Wrapped in the sweet, hymnal embrace of their community, Johnny and Lloyd go to their graves

August 22, 2013: As his sons Jordon and Joe join the other pall bearers and carry my good friend Johnny Lee Aiken down the aisle of Barrow's Ukqeagvik Presbyeterian Church, the choir and congregation sing, My Savior First of All. They sing in Iñupiaq, and their voices blend together in a gentle, sweet, beautiful loving caress that wraps around all present. It is a communal embrace, both around the family to assure them that Johnny was loved and cherished in this community, will not be forgotten and those whose pain runs deepest will find support through the darkest days, and around Johnny, whose body may rest in this casket but whose soul, it is strongly believed here, has begun a new and exciting journey and has already been reunited with loved ones and the Savior he himself embraced before his death.

Johnny Lee Aiken, April 26, 1988. His father, Jonathan Aiken, Sr., had just harpooned a bowhead whale. Eli Solomon had followed with a shot from the shoulder gun. The whale had disappeared briefly beneath the surface, come back up, rolled over and died. It was an intant kill. "Praise God!" Kunuk had exclaimed as he raised his hands above his head. 

Johnny flung his arms around Claybo Solomon. They embraced.

August 21, 2013: The day before Johnny was buried, the community had also gathered in the same chapel for the funeral of another hunter who was well thought of in Barrow and across the Arctic Slope - Lloyd Nageak. He, too, would be carried out of the chapel wrapped in the sweet, loving, embrace of the community singing My Savior First of All. Before that, speeches of remembrance were made. Hymns were sung.

"How Great Thou Art!" Lloyd's brothers and sisters sing, with much help and support from the community.

Glimpses from Lloyd's life, as seen at his funeral.

To family members and friends of Lloyd and Johnny: I must leave here in just over an hour to begin my journey to Nuiqsut and from there on to Cross Island. I still have to pack. Yesterday, an unanticipated work-related emergency arose and I simply had to deal with it. It took the better part of the day and I did not complete it until midnight. I have made an initial pass through of all the photos I took at the funerals of August 21 and 22. I will still make and post the special albums for family and friends after I return home, sometime in mid to late September.

A quick bite to eat

I found myself shedding tears more than once, but I must say the funeral of Johnny Aiken was a beautiful gathering - as the funerals of good people so often are. Along with deep sorrow, good people generate an outpouring of love at death and that love translates into beauty at their funerals.

This is the blessing of the food at the post-funeral dinner inside the house that Johnny Lee Aiken built and with wife Marietta made into a home for their famiily. That's Marietta to the right, with niece Ruby Aiken Donovan and her baby, Shaelynn. I had a plane to catch so I took just 5 minutes to eat a bowl of soup and grab three strips of smoked salmon and then headed toward the door, but it took longer than that to pass through all the hugs and to make it to the car of Marietta's brother, Tony Edwardsen, who drove me to the airport.

The plane is delayed. I could have stayed longer and enjoyed my food. If time permits before I leave again in just a few days, I will blog the funeral, but I don't believe I will Instagram it.

Between funerals, 2: dinner at the Aikens

This is from the community dinner that took place tonight in the home of my good friend, Johnny Lee Aiken, Executive Director of The Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission, who will be buried tomorrow, and his wife, Marietta. Johnny is the son of Kunuk, whose bowhead whaling crew I followed for four seasons and featured in my book, "Gift of the Whale."

Those who followed my posts before I went to Nuiqsut are reminded that I drove into Anchorage four days straight without ever saying much about why and on the final day featured a photo of the Christus statue outside Providence Hospital. Johnny was staying there after prolonged cancer treatment in Long Beach, California, just before returning home to Barrow to be with family and loved ones as he departed this life.

The woman in the middle with the yearbook is his sister, Anna. In October, 1988, I, who am not a wedding photographer, photographed her wedding to the late Joe Stenkewicz. The wedding started late because her dad Kunuk was out in a tiny motorboat helping to tow home a fall whale. Anna refused to begin the wedding until her father arrived. The beautiful young woman to her left is her and Joe's daughter, Amelia. Pikok, Marietta's sister, sits to her right. Today, Lloyd Nageak was buried. Tomorrow, Johnny. It is not an easy time in this very close-knit community.

