The Big Breakup!

We finally had Spring Breakup in Alakanuk--our tiny village on the banks of the Yukon River. We knew it was coming, because we got a play-by-play account of Breakup on the River. It was like having a town crier. “One o’clock and all is well...Two o’clock and all is well...Three o’clock and all is well...” You get the picture. But instead, our cry went like this: “The ice has moved in Tanana...The ice has moved in Klulato...The ice has moved in Kaltag...in Anviko...in Russian Mission...Pilot Station...Mountain Village...” And finally, it “moved” in Alakanuk.

I wasn’t sure what “moving” meant or why it was such a big deal--until I saw it. What a sight! All I could do was gawk. Spring Breakup truly is spectacular! I’ve never seen anything like it in my life!

One day, we were standing on the banks of the Yukon, looking across the 300 feet or so of flat, frozen river. The ice right at the shore had melted, so there was running water on the sandbar. But the rest of the three-football-fields distance was smooth ice.

The very next day, we heard the cry. “The ice has moved!”

We ran down to the Yukon and into a dream. It was magic! Mountain ranges of broken ice now stood where just a few hours before, all had been smooth and quiet. Chunks as big as semi-trucks were jammed up and reaching to the sky. It was magnificent. The power of nature is stunning.

I can’t begin to describe the immensity of this power. Even pictures can’t portray the force of nature. But it will give a small idea...kind of like a miniature replica of the Taj Mahal. So here we go:

This is a picture of Spring Breakup on the Yukon River near the Alakanuk dock. It is taken around midnight...with no flash. I love the 24-hour sun!

For a video of the breakup, go to
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49PY9bWSJ_U
This is a little long (about 3 minutes), and I actually do a lot of babbling and repeating and stumbling over my words...because I am so “WOW”ed by what I see.

My personal favorite is this video where Taco gets “up close and personal” with the Yukon. I couldn't stop laughing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOqb1w7QyIM&feature=related

Sentry Duty

Every year at Spring Breakup, there is the constant concern of flooding--especially for villages downriver. And Alakanuk is about as far downriver as you can get. The reason this makes such a difference is that you are not only dealing with your own ice, but you get everyone else’s ice too. So it can cause quite a jam.

But people prepare. Families with boats drag them up to the house and tie them there. That way, the women and kids can just climb into the boat if they needed to evacuate to higher ground.

The other day, Rod, a friend of our boys, was over. He’s a cute, energetic kid who makes me laugh. But that day, he was exhausted. He said he’d been up all night standing sentry duty. That meant flood watch. He was to watch the water level and warn others if the river started flooding so they could all get to higher ground. But I didn’t know which spot he had been watching...the Yukon River or the Alakanuk slough or channel...at the dock or further down...was he on duty for the town, or just their house...

So I asked, “What were you standing duty for?”

He grinned and belted out, “For the s’mores!” (You know...those gooey-chocolate-marshmallow-graham-cracker-delights that every kid loves.)

Sentries get a camp fire and all the s’mores they can eat. And apparently the bribery works...the guys suddenly become cooperative and are actually willing to stay up all night and watch the ice melt. Sounds about as exciting as watching paint dry--except that paint doesn't threaten to flood you out of house and home.

Teenage boys the world over have a great perspective on life. “Forget about danger--just feed me s’mores!”

Q & A part 2

I received an email (Question #4) asking, “What exactly is ‘breaking through’?” (see The Adaptable Brain)

It’s really quite simple. “Breaking through” is exactly that--breaking through the ice.

In The Adaptable Brain, Keri and Taco and I were riding the snow machine down the Yukon River. It had been warmer weather, and the snow had turned slushy--and yet we were barreling down the Yukon River on a huge, heavy piece of machinery. I didn’t trust the ice. I leaned forward and said in Taco’s ear, “If we break through, you push off and roll away and don’t stop--no matter what.”

There is good reason for those instructions. Every year, people push the limits and get on the ice too early (before it has frozen thick enough) or stay on too late (long after it has started to melt). And every year, someone falls through the ice...and oftentimes drowns or simply disappears.

