20060525 Be It Ever So Humble

My home is a tiny efficiency cabin consisting of a living/sleeping area, a kitchen, and a bathroom. I share it with Travis, a law enforcement ranger in his first season with the Park Service. The walk to the auditorium, where our classroom training sessions take place, takes about three minutes.

Today we learned a little bit about the lifeways of native peoples in the Brooks Camp area. Native peoples lived here for over 4000 years, though perhaps not continuously. They fished, hunted for caribou and other mammals, and ate local plant material. At least some of them lived in semi-subterranean homes known as barabaras. We visited a number of barabara sites this morning, including a partial reconstruction. An excavation 3-4’ deep was lined with split cottonwood limbs arranged vertically. Within this low wall four heavy timbers supported a roof structure. The roof and walls were lined with sod, brush, and sometimes gravel. The entrance was a semi-tunnel, dug lower than the floor of the main room. This design kept the heat from escaping through the entrance. Heat and light came from a fire or from an oil lamp. The lamp would be a large cobblestone worked to create a basin. Wicks could be fashioned by rolling moss between the fingers. Barabaras came unfurnished. Occupants sat on the floor against the wall.

I am neither native nor planning to stay for over 4000 years—I’ll be here about four months. Until today I believed I was really roughing it, what with shared quarters, no telephone, and no stores nearby. Now I understand that my home is luxurious indeed.