The movie, Big Miracle, and what I witnessed in real life, part 10: progress is stopped by shallow water; a snowmachine and cameras go into the ocean; time to "think like a whale"

I apologize for the big gap between my last rescue post and this one. Right now, I am sitting in a small room in the White Mountain Apache Reservation home of my sister-in-law, LeeAnn, right next to a roaring fire that blazes in her pellet stove. The fire feels really good and I feel sleepy and lazy, which, if you knew what I have been through the past few days, including my sleepless red eye flight to Phoenix followed by my drive up here to the White Mountains, you would understand.

Anyway, back to the story:

Once the two surviving whales got moving, both they and the whalers on the chainsaw crew made good progress - especially after it was discovered the whales could be lured from hole to hole by the bubblers in the daytime and by lights at night.

Then, suddenly, the whales refused to go any further. The chainsaw holes had passed over a shoal where the water was only about 12 feet deep. From the viewpoint of a human, 12 feet of water seemed to be enough for the whales to swim through to the other side, but the whales did not seem to see it that way.

Thinking that perhaps it was that 12 feet seemed especially cramped in those stretches between holes when there would be ice above and ocean bottom below, the whalers and NSB biologists decided to cut one long hole that would reach from the deeper water on the shoreward side to the deeper water on the seaward side - a distance of about 250 feet. Come dark, they would also conduct a light experiment to try and draw the whales across. 

In the late afternoon, everyone took a break. The media all but disappeared from the ice. Few people were left out here at all. One who did linger was veterinarian Cyd Hans, who would soon marry Craig George and would then produce one of the stars of the very first Barrow High School Whaler Football team in history.

As darkness began to set in, the work started anew. Soon, it became too dark to take pictures - even when I pushed my T-Max 3200 ISO film to 6400, then 12,800. I decided that I might as well put my cameras up and wait until the light experiment began. It just might put out enough light that, if successful, I could photograph the whales as they followed the light all the way across the shoal. In the meantime, I decided to see if there was something I could do to assist the whalers and NSB wildlife biologists.

So I put camera in my camera bag, zipped it partially shut, and then placed it on the seat of my snowmachine. I would have zipped it all the way shut, but earlier in the day the zipper seam had torn part way and now would not close all the way. I then spotted Geoff nearby. He had placed a tall stand with a light atop it over the water at the shore-side end of the long hole. The whales were staying put in the holes over deeper water on the shore side.

The first job of a photographer is always to take pictures. In my early seasons at whale camp, those who I was with often did not understand this. If something was happening that required manual labor, they wanted "all hands" to join in that labor - if that hand was a photographer, then he had to put his camera down and join in. So, I had had to do so, just to keep my place in whaling camp. In the process, I had missed many a good picture, but over time still managed to get most key elements.

The pyschologiy that I should put my cameras down and help had set in, and so I made one of the biggest mistakes of my career and asked Geoff what I could do to help out.

He suggested that I take my snowmachine down to the far end of the hole and turn it so that it could sit there and idle with the light shining into the water. The story behind this snowmachine is a bit complicated and convoluted and it would take a lot of words to explain, but it make it short, it was brand new, it wasn't really mine but the Borough's and the Borough had assigned it to me, full time.

It was still in break-in mode. Sometimes, when I would give it a little gas to keep it idling, the throttle would stick and the snowmachine would lunge forward. I feared that if I pointed it right at the whale hole, this might happen. So, instead, I drove to the far end of the long whale hole and then parked it at an angle to the hole. I figured that whales could still see the light from this angle, but if the throttle should suddenly stick and the snowmachine lunge, it would scoot safely past the corner and stay on the ice.

So I parked, with my camera bag lying on the seat in front of me. I gently toyed with the throttle and brought it to idle, then put my left foot on the ice. As I swung my right leg over the seat to dismount, the machine started to die. I gave the throttle a quick, gentle, squeeze - then suddenly it stuck, the engine roared to full power and the snowmachine lunged forward faster and more violently than it ever had before.

