This morning at 4:00 AM - leaving Mentasta after Katie John's funeral and potlatch

The potlatch for Katie John ended in Mentasta this morning just a few minutes before 4:00 AM and I took this picture from my car shortly afterward. The food, phone, gas, lodging referred to is the Mentasta Lodge, about nine miles from the village and it is where I spent Friday night.

I hadn't intended to. I had made no lodging arrangements at all. I had just figured I would show up in the village and something would work out. I have done this sort of things many times and it always has. However, I had gotten almost no sleep the night before I left home and I was exhausted, fighting the need to sleep, from the beginning of the drive to the end.

When I reached the lodge, I thought, "well, I'm sure there will be no vacancies but I really do need to get some decent sleep and I might not if I wind up on someone's floor or couch and stay up all night visiting." So I stopped. "No, no vacancies," the woman informed me. "There is a big potlatch going on in the village."

So I headed back to the car, but just as I closed the door, the woman came running out. Someone had just called to cancel. So I paid $74.00 for a tiny but comfortable room in a log cabin and then headed into the village where a traditional dance was taking place ahead of the funeral. I returned to the lodge about midnight, shortly after the dancing ended and then got what for me was a pretty decent sleep.

Good thing! I would not sleep again for 28 hours.

I had told myself I would leave Mentasta at 10:00 PM Saturday night, no matter what was happening at the potlatch, as I would already have a lot more pictures than I would know what to do with. If I left at 10:00, I could be home somewhere between 3:00 and 4:00 AM, could sleep for five or six hours, then get up and post all the back-logged Katie John stories I have been working on by midnight or so Sunday night and then go back to bed, get up Monday morning, drive Margie to Anchorage to resume her babysitting duties, come back to Wasilla, do a quick edit of the funeral and potlatch and make a post by Monday night.

But come 10:00 PM at the potlatch, the singing was beautiful, the drumbeat strong, the dancing full of spirt and energy. There was no way I was going to leave - not until everything was done, not until the gifts had been given, the rifles danced with.

It was all so beautiful. Yes, there was bitter sadness, but Dr. Katie John had lived a great, good, generous and loving life. The greatness and goodness she had cultivated in nearly a century of life now manifest itself at her death in a great outpouring of love and beauty, wonderful to witness and experience.

So now it was 4:00 AM. It was all over. I was headed toward home. I now planned to get there as fast as I could, take a two to three hour nap, then get up, get to work and still carry out my plan.

Well.

I got home about 10:30. I didn't want to go to bed because I feared I might fall asleep for a long time if I did. So, about noon, I laid down in the living room on the recliner Jacob and Lavina gifted me following my surgery, almost one year ago. News programs and talkshows were on the TV. A lot of people are pretty excited about how the NSA has been scooping up the metadata of all the citizen phone calls they can get into their data banks.

I closed my eyes, thinking I would open them again in two hours and get to work.

But once I closed my eyes, I could not open them. To say I fell into a deep sleep would be an overstatement. It is hard to fall into a deep sleep when a cat keeps walking back and forth across you, sometimes stepping on areas made tender by the aftermath of surgery that went awry, or upon male parts.

Still, I was so tired I could not open my eyes or get up for four-and-half hours. There were segments of time when I fell into solid, blessed, sleep. I wanted to sleep forever.

When I did get up, even though it was very late afternoon, I had to have bacon, eggs, hash browns and coffee. So I took Margie and went out and got some while she ordered dinner. Abby's does not do breakfast in the afternoon, so I went Mat-Su Family Restaurant and it was quite delicious.

After I returned, I started my picture download. I had filled four-and-half 32 gigabyte flash cards and, as I interspesed the downloads with a good long walk and a few other things, I did not finish the download until the current hour.

Sunday is nearly over now. Despite my good nap on the recliner, right now I function in a bit of a daze. So this picture and this probably nearly incomprehensible written excuse is all I am going to post tonight.

I could literally spend a full week editing and working up a good couple of posts on just the funeral and potlatch. That is what I would like to do, but I know Katie had so many friends and admirers all over who would like to see it. Plus, if I am to continue making a living, I've got to move on and get back to my paying work. So I will do a funeral/potlatch post tomorrow, then figure out how to work in the other related material.

Index to full series. * Designates the main, story-telling, posts:

Dr. Katie John, Ahtna Athabascan champion of Native rights before the Supreme Court of the United States: October 15, 1915 - May 31, 2013

July, 2001: Enroute to Batzulnetas to cover historic meeting between Katie John and Governor Tony Knowles; In a couple of hours I will go to Katie John's Anchorage memorial

*Katie John's Anchorage visitation: the void, the continuation 

*In 1999, Katie John gathered a host of young people together, most of them descendants, and took them camping at Batzulnetas

I pause this series until after the funeral, but here is Katie John with Governor Tony Knowles and the fish that made the difference

This morning at 4:00 AM - leaving Mentasta after Katie John's funeral and potlatch

*Katie John's funeral and potlatch: on the night before burial, dance wiped away the tears

*Katie John finished well - her descendants mourn, celebrate her life, bury her, eat, dance give gifts and prepare to carry on

One image from Katie John's victory celebration - the story of how she won her victory will soon follow

*Katie John and Tony Knowles at Batzulnetas: a fish escaped, the ice cream was hard and a Governor listened

*When Katie John became Dr. Katie John - closing post