​At the fishing camp that my sister and her husband own, Naknek River Camp, there are around eight cabins for guests, a dining hall that now has Internet and a large-screen television, and a bar on the riverfront called Trapper’s Bar.  After four trips to Alaska, I finally learned that Trapper’s comes with a bit of Bristol Bay history, at least, according to one of our neighbors who shared the bear tale.

Bristol Bay is the easternmost arm of the Bering Sea in southwest Alaska. The largest community in the area is Naknek (with a population between 400 and 500 people).  It’s right on the ocean shore with a lot of salmon canneries.  It connects to King Salmon (population 307 and the town closest to the river camp) thanks to 16 miles of the paved (and so appreciated) Alaska Peninsula Highway.  King Salmon has the airport as well as what used to be an active U.S. Army Air Force base during World War II, which closed down in 1994.

Today, the road continues from King Salmon further inland for 4.6 miles to Lake Camp.  It feels a lot longer.  The road isn’t paved.  The dirt and gravel continually need to be grated.  And along the way, you are guaranteed to see lots of potholes, likely to see the occasional bear, and very lucky if you spot a moose, fox, or lynx.  We’re talking Alaskan wilderness.

Back in the early 1970s, there was no road to Lake Camp on the entrance to Lake Naknek.  It was all swamp and tundra.  But, military people wanted a recreational area for fishing and exploring Alaska.  They used their jeeps to plow a pathway to the lake and establish Lake Camp as a place for their boats.  Even today, there is no town or village at Lake Camp.  It is merely a pier where people keep their boats or bring them when they want to fish. 

Most of the land in the area is either part of the 4.2 million-acre national park or owned by the local Native Alaskans.  Some bits and pieces have been sold to private individuals.  But, there really are not a lot of people in the area.  Trapper’s Bar was one of the original cabins build near Lake Camp.  Back then, it was easier to bring supplies for building by way of the river than by the dirt jeep path over the tundra.

According to our neighbor, and you know that second-hand information is always true, the original owner of Trapper’s was a retired Air Force colonel.  He lived in the cabin by himself for several years.  Trapper’s was built before a passable road was there.  In those days, it took two hours to drive to Lake Camp from King Salmon.  The colonel’s home was a one-room cabin (still is) with a stove, bed, and little else.  There were no beautiful windows overlooking the Naknek River as there are today.  There was no bar, grill, terrace, internet, or ice machine.  I’m fairly sure in guessing there was no electricity either.  Instead of windows, the colonel had gun slits in the walls in case of trouble.  Trouble meant curious, and oh so dangerous, bears.  And, if those bears ever showed up, the colonel had his gunrack by the cabin door.  He was a man prepared.

Except he wasn’t.

As the story goes, one very curious and very dangerous bear crashed through the cabin door one night.  The colonel immediately saw the flaw in his preparations.  It doesn’t do any good to have your gun ready for a bear when the bear crashes through your door and is standing right next to your weapon. Somehow, miraculously, the colonel edged his way through the darkness, around the wall, and escaped out of the cabin without being slashed, maimed, mauled, or eaten.  But, once outside, he realized that he didn’t have his gun with him.  Would you go back inside?

Our trusty colonel didn’t.

Instead, he raced to his vehicle.  But, where were his keys?  Inside the same cabin with the bear.  The brave colonel chose not to go back in the cabin for them either.  Instead, he turned around and walked – or possibly ran -- all the way to King Salmon.  He never looked back and never returned to his cabin. 
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Is all of this story true?  Well, bears still wander around Trapper’s to this day.  But, in my four visits to Alaska, I’ve never seen one colonel.

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​When you are in Alaska, if you don’t have a bear story, you know someone who does.  I’ve already blogged about the birthday party from hell, or at least Alaska.  At that party, two bears broke through the front door of a kids’ event.  The mother of the birthday girl shot one bear in the doorway.  Then, she climbed over the dead carcass and ran outside after the second invader.  In the end, the score was two dead bears to one everlasting story.
 