It dumped me behind and then, just as in the contingency I had prepared for, it shot past the corner of the hole. What I had not envisioned is that it would be traveling with such speed that it would hit a nearby block of ice and then richochet right into the hole. Worse yet, my camera bag slid off into the water - right into the middle of the breadth of the hole. Thanks to the broken zipper, it started to sink, fast.

Rick Skluzacek of Minnesota was standing nearby. Qucikly, he dove to the edge of the hole, came down on his belly and grabbed the baggage bar at the rear of the machine. He expected me to grab on, too, but the machine was floating and my camera bag was sinking. I flung myself out over the hole so that my chest came down on the snownachine seat, plumnged my arm into the water and grabbed the camera bag, which had already sunk about a foot and was going down quick. I yanked it out of the water, flung it back onto the ice, then scooted backward and somehow managed to safely deposit myself onto the ice as well.

I then grabbed onto the luggar bar with Rick. Almost instantly, the engine and cowling sank completely and then the snow machine hung vertically like a dead fish. It was heavy, hard to support and we could not long grip the handle in these icy conditions. Someone grabbed a nearby shovel. We managed to slip it between the back bar and the seat and then to lay it across the corner so that it held the tail end of machine up and kept it from sinking altogether. 

Arnold Brower Jr. then came along with a pickup truck, we roped the macine to the tow-hitch. It took two tries and one broken rope, but then Brower yanked the machine from the water. I think he was pretty irritated at me at that moment, because once the machine was out of the water he did not stop to discuss what we should do with it, but drove off straight for land.

Nothing will ruin a camera faster than a dunk in salt water. Thanks to the ripped zipper, the bag had completely filled with water. The zipped up side pouches, filled with film and accessories, had remained water tight and everything inside was dry. But when I opened up the bag, it was completely filled with slush which was quickly hardening into ice.

I dug the now ice-encased cameras out. It looked like I was out of action. My cameras were Canon F-1's, totally manual, set in a rugged case of brass. I thought it possible that the sea water had turned instantly to ice upon contact with the brass. If so, then maybe the ice itself had created a barrier that had kept the saltwater from reaching the inner workings of the cameras. 

I caught a ride back to NARL. I sat down on the steel-latticed stairway, outside in the cold, took out my buck knife and carefully began to chip off the ice. Then at the end, I took a cloth and wiped off what was left. I then slowly warmed each camera in turn with my hands, then moved them into the Arctic entry, warmed them some more and finally took them inside.

Guess what? They still worked. The tiny  LCD on top that displayed shutter speed and apertuate information no longer worked, but I could manage without it.

So the next day I borrowed a snowmachine from NSB Wildlife and returned to the ice. I had missed the light experiment, which had failed to draw the whales over the shoal. Even so, the whales were now spending time in the big hole. To force them to stay there and not retreat back towards shore, the whalers and NSB biologists had opted to let the holes behind freeze over.

Furthermore, to force the whales to swim over the shoal, they had started to cut slabs of ice from the seaward side of the long hole and then float them to the shore side, to cover it, and freeze it over. Then, they hoped, the whales would have no choice but to advance over the shoal. 

It didn't work. The whales kept swimming back into the slab covered, refreezing, ice. They pushed their snouts through slabs, chunks, and slush before it could completely freeze. They cut and scraped themselves. Their respiratory rates increased. They appeared more stressed. Sometimes, they rolled to their sides.

Here is a whale, rising into the newly covered shore end of the hole. That's Malik, with the shovel, closely studying the whale. Malik was always speaking to the whales, usually in Iñupiaq, encouraging them, trying to bolster their spirits. I am certain he was speaking to them here, as well.

The whales needed a break. The effort to force them over the shoal was called off. Work began on a new hole, a hole wider in breadth than all the others, a hole the whales might use to calm down a bit, restore their normal breathing patterns, and get ready for the next step.

It struck me as dangerous work, this new hole. Whalers were floating around on slabs of ice, cutting them with chainsaws even as they did. Sometimes, a whaler needed a little assistance to get back to solid ice. Johnny Lee Aiken throws the rope of assistance.

