little light

 In a place that hadn't been seen by many people, she was born into the frozen village of Point Hope, Alaska beside the Chukchi Sea. 

The Iñuit people know that every flake of snow that falls from the grey, heavy laden clouds is different from all of the other snowflakes that fall from the sky.

No two snowflakes have ever been alike.

No two snowflakes are alike.

No two snowflakes will ever be alike.

Such is one of the mysteries of our world.

The crystals that come together to form the snowflake are so sensitive to the conditions around them that wind blowing across the ice or a cloud moving between the Earth and the sun or the heartbeat of a bowhead whale as it rises to the surface of the great waters to take in a breath of air can change those crystals into something new.

The baby's mother and father knew that she was new, that she would be something beautiful and do something wonderful in the world.

During the first hours of her life, bound in the warm, Arctic whales blanket her grandmother had sewn for her, she whistled a sound her father had heard only once in his life.

He was a young boy, roaming the ice near the edge of the Chukchi Sea, hunting bowhead whales with the elders of the village,

There, silently by the sea, at the edge of the pack ice and the water, a bowhead rose to the surface.

The bowhead whale. 

Balaena mysticetus.

Subsistence for the people.

It's bones used to make the frames of houses, It's insides used to make the covers of sacred drums, it's blubber used to keep,the people alive in the deep, dark Arctic winter.

Symbol to the people.

It's willingness to give it's life for the lives of others.

The Iñupiat people whisper it's name with reverence and awe.

And here was the great whale risen beside the small boy.

They were so close to each other, the boy could see his reflection in the beautiful onyx eye of the whale.

His father raised a harpoon to strike the whale.  

Both father and son prayed a prayer that had been recited for as long as the people had been the people of the whale.

I think over again

My small adventures

My fears

Those small ones

That seemed so big

For all the vital things

I had to get and reach

And yet

There is only one great thing

The only thing

To live to see the great day

That dawns

And the light that fills the world

Normally, when a bowhead whale is struck by a harpoon, it dives into the depths of the sea and hopes with all it's life to stay alive.

This bowhead, though, was not a normal whale.

As the boy and his father stood at the edge of the ice and looked into the eye of the bowhead, the great whale willingly gave up it's life for the people.

Sacrificial love.

The sound the bowhead made as it's life slipped away over the expanse of the sea and sky was the same sound the baby made on that day in her first hours in her mother's arms.

"We will name her Taklaingiq," whispered her mother "The old language for the word for bowhead whale."

"We can call her Taki," whispered her father.

A little light appeared in the room.

This was unusual.

There were no lit candles or lanterns in the house.

The tilt of the Arctic land was away from the sun, so the time of the 24 hours of darkness was at hand. 

But there was a little light.

And it shone from Taki.

- trevor scott barton, stories for a brown-eyed girl, 2020