Last year (maybe the year before), we lost a recently retired school board member who was driving his snow-go down the river with his young grandson, when he suddenly broke through. His grandson was sitting in front, and the old man grabbed the boy and threw him towards the bank. But the man couldn’t save himself. The boy survived, but his grandfather drowned.

In school, the kids have to sit through a survival safety course every year. One of the things they are taught is when walking on the ice, carry a big stick and hold it sideways. That way, if you fall through the ice, the stick will hopefully stop you from going all the way under, and you can use it to crawl back out. The trick is to not let go of the stick. The guy I heard lecturing said that the first time he broke through ice, he immediately let go of his stick so he could try to catch himself with his hands. Reflexes tend to take over, and they aren’t always right.

If you break through while riding on the river, you are to push off, try to land sideways, and roll away from the hole. Don’t get up and run--just roll. Your weight is distributed farther, and there is less chance of breaking through again. That is what I was telling Taco to do if we should break through.

We had just spent an hour or so digging our snow machine out of slushy snow. And I just wanted to make sure he knew what to do if we ended up breaking through the ice underneath.

Life in the tundra...on the banks of the Yukon River...just below the Arctic Circle...can get crazy at times.

Q & A

There have been a few questions sent my way that I’ve been wanting to answer. Things have been insanely busy lately so I haven’t had a moment to spare, but we have a lull for a few days, so I’m finally able to get to them.

Basically, the questions are:

1. How the blazes do we get big things like snowmobiles and four wheelers into the village?
2. And what about flammable stuff like gasoline?
3. How do the locals afford such things?
4. What does it mean to “break through”? (See The Adaptable Brain) Because the answer to question 1 got kind of lengthy, question 4 will be answered in my next entry (hopefully tomorrow).

QUESTION #1

In the bush, travel, and even something as simple as mailing a letter, can be tricky. Getting something like a snowmobile, four-wheeler, refrigerator, or a piece of furniture to a village can be really tricky.

The easiest and most fun way to get a snowmobile is to buy one from a nearby village. (“Nearby” translates to anywhere than can be reached within a day’s snow machine ride.) That way, all you have to do is find a buddy with cabin fever, stock up on supplies, jump on the back of his snow machine, and off you go. Road trip! Just don’t forget the most important thing to take (besides extra gas)--a GPS locater. When you get away from the villages, it is very easy to get completely turned around. If it weren’t for our GPS, Keri would still be wandering around in the tundra somewhere. And it doesn’t just happen to us white guys. It’s no coincidence that Alakanuk means “Wrong Way” in Yup’ik.

Once you finally get to where your new machine is, you’ll probably have to spend the night. Since there is no such thing as a motel in the villages, you can usually arrange to stay at the school. Just throw your sleeping bag on the floor, and snooze. Ya right. Good luck with that. School floors are not built with comfort in mind.

After a long sleepless night, you crawl out of your bag, all bleary-eyed...and you and your buddy, who is no longer cabin crazy, just sleep-deprived and swearing to never do this again, climb on your machines for the long ride home. But this time you are driving your very own snowmobile!

“But,” you ask yourself, “how the blazes do the snow machines, four-wheelers, refrigerators, pieces of furniture get to the villages in the first place?!” That is an excellent question, and the answer is simple: magic. That’s what it seems like anyway.

I’ve been told that sometimes stuff is brought to the village by barge, but I haven’t actually seen it happen. The barge simply waits...and waits...and waits for spring thaw. Then they wait for all the ice to clear out of the rivers. THEN they can make the trip to the Bering Sea and up the Yukon...Kuskokwim...Kobuk...Rivers to the villages.

But most of the big stuff is flown in from Anchorage--and that’s harder than it sounds. In most villages (including ours), the airstrip is too short to handle anything but small bush planes—and those planes are too small to carry anything big. So, the snow machine, four-wheeler, refrigerator, piece of furniture...is flown into a hub. These hubs are villages with a longer airstrip, and most of them even a shack for people to wait in until their plane comes. They are quite high tech there—they even have a bathroom and coffee maker. (All we have in our village is a short strip of gravel. You just hang out on the side of the airstrip, waiting for the plane to show. Although, since they give you a personal call to let you know they’re on their way, the wait is usually pretty short. But more on that later.) We are lucky, because our hub is Emmonak (usually called plain Emmo with long E and O sounds)--and it’s only 20 minutes away from Alakanuk.

