DARRINGTON — The only sounds in the Sauk-Suiattle Tribal Cemetery are the wind in the surrounding woods and the river rushing down the valley from the Glacier Peak Wilderness.
It’s a sacred spot known to few outside Darrington.
Tribal member Kevin Lenon calls it the place where the people go on their journey home.
“Many of our people are scattered to the wind,” Lenon said. “But they end up here for their final canoe ride.”
Bringing his woodworking and carving tools, Lenon has come to the cemetery to honor those who return.
Lenon, 46, knows about being scattered. His mother is Sauk- Suiattle and his father is an Irishman from Alaska. He grew up in Lake Stevens, reared by his dad’s folks.
In elementary school, his grandmother encouraged his artistic bent by taking him along to her ceramics class. He excelled in wood shop at Lake Stevens High School and was inspired by woodworkers and log-home builders.
The connection with his tribe didn’t fully develop until he was a young man and interested in carving wood in the Northwest Indian tradition.
Wanting to know more about his Sauk-Suiattle heritage, he heard about a house for sale near the tribe’s small reservation just north of Darrington.
“I couldn’t find the place, but I picked up a hitchhiker. He turned out to be my cousin Elroy George,” Lenon said. “He told me, ‘This is your tribe, man. Go to the tribal office, get registered and there’s a house on the rez you can move into next week.’ So that’s what I did.”
While the Sauk-Suiattle people numbered around 4,000 in the mid-1800s, by the early 1920s the tribe had dwindled.
“The culture of carving was totally gone, so perhaps I come by it naturally. There have been times when I have felt a hand guiding me as I work,” Lenon said. “Somebody needed to carve. I decided to try because I figured whatever didn’t turn out could always be burned for firewood.”
Lenon made fast friends with his cousins, who told him stories of his grandfather and the canoes their ancestors carved in the forests near the cemetery. Lenon carries with him photos taken in the late 1890s of people in canoes on the Sauk River. They paddled downstream, then used poles to pull themselves back upriver.
Lenon got help and encouragement for his art from retired Darrington high school art teacher Marvin Kastning and other mentors. Much of it was given away to family members, but for a time, Lenon sold his work to art collectors and other tribes throughout the Salish Sea region.
A totemlike sculpture by Lenon stands in the middle of the Sauk-Suiattle cemetery. It’s a memorial to his cousin and friend, Simon George, who died in 1997.
“He always asked me what I was going to do with it, so after he died, I brought it here for him.”
At some point, the responsibilities of life took over and Lenon found a drywall job to help pay the bills. The father of fraternal twins Tim and David, now age 23, Lenon had to stop carving to keep his household going.
Then last year, after hearing a tribal elder speak sadly about the disrepair at the cemetery, Lenon adopted the spot as his special project and moved his carving tools out of storage.
Lenon, who once worked as a river guide, is the water rescue expert and a volunteer firefighter for Fire District 24 of Darrington. He also works in the Sauk-Suiattle natural resources department.
Occasionally he has down time to work on carving a new gate for the old cemetery. An arched piece of wood found by Lenon’s fiance will be held up on each side by long canoe paddles that surround whale and canoe figures.
“I am trying to follow the realistic work found in Salish art forms,” Lenon said. “The Coast Salish people didn’t make totem poles.”
Last summer Lenon built a canoe-themed frame for the old U.S. Forest Service sign at the cemetery and, with the help of Sean Watene and tribal youth, built a new cedar-pole fence around the perimeter of the 150-foot-by-100-foot cemetery, which is located on about 3 acres in the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest.
Along with the fence, the sign and the gate, Lenon plans to reroof the shelter used by tribal elders during funerals and their visits to the grave sites. He is splitting thick cedar shakes for the roof that will cover a bench and fire pit.
“Kevin is a real artist with wood,” tribal watershed manager Scott Morris said. “I’m glad he got the go-ahead from the tribe to do this.”
Lenon plans to have all the work done by Memorial Day.
At the cemetery on a recent sunny afternoon, Lenon gazed across the graves, some decorated with faded silk flowers.
The crisp air at this elevation is sweetened in spring by budding red alders and fresh growth on the white pines, hemlocks, cedars and Douglas firs that surround the tribe’s cemetery.
“My work here is my way to pay tribute to our ancestors and honor those who have gone on,” he said. “It’s a beautiful place.”
Gale Fiege: 425-339-3427; gfiege@heraldnet.com.
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