A Small Boy And A Stone Lamp
By Cliff Fuglestad
It was on one of those perfect days that lends an idyllic quality to the sheltered bays and coves of Kachemak Bay's heavily indented south shoreline that Glen found the stone lamp, a relic of a prehistoric Eskimo culture which had flourished there many centuries ago in a setting far removed from the bleak and often featureless Arctic Coast. The dark green expanse of a virtually unbroken spruce hemlock coastal forest created a wilderness setting that began at water's edge and then merged inland with the alpine meadows, the permanent snow fields and finally the craggy peaks of the Kenai Range that stood out boldly against a clear, blue sky.
Under a warm summer sun a gentle day breeze had sprung up, just enough to occasionally riffle the water in front of our beach, while further out on the Bay the gulls and terns dipped and wheeled, calling faintly to one another as they worked the tide rip in search of food. The "Chacon", an old familiar fishing boat of another era, had just passed from view as it made its ponderous and noisy way towards Homer, leaving our part of the Bay free of all boat traffic.
At the top of the bluff behind our beach lay an impressive pile of building materials and supplies, including the proverbial kitchen sink, which Erle and I had hauled there on a stone boat behind his equally noisy John Deere cat. Tomorrow, with the help of our young crew of four boys and two even younger daughters, we would start building our cabin, but for the moment, it was time to take a much needed rest from our heavy lifting and to savor the air of tranquility that had descended on our beach now that the John Deere was silent.
My wife Joan had emerged from under a visqueen shelter after doing the last of the noonday dishes in her temporary kitchen and had gone off with one of our sons, Glen, to look at something he had spotted in the small cove next to our beach. The tide was out and Glen's brothers and sisters were using the entire beach to play their merry games of tag and take a-way, their youthful cries mingling in harmony with those of the distant gulls and terns.
At some point the subject of Eskimo artifacts had been briefly mentioned, one in which the family had shown an interest, having found a few stone sinkers scattered on another beach and heard stories of other archeological finds in the area. I remember that Erle and I had been discussing artifacts in a rather tired and desultory manner and had reached a conclusion that there was little or no chance of finding any on our exposed beach. It was only on the inside of Halibut Cove where the prehistoric Eskimos could pull up their skin boats on the sheltered mud beaches that artifacts would continue to be found.
So much for adult wisdom for I soon noticed that the games had ceased and everyone was running towards their mother as she and Glen emerged from behind the rock point and had begun their climb up our sloping beach. It became obvious that Joan was carrying something heavy as her feet dug into the loose gravel and her progress slowed. With much shouting and laughter she was relieved of her burden by the older boys who then carried it the rest of the way and deposited at our feet certainly one of the largest and heaviest stone lamps ever found on Kachemak Bay.
Face down it resembled in both size and elliptical shape a toilet bowl cover. Face up, a well defined lip formed the rim of the bowl that retained the seal oil and there was a slight groove for the moss wick which when lit, provided the prehistoric Eskimo with both heat and light. Although weathered by centuries of exposure to the pounding waves in the little cove, nevertheless we could still make out a definite pattern of three raised bumps or knobs and the design of a fish in the bottom of the bowl that is typically found in most stone lamps from the Thule Culture. Its size and weight indicated that it was probably a permanent fixture of its provenance, in this case the small cove where Glen had found it. After all, a 42 pound stone would not have been something to keep dragging around, particularly in a small skin boat.
Chiseled or pecked by an ancient craftsman from a different rock (Chert?) than the dark country rock that is predominant on the south shore of Kachemak Bay, it was the lighter color that had drawn Glen's eye to the stone lamp as it lay, leaning against the rock face, half buried in the beach gravel where it had been abandoned long, long ago.
The small cove formed a perfect setting for the stone lamp. Shaped liked a lazy V which opened onto the Bay and a view of Glacier Spit, both arms of the cove were formed by vertical cliffs, one rising as much as 50 feet above the water's edge with an occasional scraggly spruce clinging to a niche in the sheer walls. The closed end of the cove narrowed to a small gravel beach tucked in against a low rock face over which a dense growth of alder and spruce formed a leafy canopy, all of which combined to give the pleasing aspect of a snug, secure shelter that offered protection from the elements.
Here the men of the small, prehistoric Eskimo village inside Halibut Cove must have gathered over the centuries to act out their hunting stories, perhaps to talk about the strange, new people who were beginning to appear on the upper reaches of Cook Inlet, or more probably, to engage in their shamanistic rites that would bring them good luck on their next hunt for the larger and more dangerous mammals including the occasionally polar bear that would provide additional subsistence for the village.
Visiting the small cove late in the fall in a gathering dusk under an overcast sky with tendrils of fog lying low on the water, it requires very little imagination to picture such a gathering, to almost hear the guttural voices of a stone age people and to almost see the flickering light from the stone lamp reflected on the rock walls and to wonder. Who were the last of their kind to place the stone lamp against the rock wall and then leave, never to return as the gulls called out a lonely requiem? How many centuries have passed since then as the storm tides reached further into the cove as the land subsided in a series of giant earthquakes plus a rising sea level, alternately covering and then uncovering the stone lamp with the shifting beach gravel? And how many people since then, particularly in recent years, have walked into the cove at low tide to pick the plentiful mussels and to look for driftwood while failing to see this relic from the ancient past?
To those who came in recent years, if they noted it at all, the stone lamp must have looked just like one of the many rocks which lay scattered along the beach. However, to a young boy with bright eyes, it held a fascination that led to its discovery and preservation as a link with a distant past, a past that is slowly emerging from the mists of time.
Over a century ago and half a world away, a poet held in his hand a delicate artifact from perhaps a more distant past , mused about the feelings it evoked and wrote "...........of Silence and slow Time."
