| Thursday May 8, 2003 Hello friends and fiends, family and strangers, What's new for us in Kingcome? A lot by the time you get to the end of this letter. The bears are back in full effect. Some houses have been "visited" each night for a week. The bears have been so bold as to go on porches, knock on windows and scratch on doors. One guy was even "patted" on the back as he was out at night having a smoke. Still, we have not seen one with our own eyes since Halloween. We can tell that we have been here for a while as our fear has practically vanished living among bears. Although, we have yet to see the whites of their eyes on a moonlit night in the middle of an empty road. Well, it's about time. The oolichans have arrived! All 57 of them! "Wait a minute. How come so few?" I don't know. Some years they don't come at all. Most years, the annual return of the fish inundates the river and thousands upon thousands are gathered. This year, only a few, and late at that. We got to help some guys drag a net for 3 sets in the river one night gathering oolichans. The net was about 5 feet wide and 200 feet long. As the next gets pulled ashore, I can picture at least 10,000 oolichans fitting in the haul. But there were only 40 per set, if that. Still, what a great thing to witness and be a part of. I (John) took a trip to Vancouver by myself for a conference a couple weeks ago. It was fantastically awesome. I stayed at the Hyatt, had room service, first class all the way. It was exciting, too, to be in downtown Vancouver as the Canucks beat the Minnesota Wild in the first game of this playoff series. Canadians love their hockey. Nicole proudly wears her Canucks t-shirt. "Is that who we want to win, Vancouver?" she asks. Nicole has been swimming in the river with other kids lately. She loves it, despite being constantly reminded that it's glacier-fed water. Her skin is becoming more of a blue tint and she sort of has that rigor mortis smell about her, but she still goes headlong into the river. All three of us are going out this Saturday for 9 days to Vancouver Island for sightseeing and holidaying. We will be mostly uncontactable, but enjoying ourselves immensely. We are going to the west side of the Island as we realize we better see what we can while we are here because..... We are moving out of Kingcome at the end of June. MCC came up this week to make it known and understood to the community that we will be finished at the end of this school year. This has been a very difficult year, for all of us. My (John) job was not what MCC envisioned and is unworkable in this context. This has been a large struggle throughout the year. Nicole has been the brunt of too many struggles with children here and we are not willing to put her through that again for another year. We realize that this is surprising news for some of you, some others have been following this throughout the year, as it has been a yearlong process. We also realize that we have written these letters in a positive tone and of the positive aspects of our time here. Sugarcoated letters. Our joint decision with MCC to leave is a difficult one, and complex to fully explain. The community, as a whole, is not ready for MCC. We will miss the friendships we have made here and forever value the positive experiences we have had in Kingcome. Our future? We are not entirely sure yet. We plan on heading back to Minneapolis as a homebase until we have that figured out. By the way, this is not our last letter. We still have 7 weeks here, so expect continued contact from us. Peace to you all. JohnKristinNicole |