Crazy Summer & Other Stuff

Time for an update on life. We may not be in Alaska right now, but there is a lot going on.

Spring has sprung in Alakanuk. There is still snow and ice everywhere, but the buds have popped. Keri did his last rabbit hunt of the season. (The picture of Keri is when I went with him to check traps shortly before the boys and I left.) Tanner and Taco (Jeremy) and I made it down to Utah. (We were locked into our flights before Rachelle got her second extension to stay in France. So we came down anyway.) I was REALLY sick with a bad cough, but I’m getting better now.

Our summer vacation is going to be insane! It is a very busy time, with a lot of traveling. I feel like a person who has been thirsty for a long time, and then gets hit with a tidal wave. We’ve been in a place inaccessible by road, which limits the ground travel to short snow machine trips. And now it seems like we will be doing nothing but driving.

In the next three months, I will be making about 10 trips to Idaho and back for several track meets, two high school graduations, returning missionary (my sister Rachel’s son), EFY, and best of all, wedding stuff (bridal shower, etc. for Erin, my wonderful daughter-in-law). (I also get to spend time with Rachel and family, and with Erin's family.) We will be driving to Montana for a wedding (another of Rachel’s sons). We will drive to Los Angeles where we will fly out to Costa Rica for 3 ½ weeks; we will drive all over that country. We return to LA and then drive up to northern California to see Keri’s family; then back to southern California for my extended family reunion; and back to Utah. And that is just the highlights. (Keri gets down here June 4th--yay!--so he will be here for a chunk of the driving too.)

I figured out that when you add all the mileage together, I could have driven round-trip from Los Angeles to New York and back, and then started out again, and ended up in the midwest. Yikes. That's a lot of wheel time.

Keri is anxious to get down here with the family. It's hard to be alone where there is very little to do. He's my hero.

On the fun side, I’ve been able to hang around my future daughter-in-law, and I’m crazy about her! The more I’m around her, the more I like her. Just when I think I couldn’t possibly like her more, I do! Erin has a very sweet and kind nature, but is also feisty enough to stand up to Chris. I am quite pleased.

Life is good.

(By the way--have I mentioned lately that Rachelle gets home on May 25th? Ask me how long it will be, and I will tell you exactly. Not that I'm counting.)

The Shuttle Shuffle

The boys and I flew into Anchorage on Friday, and stayed at the Crown Plaza Hotel Friday and Saturday night. Great hotel! Very comfortable beds and friendly staff. I highly recommend them.

Anyway, we checked out Sunday, but our flight didn’t leave until just after midnight; so after we checked out, we hung around the hotel. (They said it was fine.) We had our bags piled on a luggage carrier, which we parked in the lounge—a large room off of the foyer. There were tables and chairs, comfortable couches, a big TV, and a bunch of books. We played cards, read, and basically just lounged around until about 10:30 that night.

The hotel has a free shuttle service to the airport—one of those white vans with a logo on the side. When we rode it to the hotel, the driver was very helpful, loading up our luggage and he was really friendly and chatty. I was headed to the front desk to see when the shuttle would be there, and I saw it pull up in front. So I ran and got the boys. “Hurry!” I said. “It just pulled up!” We grabbed our jackets, my computer, two backpacks, and the luggage carrier that our other bags were piled on, and headed for the door. We were really loaded down.

I waved to the driver as we headed to the back of the van. I was a little surprised that he didn’t come help us load the luggage, but figured he was a “do-it-yourself” type of driver. But the back door wouldn’t open, and he didn’t unlock it when we knocked on the back of the van. I figured he didn’t realize we were going with him, so I walked to the front and opened the passenger door. I said, “Can you open the back? We need to put our luggage in.” He was looking at me like I was nuts. So was the guy who had just climbed in the back. The driver said, “Uh…” and kept looking at me weird. I asked, “Aren’t you going to the airport?” He said, “Uh…no.” That’s when I took a good look at the logo on the side of the van. It said “Salvation Army.” How embarrassing.

Our Trip Home

The boys and I are now in Anchorage.

We left Alakanuk yesterday (Friday, April 10th) about 11:00 and traveled to Emmonak by snow machine. It was a really cold trip. Notice the picture taken from the school deck just before we left (the parking area with frosted trees behind).

The snow machine trip that normally takes 30 minutes took us 40 because we had to go so slowly. Tanner may be staying in the lower 48 for school next year, so we brought all of his stuff, plus what Taco and I will need over the summer. And we had to carry it in the sled behind the snow machine. And of course, there were four of us going, and we can only fit three on the machine. So Keri and Tanner and I rode on the machine, and Taco rode on top of the giant tote in the sled and held on tight. I rode looking back the entire trip. I couldn’t see him, but I could see his shadow. If there was too much bouncing, I would whack Keri on the arm, and he would slow down. I wanted to ride on the sled (because I didn’t want my son back there), but the others shot the idea down fast. The sled was weighed down enough without having me back there. The pictures are of us sitting in the middle of the Yukon River when Keri stopped to tighten Taco’s hood because it kept flying off. And Taco’s jacket isn’t gray—it is covered in snow and ice.

