Nora Marks Dauenhauer

Like people emerging from a steambath, bending over, steaming from their heads and shoulders, the ring of the mountains from the Chilkat Range to the Juneau ice field as if in steambath towels of snow flurries; at their feet are foaming white caps of sea like water thrown on rocks steaming from the heat.

My grandmother Eliza was the family surgeon. Her scalpel made from a pocketknife she kept in a couple of pinches of snoose. She saved my life by puncturing my festering neck twice with her knife. She saved my brother’s life twice when his arm turned bad. The second time she saved him was when his shoulder turned bad. She always made sure she didn’t cut an artery. She would feel around for days finding the right spot to cut. When a doctor found out she saved my brother’s life he warned her, “You know you could go to jail for this?” Her intern, my Auntie Anny, saved my life when I cut a vessel on my toe. While my blood was squirting out she went out into the night and cut and chewed the bark of plants she knew. She  put the granules of chewed up bark on my toe before the eyes of the folks who came to console my mother because I was bleeding to death. Grandma’s other intern, Auntie Jennie, saved our uncle’s life when his son shot him through the leg by accident. A doctor warned her, too, when he saw how she cured. Her relative cured herself of diabetes. Now, the doctors keep on asking, “How did you cure yourself?”

Eaglecrest, Juneau, February 24, 1989 Amelia, space-age girl at top of Sourdough makes her run with Eagle Grandpa Dick, Raven girl, balancing on space, gliding on air in Tlingit colors: black pants, turquoise jacket, yellow shoulder patches, black hair like feathers clinging to her head, face the color of red cedar. Once in a while I could even see space between her legs and skis. Diving downhill she continues side to side, slalom style, following Grandpa’s red boots. Then the two figures swoop around the corner, swishing downhill, shooshing home.