So--for us, the big ticket item is flown into Emmo and then picked up from there. If it’s during the summer, one of the locals takes their boat up the Yukon to Emmo, picks it up and brings it back to the Alakanuk dock. If it’s winter, then a truck drives up the Yukon River, which is now an ice highway, to pick up the item and bring it back to the village.

QUESTION #2

As for gasoline, I am told that it is brought in by barge during the summer months. The village stocks up on enough gas to last through the coming winter. Since there are very few cars or trucks around here, most of what is driven is snow machines or four wheelers. These machines tend to get better gas mileage than most other vehicles, so the gas goes farther. And another thing is that most of the driving is done close to home. Back in California, my husband used to drive about 50 miles to work each day. Here, a trip that long takes detailed planning and provisions--so there isn’t an awful lot of gas being used.

About three years ago, a neighboring village didn’t get their final gasoline order in on time, so they didn’t receive their last shipment. They were running out of gas by the time the winter was half over. The media got wind of it, and the whole thing became a circus. By the time it was over, some rich guy had shipped in a bunch of gas to Anchorage and then had it flown out to the village by bush plane. But usually, it’s just brought in by barge.

QUESTION #3

As for how the locals afford such “luxury” items as snow machines, four wheelers, and boats, first of all…these items are not luxuries; they are essential to survival. It’s not like most of the world where such things are used for recreation. Here, they are the only mode of local transportation. They are used to travel to other villages, to go hunting with, etc. Basically, snow machines, four wheelers, and boats have taken the place of the dog sled and are used in the way that other places use cars and trucks.

When it comes to affording it, that is a mystery--until you figure out the local economy. Much of the bush population lives by subsistence. That means they “live off the land” through hunting, fishing, berry picking, and so forth. They don’t have to pay much, if anything, for their housing or utilities. Some people have jobs (mostly with the schools), but most of them are on welfare. Plus, they all receive their annual PFD, or Permanent Fund Dividend; this is a lump sum that every Alaskan receives each year. It is usually $1000 to $2000 per person--but if you consider a family with 5 or 6 kids, that adds up to a lot of money. There are also cottage industries that go on too. People sell everything from jewelry to home brew (also called moonshine).

Question #4 will be answered next. (hopefully tomorrow)

The Cat's Meow

The other day, we went for a six-mile jog /walk/crawl. Keri and Taco were fine—I was the one who could hardly move by the time we got back. Because I didn’t want to get my good shoes all muddy, I'd worn my old ”piece of junk” pair—also called a “ten minutes in these things and my feet are screaming” pair. By the time we got back home, my feet were doing just that--screaming. The next morning, my feet still ached, my ankles were stiff, and I had blisters. My entire body joined in on the “woe is me” chorus. Every muscle in my body was quite annoyed with me and let me know about it whenever I so much as moved.

But the shoe-fiasco aside, we had a WONDERFUL time on our walk. The birds were out in force. We saw Canadian geese and trumpet swans flying overhead. I love watching the swans. They remind me of giraffe--a picture of grace and beauty in what looks like a disproportioned body. There was also a sandpiper near the road, as well as a slew of other birds flitting around the trees. What with all the honks and chirps and tweedles and twaddles and twitters, we’ve got a perpetual orchestra going on around these parts. They don’t even slow down at night--maybe because the sky never gets black, but it just gets darker blue like denim, so they don’t realize they are supposed to sleep. I love it!

But there are some animals that are never seen here--and I’m not talking about the obvious tropical variety. I’m talking about basic things--like snakes. Snakes just don’t exist in Alaska. In fact, no reptiles do. That is something I look at as being a big plus. It almost makes up for the frigid weather.

