Old School, New Buildings

Kyle and I took a weekend trip in 2005 to the north coast of California. I wanted to show him some of my favorite places from my old hometown.

One of those places is Margaret Keating Grade School, which is named after my sister Deirdre’s God-mother.

There we found that two full-scale Yurok buildings had been built-in the field across from the school and still on school grounds. One is a traditional sweat lodge, the other a multi-family home.

As a kid, Sandy Sanderson used to take me up the hill to the old sweat lodge somewhere below the Requa Air Force Station. There, he’d let me participate in the ceremonial practice of sweating, then heading to the Klamath River in order to cool off.

As Kyle and I explored the two structures, it made me wish they had been there back when I was kid going to school.