July 2006 Archives
After we arrived all the way in the park at Wonderlake, we took a quick stroll down to the lake. 280 feet deep in the middle it was one long, clear piece of water. This little bird and his buddy were catching some dinner-bugs at the shore.
These monstrous insects were hard to avoid, and had me in hysterics at least twice, once at mile 9 of an 18 mile bike trip, which made Keith a bit nervous I was gonna run off the cliff. One slap to the back of my head killed five bloody ones at once. But, thanks to some clutch headnets we purchsed in Fairbanks, we all made it out with most of our body parts.
Falling asleep to a loud orchestra of mosquitos is no less than creepy-crawly.
We were sure to put all our Hutchinsons in a row at least once.
At fifty miles distance, if you measure the distance between the observer and the fingers, and the distance between the fingers, and the angle from the lower fingers to the upper fingers as observed by the observer...
Well, one hell of a mountain.
Coming around a corner on the camp bus Denali offered himself to us, top to bottom, a rare occurance in the summer. A good opportunity for photos of the 20,000+ foot mountain. Little did we know we'd get better views from inside our tents at Wonderlake.
The area used to be full of these Dall sheep, until they were hunted down. Now though, we were able to glimpse quite a few, older ones relaxing like these, and young little guys sprinting around on the mountainsides.
We headed into the park on Saturday morning, following my parents' sweet ride. There we parked and boarded a park camp bus with far too much stuff in tow. We bounced over gravel spotting wildlife left and right for the next six hours.
The airstrip is a solid mile down a dusty gravel road from our house. On June 9th we were to start our vacation, bringing out two foldable kayaks, two lifepreservers, clothes for 10 days, a tent, two sleeping bags, two thermarests and a bag of dryfish.
Keith whispered me awake around 7am. "Eliza our flight is at 9. We have to be there by 8:30. We have to make two trips each to carry all of our stuff. Each trip is twenty minutes. We begin the last trip out at 8:10, which means we started back from the first trip at 7:50. Which means we have to start the first trip at 7:30. Eliza, its 7:12, neither of us has had showers. And we're not done packing."
I couldn't really follow it either. But we didn't have time.
I jumped in the shower, Keith had some oatmeal and started off with a load.
I started off behind him with my two trips worth in my hands. As I reached the straight away I watched Keith jumping up in a truck, getting a ride. It wasn't long after I scored a ride myself.
It was 8am, three quarters of our bags were sitting on the airstrip. Keith ran on ahead of me and I followed him home to help with the last load.
As I turned into our circle Keith was striding out to meet me.
"You got the keys?"
Its our little game. Our little game, right Keith?
This however was not our game just like that time in the middle of the Cascades.
Nope, no keys. Locked out of the house its 8:20, our plane leaves at 9, we are twenty minutes from the airport and our bags are locked in the house.
A quick pow-wow and we were off to the clinic where our landlord works. The sign says clinic hours are 9:30-4. Luckily we find everyone in.
Unluckily, our landlord doesn't have our keys on her, nor does she have a ride. Her house is a half hour walk in the other direction.
On the flip side, it seems pretty much everyone in town has keys to our house. When we called a local fix-it man a while back to fix our furnace, Keith asked if he should leave the house unlocked. "Do you have to?" the old man asked. Keith offered to leave the keys outside somewhere. "Why, have you changed the locks?" Turns out this guy has keys to our house.
And he was up at 8:20 on June 10th, when Keith called pleadingly.
The guy came through and even brought Keith back to the airport. In time to wait twenty minutes for the plane.
Budding migraines in tow we got into Fairbanks and after a quick round of shopping. (Nothing like a espresso and a CD spree after a few months in the bush.) We jumped in the car and headed South to meet my parents.
On the way there we paused for some scenic overlooking and Keith balanced his chi out on a cliff over the Nenana river.
(Another way to start your vacation is to get stranded in Boston, when your flight is canceled, arrive in Anchorage a full twenty four hours late, and not get your baggage until three days later, when a courier knocks on your motorhome at two-thirty in the morning. My parents gave that way a test run, and don't recommend it.)
Mildred took me to the village glacier, where her husband had recently improved a trail. Folks like to go out there to picnic. Its a river bend where for some reason the ice lasts deep and well into the summer. This Mildred is one mighty woman. Worked with five children for me, taught the preschool and over the summer, oversees a bunch of teens digging up a mountain. Doesn't ever seem to stop working. And this winter she went to a Aerosmith concert in Vegas, of course.
Here is Arctic Village second-chief, a mother in our program, and her kids as they pile on the fourwheeler to cart home the toys and books they got at our cookout. Later I stopped by their house. Lots of fry-meat (caribou) on the stove. Big TV, toys, and little babes napping.
After we hosted the Early Head Start celebration cookout, Mildred went back to her summer job leading teens on a Youth Conservation Corp project. She has them clearing trail up the "mountain." Though on this day she had them in town helping at the cookout and kept them there in the afternoon moving books to setup a village library. She sent me off with her co-worker Joel, born and raised in Arctic Village. He works for Fish and Wildlife sometimes, and helps lead the teens in the summer.
We jumped on the YCC rented fourwheeler and headed straight up the "mountain." There were mountains all around, but I would have called this a hill, but they laughed at how the flatlanders from Fort Yukon call it a hill. In any case it was quite steep.
"When it flips jump off to that side. Don't worry about me, I'm expendable." Joel told me at one point. I was poised. But we stayed upright, if only barely.
We made it up to the ridge, and Joel had his rifle out. Everyone in this country has them when they go any distance from town, for bears. I have yet to see one. As we crossed the ridge he explained that this is where his people come hunting, and during migration there are hundreds of Caribou spread across the high tundra. He was ready for any stragglers, and we passed another man out on his fourwheeler with his rifle.
He wanted me to take a picture. "People think I look like a real Gwichiin."
On the way down he told me stories. There are bush people still living out in the land, and they never come to town, but they are there. Once they captured a guy from Fort Yukon, and took him to a cave where they were living, but they let him go, but told him they'd kill him if they told anyone where they were. They'll be able to survive anything that happens cause they still live out on the land. Even Arctic depends on flights, and when 9/11 happened no planes came for over a week. No milk, no eggs, no potatoes, no oil, no gas. No electricity after a while. And it could happen worse. The elders are saying something bad is going to happen and so everyone should be saving things and getting ready for hardtimes. People are listening to the elders.
And over North of the village there is a very high mountain where the Shaman from old times is. And if you go up there, but people are scared to now, but if you did you'd find his beads and magical things.
Nestled into the Brooks Range a hundred miles North of Fort Yukon, lies the northern most US Gwichiin village, Arctic Village. Our Early Head Start program's most beloved home visitor has been teaching preschool here for a decade. I packed a bunch of burgers and fruit and headed up at the beginning of June for a celebration cook-out. Arctic Village, with only one or two flights in a day gets markedly less produce than Fort Yukon.
It was a great visit to a place that looks worlds different from our "flat-land" Gwichiin settlement. It's different land and weather up there. Plenty of snow left in June, little pockets of ponds and lakes, mountains on both sides. the low Chandalar River creeps up the valley and on the other side lies the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Its truly beautiful country.
One local man, who treated me to a tour on a four wheeler straight up a nearby mountain, explained that he kind of thought that maybe the poles had reversed somewhere along the way of history, and maybe his valley right there was the Garden of Eden. It really wasn't so hard to imagine.