Trying to describe a snake to the locals is a real challenge, because there is no frame of reference. You can’t say, “it feels like...” or “it looks like...” or even “it sounds like...” There is nothing in their world that is remotely similar to a snake.

Another thing that can’t be found--at least out in the bush--is the good-old-fashioned housecat. They are unheard of. A while back, during basketball practice, a crowd gathered on the steps at the side of the gym. (Our bleachers here consist of three wall-to-wall steps leading down onto the gym floor.) The group was all excited about something, so Taco went over to check it out. There, in the middle of the ruckus was a visitor from Anchorage, holding a Siamese cat. The kids had never seen anything like it. They were all talking at once.

“It must be a small dog!” “Then why does it look so funny?” “It doesn’t sound like a dog.” “Why does it have such a long tail?” “What is it? What is it?” “Can you eat it?”...

One of the kids made the mistake of trying to touch the thing but ended up kind of bonking it on the head, and the cat struck out at him in true Siamese fashion. The visitor just grinned.

Taco watched for a moment and said, “It’s a cat.”

Immediately, there was a flurry of questions. “What’s a cat?” “How do you know? Have you ever seen one before?” “Why does it sound so funny?” “Why is it so mean?”

Taco tried to explain about cats, but it just brought up more questions.

Finally he said, “A cat is like a really small lynx that you keep as a pet.”

There was a chorus of “Awwww!” with grins and head nods.

THAT was something they understood.

The Big Breakup

I received an email from Donnette with the Ice Classic, correcting some small details of the ice tower breakup, and providing me with more information. So I have corrected and added to my previous posting. This is the revised version:

There’s a lot of excitement around these parts. Everyone is focused on the big breakup. No, I’m not talking about some tabloid celebrity split—I’m talking about ice.

Every year, the rivers break up. And every year, bookies prosper. The most publicized breakup is the ice tower on the Tanana River just upstream of where the Nenana River flows into it. People come out in droves to bet on the exact day and time that patch of ice will break up. This year, the betting pool reached $338,062.00, and there were 22 winners. Even divided 22 ways, that’s a lot of money.

A watchtower has been built at that spot. Every year, a large tripod is assembled on the ice, mounted in trenches cut about 24 inches into the ice. A cable is strung from the ice-bound tripod to a clock set in the watchtower. This tower is guarded by watchmen 24/7. When the ice breaks up it moves downstream, taking the tripod with it. Once the tripod has traveled 100 feet downriver, the cable connecting the tripod and the clock pulls out of the clock, thereby stopping the clock. That marks the exact moment of breakup. They even have an official website for this important event. It is http://www.nenanaakiceclassic.com/

Donnette (of the Ice Classic) describes the breakup as “a spectacular event.” Of course, it’s a welcome site because “it’s the sign that Spring is here.”

Where the Nenana and Tanana Rivers meet is not too far from Fairbanks; the Tanana then flows into the Yukon River and eventually out to the Bering Sea—and it passes a lot of villages along the way, including ours. I’m not sure why the Nenana/Tanana intersection is considered the magic spot, but it is. What happens there is somehow used to predict what will happen across the rest of the state.

When breakup happens, the ice cracks, splits, starts floating down current, and gets jammed up which forms a dam and backs up the river, causing serious flooding. This breakup and flooding happens every year, but some years are worse than others. About a week ago, a village by the name of Crooked Creek on the Kuskokwim River was wiped out. The river flooded so quickly that the residents didn’t have time to grab much of anything. They just ran, or climbed onto their roofs. The State Troopers had to go in by boat to evacuate the residents. A friend of ours was one of the rescuers.

You might ask why people live in a place where they are faced with seasonal natural disaster year after year. I think I understand. For 14 years, we raised our family in a small mountain town in southern California that was threatened by wildfire every summer—but we never considered moving. We stayed because it was our home. That’s the same reason people choose to stay in Tornado Alley and rebuild after being wiped out by a giant whirlwind. It is their home. Well, here in the land of the frozen, villages get flooded out every spring. California has fire season, the south has tornado season, and the bush of Alaska has flood season. But if a village is wiped out, people choose to stay and rebuild. This is where their friends and family are. This place is familiar. This is their home.