I had my own brief encounter, but I slept through the whole event.  In my sister’s home is an enclosed porch where they put their trash.  A mere set of very fragile French doors separate that porch from the living room where I slept.  I never heard the bear that broke into the porch to eat the feast set before him.  No, I didn’t hear a peep or ravenous growl.  But, in the morning, I certainly saw the mess in the porch and down a path into the Alaskan tundra.  Bears are not tidy eaters.
 
Now, last season, my sister had Alaska’s best bear story – at least in my mind.  One night, at two in the morning, she got up to go to the bathroom (as so many of us need to do).  When she was finished with her “business”, she heard an unusual noise in the lodge.  She went to investigate.  Already, it was a foolish thing to do.  That kind of investigation is for husbands and adult sons.  But, nope, my sister went to investigate.  And, that’s when she found a grizzly bear in her kitchen.

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​A long, long, long time ago, so long ago that it feels like another lifetime, I used to go to a Renaissance Fair every year.  My favorite thing there was not the jousting, the medieval costumes, or giant turkey drumsticks.  No, my favorite thing was the storytellers.  They'd gather an audience around them in a circle and tell a tale with audience participation.  Now, it's so long ago that I don't remember any of the stories or antics, but I remember some of the techniques used.  And, those little gems were stored away somewhere in the back of my mind for future use.

​Since then, I've been collecting folktales from around the world.  I've not really counted how many I've gathered and rewritten, but it is in the vicinity of 300 stories.  Out of all of those tales, I have two favorites in my collection.  I love The Paramount Chief and One Wise Woman.  It's a tale from Liberia.  I illustrated it as a stand-alone children's book.  I merrily used photographs from my time in Liberia as references to draw the pictures. It's certainly worth the read.

The other favorite tale was a much more recent discovery.  It's The Stone at the Door, a love story from Morocco.  It's also very special to me because I lived in Morocco after my time in the Peace Corps.  In this tale, a young man is on a search for his bride.  But, before he can find that woman, he has an important lesson to learn.  It truly is a wonderful story.  And, of course, I also created a stand-alone children's book for this tale as well.

However, when I travel to schools as a guest artist/author, I don't read either of those two favorite tales.  No, my story of choice is always Spider and the Honey Tree, a tale from Liberia that I gathered as a Peace Corps Volunteer.  I've told this story so many times I can't even guess the number of times.  And, every time I tell it, I remember the techniques I learned so far long ago at a Renaissance Festival.  I have audience participation, to be sure, and I keep the audience's attention no matter the age of my listeners.  

In Liberian tales, Spider is frequently the main character.  He's a trickster.  Sometimes he gets away with his tricks, and other times they backfire on him.  In every case, there is a lesson to be learned.  When I tell my tale, I'm always Spider and I need the nicest, sweetest, most wonderful child in the history of the world to help me enact the story.  Of course, I'm trying to trick the kid.  Will the child become Spider's victim or will the tables be turned on him?  You'll just have to read the story.

I always ask the child/actor/victim if they are the nicest, sweetest, most wonderful child in the history of the world or if they are an actor.   The answer to that question is about a 50/50 split.  I'm guessing half of the kids are liars.
The story is part of my collection of 50 Liberian tales in Once Upon West Africa.  However, I finally decided that book 23 on my list of children's books must be a stand-alone book for Spider and the Honey Tree.   I have no idea what took me so long, but the book is finally complete.
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It's a very good read, but if you really want to hear it the way it should be told, you need to invite me to your school, library, or wherever a group of children gathers who want to be told a good tale.

PS  When Spider and the Honey Tree is available for ordering, I'll add the link to that.

I know that I am not a marketer and I have no networking skills.  Those are not my gifts.  I have an abundance of talent to work with people of all abilities and in any language, but I still struggle to get the word out about my community work.  How is it possible that I've connected to make 65 murals?  It's one of life's miracles.

A Little Unexpected Networking   So, in spite of my lack of marketing gifts, a little networking was done for me. After I finished my last mural with special needs young adults, my mural was shown to a woman who could possibly be interested in what I do.  And, she was interested!  When she contacted me, I learned that she worked with 87 charter schools in Ohio -- AND SHE LOVES WHAT I DO!  Research shows that when students take pride in their schools, they also are better behaved.  Of course, ownership in a Mural Man mural helps to build that kind of desired pride.  It's a win-win all over the place.