If you are ever in Barrow in a normal June (which, as the climate warms, is becoming less and less normal) you will see children playing on ice floes near shore - leaping from one to the other. It might frighten you to see a such a sight, because you will know that if the wrong thing happens it could be tragic -and sometimes, though rarely, has been - but it does help to prepare them for the kind of life an Iñupiat whaler leads.

A bioiogist who grew up an easy train ride from New York City did not have that same kind of childhood experience, yet it is true that there are very few non-Iñupiat people who are as comfortable and competent on Arctic sea ice and water as Craig George and Geoff Carroll.

Still, Craig George was not prepared to have the slab of ice he was working on break in two prematiurely. Worse yet, the tiny, unstable piece that he stood on started to float to the middle of the hole, where he could easilly fall off and find himself pitched into a most troublesome and dangerous situation. I suspect that the whalers would have fished him out, but there would have been no guarantees.

Craig took a big leap...

His chainsaw floated out into the hole - but it would be easy enough to retrieve.

"If you want to help the whales, you've got to think like a whale." I heard this statement attributed to two people - Malik and Arnold Brower, Sr. It is easy enough for me to believe that it expressed the thoughts of both.

So with Malik at the fore on the ice, they put their brains into whale mode and asked, what would a whale naturally do if came to shallow water over a shoal? The answer - swim around the shoal.

They decided then to begin a new series of holes, a series that would go, not over, but around the shoal.

Sure enough, the whales quickly took to this new series of holes as they were cut around the shoal The whales did not need lights to draw them, nor bubblers either. As soon as a new hole was cut, the two whales were in it. They seemed to understand what the holes were for. They seemed to know the holes were leading them to safe and open water. They seemed to grow ever more eager for each new hole to be cut.

In fact, they grew so eager that they quit waiting for the whalers to finish a hole. They began to pop up in the holes even as they were being cut. They wanted to get moving. Now, the whalers had to take care so as to not accidently cut a whale with a chainsaw.

That's what was happening  here. Out in the ocean, two giant Soviet ice breakers - the equivalent of which the US lacked, were busting their way through the Arctic Ocean toward the whales. Those icebreakers, and a handful of the crew who manned and womaned them, will be the subject of my next post.

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Complete series index:

Part 1: Context bowhead hunt

Part 2: Roy finds the whales; Malik

Part 3: Scouting trip

Part 4: NBC on the ice

Part 5: To rescue or euthanize

Part 6: Governor Cowper, ice punch, chainsaw holes

Part 7: Malik provides caribou for dinner

Part 8: CNN learns home is sacred place

Part 9: World's largest jet; Screw Tractor

Part 10: Think like a whale

Part 11: Portrait: Billy Adams and Malik

Part 12: Onboard Soviet icebreakers

Part 13: Malik walks with whales, says goodbye

Part 14: Rescue concludes

Part 15: Epilogue

The movie, Big Miracle, and what I witnessed in real life, part 1: Context - bowhead hunt

The movie, Big Miracle, released today in threatres nationwide, begins with a Barrow bowhead whale hunt, so I will begin my series on the Great Gray Whale Rescue of 1988 with a bowhead hunt as well - actually, fragments of different Barrow hunts, culminating in the spring of 1988 - the same year that the rescue took place.

I was awestruck by the whale in the opening scene of the movie, in part because I have never seen a bowhead from quite that perspective in real life, yet I have seen them almost exactly like that in my dreams. The difference being that in my dreams the bowhead always turns upward, pulls the surface of the sea up in a dome with it until finally its snout breaks through the dome and then the water cascades down its sides as it climbs straight up through the air towards me.

The bowhead whale above breached in front of the whale camp of George Ahmaogak, Sr. during a time of cease fire. Elsewhere on the water, crews were in the process of landing two bowheads. Until that task could be completed, no further strikes could be made. This happened in the year 1994 - when I returned to the Ahmaogak camp nine years after my first sojourn with them.

This whale has been keeping the Iñupiat people alive now since the days of antiquity. To some, it may seem incongrous, but the Iñupiat people not only know the whale better than does anyone else, they have a deep love and respect for the bowhead whale, the likes of which is held by no other group of people. They depend on the whale, they need the whale, they know the whale, they respect the whale, they love the whale, they hunt the whale.