Here are some pictures borrowed from the above-mentioned website. You should check it out--it's an interesting read.

Building the tripod. This is out in the middle of the river. Notice the deep trenches they are putting it in--and the car parked on the ice.

This is no small tripod.

The beginning of the breakup

More breakup

Prom Night

We went to Prom on Saturday night—all three of us. So Taco has now been to his first dance, where he sat around with his parents and ate cheese chunks, olives, and baby carrots for dinner. I think there was a fruit platter, but that vanished almost the moment it was set out.

The Alakanuk Prom is definitely different than any I’ve been to—and I’ve attended a few. (I’ve gone to several with Keri to help chaperone.) I think there were more adults than kids there (not much to do around these parts, so everyone turns out).

And around here, “anything goes” in the wardrobe department. The kids were dressed in everything from sweatpants to scruffy jeans and t-shirts to full-blown formals. I fit right in. I wore a fancy beaded top with a pretty black skirt. And to complete the outfit, I decked my feet out in hiking boots. But at least I scraped the mud off and wiped them with a washcloth first. They had won out over the other options—snow boots, white runners, or big rubber farmer boots.

During the evening, there was the traditional announcement of Prom King and Queen, as well as the Junior Prince & Princess. The Prince & Princess were siblings, and their dance together was hilarious. They stayed about as far away from each other as they could and robot-stepped around the room.

The decorations were cute, the music was not bad, and I got to dance with my husband. It was a fun evening.

Next year, I think I’ll buy something special to wear to the Prom. Like black runners—and maybe even some sparkly shoelaces.

Our Junior Prince & Princess.

A group of kids dancing the Macarena—wearing anything from jeans to formal dress. The girl on the right is wearing a quspuk (a traditional Yup’ik top). Just off camera is someone in sweatpants.

Spring Has Sprung!

Change is a-happenin’ up this way. Spring has Sprung!

The sun is back! During the winter, it would hardly show itself. Now it doesn’t leave. The other day, I got really sick, and was up all night--literally. I can now report that the sun pretends to go down about 1 AM--but the sky doesn’t actually get dark. By 4:30 AM the sun is on its way up again. I like this MUCH better than the winter when we hardly got any daylight at all. But it does reek havoc with the internal clock. Our poor bodies don’t know when it’s time for bed. I lay there at night, staring out at the still partially-lit sky, and wonder why I’m in bed when it’s not dark out yet. When I was a kid, I would fight going to sleep when it’s still light outside--and I still do. Some things never change.

And along with long daylight, we have warmer temperatures. It has been in the mid 30s every day for a couple weeks now. That means that the snow is beginning to melt—a lot. Instead of mounds of snow in the road, we now have mud and lakes. Snow boots have been traded in for big old rubber boots. We look like farmers. We’ve even been able to shovel off the boardwalk that goes around the teacher’s housing. Yay!!

This is the boardwalk that runs past our front door. The picture was taken at almost 10:00 at night--without a flash.

One good thing that goes along with mud instead of snow is that we don’t hear the roar of snow machines round the clock. During snow season, the kids would be out there doing the Alakanuk equivalent of “dragging Main Street” all night. And I mean all night. But it’s like living next door to a train station or airport. After a while, you just tune it out—kind of. But with no snow for the kids to race around on, the nights have become much quieter. It’s sssooooooooooo nice!

But from what I hear, this is really just a hiatus. As soon as the lakes dry up, the kids will “drag Main” with their four-wheelers--all night. But the lakes won’t dry up for a while, because the river has to flood first. So this town has about two months of peaceful slumber. Then--watch out!

And with the change of seasons, the geese are returning! So now we hear the bellowing of moose and the honking of geese. I love it!

Buds are popping. Before long, we may even have some green leaves around here…and then wild flowers. I can’t wait!

We are celebrating!

Yup—Spring has Sprung!

This is the view from our back door right now. Notice the reflections of the buildings in our newly-formed lake.