CBAN   Connections with ACCEL Schools were made for my first mural at the Columbus Bilingual Academy North (called CBAN for short), just about fifteen minutes from where I live.  It was a delightful school!  I painted in the building that housed grades two through eight.  Student participants were from all across Latin America.  Their level of English varied from totally bilingual, to beginning levels of English, to no English at all, yet!  So, I had to rely on my very pathetic Spanish speaking skills once again.  Of course, I'm delighted that I can communicate at all in a second language.  I know the truth that my Spanish is close to pathetic.  However, nobody laughed even once.  Nobody mocked my Gringo accent.  We had a wonderful time -- en español !   It was so amazing to have this kind of experience so very close to my home.

As always, I requested input from people at the school for the design of the mural.  The first requirement was the inclusion of the school mission statement.  It's a good thing that I really enjoy lettering.   In my initial discussion with the principal and a few others, we thought that illustrating the letters CBAN would do well to contain several of the ideas that they wanted incorporated.

In the Letter C, I included lots of faces of children of different ages and skin tones.  It was the only location to place my very identifiable style of cartooning in the project.  Letter B was filled up with flags across Latin America. It might look like a rather simple design, but several of those flags had national crests and symbols that took an enormous amount of time.  Letter A was filled with a map of Central and South America.  I love maps as much as I love lettering, so this was especially fun to create.  And, finally, the Letter N was filled with the school mascot, a panther.

Now, if you are familiar with my murals, you know that I like to hide the current number somewhere in the mural.  It was not easy to find a place for that 65.  It couldn't easily go on a flag.  There didn't appear to be a way to hide it in the map.  The panther design was elegantly simple.  So, I had to hide it somewhere within my cartoon characters. Of course, I was up for the challenge.  If you look closely, the girl on the lower right side is wearing a colorful band to create her ponytail.  If you look even closer, the number 65 is hidden within the design for that band.  Whew!

​Never Too Old to Learn    I am always up for learning new things when I create my murals.  Early on, with mural 4 in Romania, one of my hosts asked me why I drew my grid on the wall with a yardstick and pencil when I could have used a chalk line.  Why had that never occurred to me?  Of course, I have done that ever since.  No brainer! So much later, with mural 46 in Moldova, my artist/interpreter asked why I drew the design on the wall with a pencil instead of a graphite pencil.  (In case you don't know, you have to sharpen a regular pencil about every thirty seconds when you draw on a wall.  A graphite pencil is best described as a crayon made of pure graphite.  You never have to sharpen it.  You can just draw, and draw, and design a mural to your heart's content.)  It was another wonderful addition to my muraling skills.

My Favorite Store    But, I learned two new things on Mural 65, and they both happened at my favorite store in the world.  I love the Sherwin Williams paint store near my home!  It's like shopping at "Cheers".  All the employees know me by name.  They love my murals.  A poster advertising my murals in on permanent display in the store!   And, someday, I'm going to paint with them.

For this mural, I spoke with main sales representative about the actual wall at the school.  The area had a design with the top half of the wall painted white and the bottom half a deep chocolate.  They were separated by a thick red line.  He asked if I was going to sand the wall to get rid of any unwanted texture.  That had never occurred to me before.  Why not?  I have no answer.  But, I would have just painted over it and hoped that all the layers of paint would cover the lines.  I'm happy to say that the sander worked wonders and I will always be reminded of Sherwin Williams every time I do this.

However, there was a second thing to learn for this mural thanks to the people at my favorite store.  If you paint a mural, you may notice that red is a difficult color to paint.  I painted the red banner that contained the mission statement for the school four times!  It still didn't look good.  My sales representative said I really wasn't using the right product this time, but it was too late to change at this point.  He told me to put tape around the edges and then apply the paint with a roller.  A roller would apply a thicker coat of paint and solve the problem.

Then, he gave me a free gallon or red paint!

So, you see why I love going to that store!  And, the roller worked so well that I taped around every bit of red on the mural and rolled over each part.  It required an extra day of work, but the results were amazing.  I will have to do this for each mural from now on.  Hopefully, I'll be remembering Sherwin Williams for a whole lot more murals in the near future.  And, very hopefully, a lot of them will be for ACCEL Schools across Ohio.