Hello friends, neighbors, and colleagues. The Talleys are on the road. We left Staunton this morning bright and early, as bright and early as it gets for us. Away we go bound for Lottsburg, where we store Flicka, our 1979 Allied Seawind, 32-foot ketch for the summer. We have spent many days and nights on this intrepid little boat plying the waters of the Chesapeake Bay, ducking in and out of “gunkholes”, quiet, out-of-the-way anchorages and visiting quaint villages. For two years in a row, we took Flicka on excursions to Florida via the Intracoastal Waterway. But now she lays at rest “on the hard”, to be recommissioned in the fall.

We arrive at Lottsburg in the early afternoon and set up our new Aliner Titanium travel trailer. We call her Ali the Aliner, all fifteen feet of her. Complete with bunks fore and aft, propane, DC and AC powered refrigerator, propane heater, six-gallon hot water tank, two burner propane stove, eleven-gallon water tank and sink, ceiling fan, air conditioner and a little dinette where I now sit as I write. No shower. No toilet. We still use our trusted Luggable Lou. A five-gallon drywall bucket with an attached toilet seat. No moving parts. No blockages. A Luggable Lou gets one in touch with one’s essential nature.

Ali’s builders made her to “off road” specifications, with an eleven-inch clearance and a heavy-duty flex axle.  Our 2013 Toyota 4-runner is the tow vehicle. With that combination, we can get off the beaten path to explore some of America and Canada’s spectacular and remote landscapes. We even invested in a 100-watt solar panel, so we charge Ali’s deep cycle marine battery.

http://www.coanrivermarina.com/

Its nearing 5 PM. We eagerly rummage through Ali, organizing and reorganizing our stuff. Figuring out the best place to store things in a logical way so that we can get to them when we need to. It’s a difficult task in a 15 foot by 8-foot space.

Flicka awaits my attention as there are tasks I have not completed to ready her for a six-month stay on the hard out of the water for the summer. The Chesapeake Bay’s summer sun is relentless, so I am placing tarps over the cockpit and forward hatch.

I look up and, much to my joy and amusement, I see my friend Tony Holmes, known to the Alaskan Yupik people in the Bristol Bay area of Alaska as Pukuk, which in Yupik loosely means “marrow extractor”, which apparently Tony is particularly good at when sucking the marrow from moose bones. The resourceful native people of Alaska never waste food.

“Hello Tony”, I say happily. “It’s good to see you. What up?”

We talk and Tony, the fisherman, oyster grower, jack of all trades, knife maker, and holder of a master’s degree in rehabilitation counseling starts telling stories, a pastime at which he is good. They are good stories about places he has been, people he knows, and the many jobs and trades he has undertaken through the years.

Tony’s knives are special. How he came to make them is a special story. He spent a lot of time in Alaska, particularly the southwest regions. In the Village of New Stuyahok, a remote area sandwiched between vast wilderness regions with the Togiak National Wildlife Refuge to the west, the Katmai National Park and Preserve to the south and the Lake Clark National Park and Preserve and the McNeil River Game Range to the east.

In New Stuyahok a Yupik Eskimo woman taught Tony how to use a traditional Alaskan knife known to people in that region as the uluaq, meaning woman’s knife. In the harsh world in which the Yupik people live, the uluaq, or ulu for short, is the only knife they use. It is a highly utilitarian tool that the natives believe outperforms a butcher knife every time. Men generally do the hunting in Yupik communities and women process the meat, be it fish or mammal. They must do it fast and efficiently and the ulu is their tool of choice. One can push a sharp ulu through meant and bone, chop with it or rock it back and forth as needed. Highly versatile. Easy on the hands. A great knife for filleting fish.

Later in Tony’s time in Alaska, Father David Askoak, a leader in the American Orthodox Church from Iliamna, Alaska, taught Tony how to make a traditional uluaq with a cold chisel and an old saw blade using a rock for an anvil. David was hooked. He began making the knives in earnest and gave one of his first made to the Yupik woman who had taught David how to use it.

Go to Tony’s website to learn more of his story and his great knives. www.tonysulu.com.

Tony, aka Puku, lives in Virginia now, right across the Coan River from us. I’m glad he is here.

Away he goes and we set up to prepare dinner outside on the grill. Right on time just as I am finishing up the chicken black clouds appear on the western horizon moving fast. The wind whips up and the rain comes down in sheets. I frantically get things squared away outside and bring in the sumptuous chicken.

And it rains and rains, for about two hours. But we are safe and dry in Ali the Aliner.

Tomorrow, southbound for Montgomery Alabama.

Stayed tuned for Go West Young Man. Chapter 3. Father Doncombe