The Iñupiat and the bowhead have shared this sacred, life-giving relationship for thousands of years. In these modern times, the Iñupiat, a modern people, remain bound to the whale just as their ancestors were.

This is George Ahmaogak, who, in May of 1985, opened the door that allowed me to enter the world of the Iñupiat, and of whaling in particular. That May, I spent 12 days on the ice with him and his crew. It was a hard season. No whale was landed in Barrow in that time.

George taught me many lessons, some of them difficult. Chief among these lessons was one that I would hear confirmed many times by the elders afterward: a hunter must be skilled and stealthful, a hunter must also be respectful and generous toward others. No matter how skilled the hunter is, he is not skilled enough to land this great animal unless it first chooses to give itself to him.

The whale will only give itself to respectful, generous hunters, who keep their ice cellars clean and share their food with others - especially the elderly, the sick, and those who cannot hunt for themselves.

Hence, the title of my book, from which these pictures come: Gift of the Whale: The Iñupiat Bowhead Hunt - A Sacred Tradition.

This is one of the hard lessons that he taught me. Whaling is hard work. Just to establish a camp, crews must make trails across the sea ice that can exceed 15 miles in length. They must cut their way through many pressure ridges.

I came to take pictures, but when it was time to cut through a pressure ridge, I could barely get off a frame or two before George would hand me a pick axe and order, "Put that camera down and get to work!"

This was an even harder lesson. A shard of ice can easily poke a hole through the bearded seal skins that cover the umiak, or even break the frame. To ensure that this does not happen, whalers, usually young and fit, run with the boat. Several times, we had to move camp. Each time, George ordered, "Put that camera down and run with the boat."

I did not put the camera down, though. I kept it with me and every now and then lifted it above my bursting lungs and tried to get a frame off.

This effort would completely fall apart in the pressure ridges, where I stumbled and fell a couple of times. Once, I struggled to get back on my feet - retching, feeling like I was heaving up my guts altogether. I got no mercy from George. He stopped his machine, got off, stomped back to me, scolded me, mocked my poor "run with the boat technique" and then demonstrated how to do it right. "You are a shock absorber! A human shock absorber!"

And so I was.

It was hard. I did not want to swing a pick. I did not want to run with the boat; I wanted to take pictures, which is hard enough even when you are not swinging a pick - but, just like a young boy, I had to earn my right to be in camp. I learned things I would never have known if I had not undergone all the different tasks that George put me through.

I first went out with George in the spring of 1985, on a freelance assignment for We Alaskans, the no longer published Sunday magazine of the Anchorage Daily News. At the end of that year, I started up Uiñiq - a new pictoral magazine of life in the eight Iñupiat villages of the North Slope Borough.

I wanted to document the efforts of a single whaling captain and crew to bring in a bowhead. As George was then Mayor of the North Slope Borough. As the Borough funded Uiñiq, it seemed to me that it would be a conflict of interest if I were to focus on the Mayor's crew. So I had to find a crew - but whose crew?

In the spring of 1986, I had no crew to follow, so I basically stayed on land but kept my ears peeled as to what was happening on the ice. When I would hear that a crew had struck and landed a whale, I would seek out a snowmachine ride and then head for the landing site. This happened two or three times, and each time the butchering process was well under way by the time I got there. There wasn't much left for me to take pictures of.

Then, the final alloted strike of the season was made. A good lady by the name of Sally Brower let me ride on her sled and she drove me to the site where Jonathan Aiken, Sr., better known by his Iñupiaq name, Kunuk, had brought his whale. The whale was pulled out of the water even as we approached. I jumped off the sled as Kunuk climbed atop the whale with two of his tutaliks - his grandsons.

I shot this picture. I quickly ascertained that Kunuk was a quiet, humble, man - gentle and kind. I knew his was the crew I wanted to follow.

I made the request of Kunuk - that he let me follow his crew. For the next 11 months, whenever I would follow up, usually through his oldest son, Johnny Lee Aiken, the response would always be, "he's thinking about it. We'll let you know."

