OK before the crime. When Keith Jones’ sod igloo next to ours caught fire and burned — there was Clarence on the ice, the first to spot the flames. When that mail plane went down, midwinter, up at Plane Crash, Clarence somehow again was passing by and the first on the scene.
Even though Hunt River, the area where I grew up, was his favorite place, if you talked to villagers hundreds of miles away in Huslia, or in Anaktuvuk, or homesteaders up the Ambler River, or whalers up the coast in Point Hope, they’d say similar: Clarence Wood traveled there, too.
Nothing about the news was the way I wanted it to be. Clarence was in his 80s and has been in a lot of pain the last years, suffering, and this fall his house caught fire and burned; then a dog attacked him, and finally on Christmas Day, in an opioid stupor, he was terribly scalded and medevacked to Anchorage. No, no part of that was how I wanted to remember this man.
Instead, I traveled back to my first memories, along the Kobuk River in the 1960s — cold winters then, with folks hunkered down in small cabins and sod igloos, eating from their caches and sigluaqs, meat and fish and berries they had gathered earlier in the season. My family lived in the dimness of our tiny sod home, buried in the ground and drifted under snow, with mice and shrews for company, Kerosene lamps for light, caribou most meals, and the only surge of excitement in our day was if a human visitor appeared.On those rare times that my brother and I spotted a dot moving on the ice — a dot that wasn’t an animal — we’d shout, “Travelers! Travelers coming!” That’s what folks called people who came off the country. When you’re alone for weeks or months almost nothing is a bigger deal than seeing another human out there on the land.
The traveler who showed up most often at our place there at the lower end of Paugnautaugruk was an Inupiaq hunter from Ambler, a man in his mid-30s, lanky and friendly, with cropped black hair and a handsome face already scarred by frostbite. The young man’s name was Clarence Wood.
My parents were new to the Kobuk then, and attempting to live some of the old ways: hunting and gathering food and furs, drying sinew to use for thread to sew skins into clothing, stuff like that. Life wasn’t like today; our connections to each other were shared stories, and memories — there was no electricity in the villages yet, no telephones, no TV, definitely no clicking on Amazon and, poof!, here comes your new ax or snowshoes. People lived by their own skills and few had jobs. Nearly everyone hunted, and back then Clarence was already a hunter that others talked about.
I wouldn’t say everyone liked him. He was young and relentless, constantly out on the land no matter the conditions, and maybe already a bit too successful at it. And he wasn’t from the upriver villages. He was prone to bragging, too.
His stories were plenty amazing, but he liked to improve them. And who can say, maybe he did get that wolverine with a screwdriver, and that swimming bull moose with his knife. After all, he could find his way across the Brooks Range in winter without a map, and certainly the wolves, bears and caribou he brought home grew to be beyond counting.
Times were changing fast. Dog teams were being replaced by the first snowmobiles — Snow-Travelers, we called them — and traversing this country back then was serious, at times deadly. Nearly everyone passing our place would stop in to warm up and visit and ask about the trail. Many a friend and stranger alike would spend the night on a caribou hide on the floor and get a fresh start in the morning. People didn’t rush like we do now. The one thing everyone had plenty of was time.
Over the years, Clarence spent countless nights on our floor, countless days on our bearskin couch, drinking coffee and telling stories, teasing us boys, watching my dad bend sled runners, waiting to see what my mom would pull out of the wood oven. He’d peer over his shoulder out our Visqueen window that flapped in the wind, checking the weather. He never appeared to be in a hurry but usually didn’t stay long. “Well,” he’d announce, put down his cup, and rise. “Thank you much!” Outside, he’d shoulder into his parka, big hands reaching in his pockets for cigarettes. I can still hear the clink of his metal lighter. And out he’d head, disappearing again into the land. (...)
Now, so many years later, it almost doesn’t matter which of a thousand stories I tell, or what season, what year, Clarence was usually there, or passing by, or had just left. In January 1970, when three men were murdered below our place, Clarence was the last one to see them OK before the crime. When Keith Jones’ sod igloo next to ours caught fire and burned — there was Clarence on the ice, the first to spot the flames. When that mail plane went down, midwinter, up at Plane Crash, Clarence somehow again was passing by and the first on the scene.
Even though Hunt River, the area where I grew up, was his favorite place, if you talked to villagers hundreds of miles away in Huslia, or in Anaktuvuk, or homesteaders up the Ambler River, or whalers up the coast in Point Hope, they’d say similar: Clarence Wood traveled there, too.
by Seth Kantner, Anchorage Daily News | Read more:
Image: Nick Jans