It was on one of those perfect days that lends an idyllic quality to the sheltered bays and coves of Kachemak Bay's heavily indented south shoreline that Glen found the stone lamp, a relic of a prehistoric Eskimo culture which had flourished there many centuries ago in a setting far removed from the bleak and often featureless Arctic Coast. The dark green expanse of a virtually unbroken spruce hemlock coastal forest created a wilderness setting that began at water's edge and then merged inland with the alpine meadows, the permanent snow fields and finally the craggy peaks of the Kenai Range that stood out boldly against a clear, blue sky.
Under a warm summer sun a gentle day breeze had sprung up, just enough to occasionally riffle the water in front of our beach, while further out on the Bay the gulls and terns dipped and wheeled, calling faintly to one another as they worked the tide rip in search of food. The "Chacon", an old familiar fishing boat of another era, had just passed from view as it made its ponderous and noisy way towards Homer, leaving our part of the Bay free of all boat traffic.
At the top of the bluff behind our beach lay an impressive pile of building materials and supplies, including the proverbial kitchen sink, which Erle and I had hauled there on a stone boat behind his equally noisy John Deere cat. Tomorrow, with the help of our young crew of four boys and two even younger daughters, we would start building our cabin, but for the moment, it was time to take a much needed rest from our heavy lifting and to savor the air of tranquility that had descended on our beach now that the John Deere was silent.
My wife Joan had emerged from under a visqueen shelter after doing the last of the noonday dishes in her temporary kitchen and had gone off with one of our sons, Glen, to look at something he had spotted in the small cove next to our beach. The tide was out and Glen's brothers and sisters were using the entire beach to play their merry games of tag and take a-way, their youthful cries mingling in harmony with those of the distant gulls and terns.
At some point the subject of Eskimo artifacts had been briefly mentioned, one in which the family had shown an interest, having found a few stone sinkers scattered on another beach and heard stories of other archeological finds in the area. I remember that Erle and I had been discussing artifacts in a rather tired and desultory manner and had reached a conclusion that there was little or no chance of finding any on our exposed beach. It was only on the inside of Halibut Cove where the prehistoric Eskimos could pull up their skin boats on the sheltered mud beaches that artifacts would continue to be found.
So much for adult wisdom for I soon noticed that the games had ceased and everyone was running towards their mother as she and Glen emerged from behind the rock point and had begun their climb up our sloping beach. It became obvious that Joan was carrying something heavy as her feet dug into the loose gravel and her progress slowed. With much shouting and laughter she was relieved of her burden by the older boys who then carried it the rest of the way and deposited at our feet certainly one of the largest and heaviest stone lamps ever found on Kachemak Bay.
Face down it resembled in both size and elliptical shape a toilet bowl cover. Face up, a well defined lip formed the rim of the bowl that retained the seal oil and there was a slight groove for the moss wick which when lit, provided the prehistoric Eskimo with both heat and light. Although weathered by centuries of exposure to the pounding waves in the little cove, nevertheless we could still make out a definite pattern of three raised bumps or knobs and the design of a fish in the bottom of the bowl that is typically found in most stone lamps from the Thule Culture. Its size and weight indicated that it was probably a permanent fixture of its provenance, in this case the small cove where Glen had found it. After all, a 42 pound stone would not have been something to keep dragging around, particularly in a small skin boat.
Chiseled or pecked by an ancient craftsman from a different rock (Chert?) than the dark country rock that is predominant on the south shore of Kachemak Bay, it was the lighter color that had drawn Glen's eye to the stone lamp as it lay, leaning against the rock face, half buried in the beach gravel where it had been abandoned long, long ago.
The small cove formed a perfect setting for the stone lamp. Shaped liked a lazy V which opened onto the Bay and a view of Glacier Spit, both arms of the cove were formed by vertical cliffs, one rising as much as 50 feet above the water's edge with an occasional scraggly spruce clinging to a niche in the sheer walls. The closed end of the cove narrowed to a small gravel beach tucked in against a low rock face over which a dense growth of alder and spruce formed a leafy canopy, all of which combined to give the pleasing aspect of a snug, secure shelter that offered protection from the elements.
Here the men of the small, prehistoric Eskimo village inside Halibut Cove must have gathered over the centuries to act out their hunting stories, perhaps to talk about the strange, new people who were beginning to appear on the upper reaches of Cook Inlet, or more probably, to engage in their shamanistic rites that would bring them good luck on their next hunt for the larger and more dangerous mammals including the occasionally polar bear that would provide additional subsistence for the village.
Visiting the small cove late in the fall in a gathering dusk under an overcast sky with tendrils of fog lying low on the water, it requires very little imagination to picture such a gathering, to almost hear the guttural voices of a stone age people and to almost see the flickering light from the stone lamp reflected on the rock walls and to wonder. Who were the last of their kind to place the stone lamp against the rock wall and then leave, never to return as the gulls called out a lonely requiem? How many centuries have passed since then as the storm tides reached further into the cove as the land subsided in a series of giant earthquakes plus a rising sea level, alternately covering and then uncovering the stone lamp with the shifting beach gravel? And how many people since then, particularly in recent years, have walked into the cove at low tide to pick the plentiful mussels and to look for driftwood while failing to see this relic from the ancient past?
To those who came in recent years, if they noted it at all, the stone lamp must have looked just like one of the many rocks which lay scattered along the beach. However, to a young boy with bright eyes, it held a fascination that led to its discovery and preservation as a link with a distant past, a past that is slowly emerging from the mists of time.
Over a century ago and half a world away, a poet held in his hand a delicate artifact from perhaps a more distant past , mused about the feelings it evoked and wrote "...........of Silence and slow Time."