Soon, final preparations for the spring hunt of 87 were under way. Next, I was listening to KBRW and I heard the announcment that the Aiken crew was about to give out candy at Kunuk's house. This meant they would be going down to the ice within an hour or so.

So, feeling very depressed, I went over to get some candy and to see the crew off. Maybe, if I did so respectfully and without complaint, and then Kunuk thought about it for another year, he might take me in.

When I arrived. Kunuk and all his crew were dressed in their hunting parkas, with their bright, freshly sewn, white covers. Kunuk looked at me through dark sunglasses that gave me no hint of what was happening in his eyes.

"You coming?" he asked.

Here is Kunuk, pulling the umiak as his crew follows. I took these pictures, then scurried back to where I stayed, donned my arctic gear, hustled back to Kunuk's house and soon caught a ride out to camp.

Kunuk's camp, May, 1987 - waiting for a whale.

Kunuk's crew, May, 1987 - watching as a whale moves up the lead, past another crew.

Kunuk's crew, May, 1987 - they paddle for the whale.

Kunuk's crew, May, 1987 - they look for the whale after it dives.

Kunuk's crew, May, 1987 - they scrape the slush off their paddles before it hardens into solid ice. "Oh, well," Kunuk says.

Whalers like the east wind, but not the west. The east wind keeps the pack-ice separated from the shorefast ice - it holds the lead open. The west wind blows the pack ice back to the shorefast ice and closes the lead. If a large iceberg crashes into the ice, it can shatter and break it apart. Unwary whalers can be pitched into the sea or crushed in crumbling ice.

The wind has shifted to the west. Kunuk studies the advancing ice.

Kunuk deems the advancing ice to be too dangerous. He gives the order to break down camp, pack up and head for safe ice closer to land. In about 15 - 20 minutes after I took this picture, this campsite was completely vacated.

Kunuk and crew - on their way to safe ice.

Closed lead time is a good time to hunt eider ducks, which pass by the thousands, the hundreds of thousands, the millions.

It is also a time to relax on the caribou skins in the tent, to drink coffee (I never did drink coffee until I started to hang out with whalers) tell stories, and play pinochle. Raymond Kalayuak studies his hand as Eli Solomon peers over his shoulders.

On a few different occassions that season, we would hear that another crew had received the gift of the whale. Some of the crew would go to help with the landing - I would sometimes follow, nervous that a whale might come to Kunuk while I was off taking pictures such as this.

Some might look at a whale and say, "What a giant animal - how could the people possibly consume it all? But Barrow is a big community. After helping land and cut up a whale, different members of Kunuk's crew stood with their shares. They would get more at the feasts of Nalukatak, Thanksgiving and Christmas, but still one whale would not be even close to enough.

They needed more.

In 1977, based on information produced by scientists who did not yet know how to count bowhead whales in the Arctic, the International Whaling Commission and the US government believed the western Arctic bowhead population to number as few as 600 whales and no more than 1800. So IWC imposed a moratorium - a quota of zero - and the US agreed to enforce it.

From their own observations, the Iñupiat and other Alaska Eskimo whalers knew the government numbers to be wrong and so organized the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission and sent their leaders to IWC and Washington.

IWC and the US backed off a bit, but imposed a severe quota of only 12 landed whales, with no more than 18 strikes, for all ten (now 11) of Alaska's recognized whaling villages. Barrow's quota was four landed with no more than five strikes to land them. A decades long census effort was launched in cooperation between the US, AEWC, and the North Slope Borough. AEWC would manage the hunt, but would be under constant scrutiny. Eskimo whalers taught scientists how to better live on the ice and observe what was happening, there were aerial surverys and high-tech sound systems set up to detect and count whales that could not be seen from atop the ice or due to fog and weather condition.

In time, the census, subjected to rigorous peer review and then accepted by IWC and the US, proved that the bowhead population numbered more than 10,000 and is growing every year. The current, five-year block quota averages out to 67 strikes per year and the population continues to grow.

In 1987, the quota was still very tiny. It was not enough. Hunters had to double down on their efforts to catch caribou, seal, walrus and other animals of the Arctic - which supplement, but cannot replace, whale. Because they lead active lives in a frigid climate, they consume five to ten times the amount of flesh that other Americans do.

