alighting in arctic village

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.