The Big Waves

When I was seven or eight years old my sister and I went berry picking with Nick Isaac, his family and his parents below Mtn. Village.

Going down it was nice and sunny out the whole time and it stayed that way for two or three days.

After we filled up all our five-gallon buckets, Nick's parents wanted to go to Alakanuk and visit some of their relatives. So we gathered all of our stuff, brought it to Nick's boat and then headed down river.

While we were traveling, it started getting rough, but it wasn't scary for us kids because we were having fun bouncing in the waves. But later, as we got closer to Emmo, the waves started getting bigger, and we kids were sitting in the bow of the boat and making the best of it by bouncing around every time the boat hit a big one. But when I looked at Nick's parents they told us to quit having so much fun or the waves would get worse. Since the boys didn't listen, I stayed up there with them trying not to let on that I was scared.

The waves were so big, even the adults were bouncing around really hard and having to hold on to the side of the boat. Then Nick pointed to a barge, and I guess he wanted us kids to move to the floor of the boat. But we all stayed up there watching the big waves. Jason was kneeling on the top of the bow when all of a sudden we hit a big wave, and Jason flew into the air and almost fell out of the boat. That was when I finally decided to move and sit back by my sister.

The waves were about 15 feet high Nick said later. But now, whenever he brings it up we laugh about it because we kids didn't listen to his parents, and we were really scared.