On April 26, 1988, the Aiken crew was the first to go down to the ice. They were soon joined by two other crews - Jacob Adams and Oliver Leavitt. I came too. We had to cut our way through a jumble of young, broken, jagged, sharded ice to get to the tenuous spot that Kunuk had chosen for our campsite.

As always, when swing a pick, I worked up a sweat. In previous years, that sweat had caused me to freeze not to death but into a state of perpetual misery. Nobody ever heard one word of complaint out of me, but I suffered. Now, I planned to sit out all day and all night for at least 24 hours and wait for a whale. I did not want to freeze. So, shortly after the tent was established, I went inside to change into dry clothes. I felt very nervous about this. What if a whale came right at the moment that I had removed my sweat-soaked clothing?

I thought about my previous three seasons on the ice. In all that time, only one whale had come within paddling distance of camp. What were the odds that one would now come in the few minutes it would take me to change into dry clothes?

I started to strip off my wet clothes, still feeling nervous. Claybo had laid down upon the caribou skins covering the tent floor to take a nap.

At the moment that I stripped down to my skivvies, Johnny whipped open the tent flap. "Whale!" he whispered. I jammed my feet back into my boots, didn't worry about anything else, grabbed my cameras and slipped quietly out through the tent flap. I was surprised to see the whale RIGHT THERE, just yards in front of the tent. It had the appearance of almost bowing to to Kunuk, who had raised his harpoon. To me, it looked felt like the whale was offering itself, just as I had been taught it would.

My angle was bad. Staying crouched, I slipped maybe four feet to my right, then saw that I could not take even one more second to better my position, so I raised my camera. My breath hit the manual Canon F-1 viewfinder and froze on it, covering it with frost. I could not see through the viewfinder to focus and this was in the time of manual focus. I did not have a motor drive but only a thumb lever. I focused on instinct, fired the shutter, cranked my thumb as fast as I could.

Kunuk thrust the harpoon into the whale, triggering the darting gun that would fire a bomb. Eli Solomon followed with the shoulder gun, to fire another bomb. The whale disappeared beneath the surface. We felt the reverberations of the two bombs come up through the water and the ice. We waited...

... in just seconds, the whale rolled to the surface, flipper up. Kunuk raised his hands above his head. "Praise God!" he prayed in thanks. It was an instant kill. 

Johnny and Claybo embraced. They were joyous. This whale had brought its gift to their crew. They would now have the honor of feeding the community.

Two months later, the Aiken crew joined with three other successful crews. Crew members gathered around the prepared whale, joined hands, and prayed. The feast of Nalukataq was about to begin. All who came would be fed generously. All would leave with generous portions to take home with them - as they would in the upcoming feasts at Thanksgiving and Christmas.

A blanket made from the skins of one of the successful umiaks was brought out. The first people to be tossed during breaks in the afternoon serving were children. Come night, in the time of 24 hour sunshine, the youth and adults took over the blanket.

Big Boy Neakok performed his famous flips.

In the movie Big Miracle, Malik is the captain who guides the paddling of the umiak toward the whale in the opening scene. He is a fictitious Malik, but is named for a real Malik who I have been told harpooned more bowheads in his life than any other hunter. In the movie, Malik proves to be the leading force in the whale rescue. The real life Malik would play a similar role, but with different nuance.

Tomorrow, I will introduce readers to the real Malik, together with Roy Ahmaogak, who found the three gray whales while out scouting in the hope of spotting bowheads. The three graywhales will appear in tomorrow's post as well.

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Complete series index:

Part 1: Context bowhead hunt

Part 2: Roy finds the whales; Malik

Part 3: Scouting trip

Part 4: NBC on the ice

Part 5: To rescue or euthanize

Part 6: Governor Cowper, ice punch, chainsaw holes

Part 7: Malik provides caribou for dinner

Part 8: CNN learns home is sacred place

Part 9: World's largest jet; Screw Tractor

Part 10: Think like a whale

Part 11: Portrait: Billy Adams and Malik

Part 12: Onboard Soviet icebreakers

Part 13: Malik walks with whales, says goodbye

Part 14: Rescue concludes

Part 15: Epilogue