Our flight to Anchorage was awesome. We were in a big plane (see picture of the boys about to board). It had two seats on each side of the aisle instead of just one seat. And it had a stewardess! I’ve never heard of such a thing in the bush! She served juice in BIG cups, and she offered refills. And even better, there was a bathroom! That’s another first. There wasn’t running water in the bathroom, though. Instead, the sink was filled with packets of moist towelettes. But at least there was a working toilet.

And we are now sitting in Anchorage waiting for our flight out at midnight on Sunday night. We are in a nice hotel (thank goodness for Priceline). And Keri said that it’s a good thing we left when we did, because we probably wouldn’t have been able to get out over the weekend. A big storm hit and there’s no sign of it letting up—and nothing flies when the weather is like that.

But we are in warm Anchorage. It is 32 here right now. And it’s supposed to get up to 39. It’s a tropical paradise. So I’m going to go get ready for the day, and we are going to go out and enjoy the heat wave.

Road Trip

We are in a whirlwind of activity, getting ready to leave Alaska for three months. And so I am doing the logical thing. I am sitting down to write. Actually, I have to take a few minutes break, or I will break. And writing is calming for me. Relaxing. Therapeutic. It’s also an avoidance tactic—a great way to procrastinate the unpleasant. Basically, there is so much to do, I don’t know what to do next. And I have a strategy that I firmly stand by. Apparently it’s a popular strategy, because it is used by people the world over—especially politicians. It goes something like this: When you don’t know what to do, do nothing. So I am writing instead.

Keri went on a road trip. Yup. A road trip in an area where there are no roads. Go figure that one out.

He and two of the teachers took their snow machines 215 miles—just for fun. And they had a blast.

They first went to Nunam Iqua, a village about 12 miles southwest. It was so clear, that they could see all the way to the mountains at Scammon Bay, about 60 miles away. They didn’t even have to use the GPS—they just headed straight for the mountains. There was fresh powder on the ground, and Keri said it was like traveling over a field of diamonds. Once they hit Scammon, they headed over the pass, and on to Hooper Bay, about another 45 miles south.

In the Bush, there are no hotels or anything of the kind, so the local schools serve as the accommodation place. And that is where they stayed. They picked up the keys, and ended up sitting around visiting with the principal until after midnight. And once at the school, the three of them stayed up and yakked until almost 3:00 AM.

The next day, they went to Chevak, a village about 20 miles east, then headed north back to Scammon Bay, and then home to Alakanuk. Keri had a blast. He slalomed over open terrain, and even got airborne a couple of times. (I was annoyed about the airborne part—that snow machine costs a fortune—but he said there was so much powder, that it just settled in and kept on going).

When they finally got home, Keri looked like a popsicle—a popsicle that had just come in from playing and having a blast. I’m glad he went.

The downside of the trip was that he made the house reek like gasoline. We couldn’t figure it out. I walked around sniffing everything—his coat, his pack, his boots. I must not be part bloodhound, because I couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. By the next day, we had headaches from the gas smell. We left the windows and outside door open for two days trying to get rid of the stench. (Snow was blowing into the entry, but we were desperate.) We finally found the source. The spare gas can had leaked some gas into a plastic bag that he had put away, and the bag had leaked onto the floor of the entryway. After a lot of scrubbing, the stench finally dissipated.

Thank goodness for Pine Sol.

United in Poor Customer Service

I have done a lot of travelling in my time, and had some frustrating experiences along the way. (My trip to the Philippines was an insane story, but that’s for another time.)

My travel back and forth from Alaska so far has been tiring and adventurous, but positive. When I had to get back to Utah in December, Delta was golden. They went above and beyond to be helpful in getting me home at a moment’s notice. They were accommodating, they were caring, and they were sensitive. They are solidly set on having great customer service.

Then there is the other end of the spectrum. And that is where United Airlines hangs by their fingernails—about as uncooperative and uncaring as a company can get.

When planning our return trip for the boys and myself, I made the mistake of trying to save a few dollars by flying on United. Big mistake! And one that I won’t make again.

I planned our return trip to coincide with Rachelle’s arrival home. Monday morning, we were to take a snow mobile from Alakanuk to Emmonak, and then fly by bush plane to St. Marys and on to Anchorage. Monday night at midnight, we would catch the United flight from Anchorage and eventually end up in Salt Lake, arriving at the Salt Lake airport about 3 hours before Rachelle flew in from France. (We would have been in a total of six airports by the time we arrived.)

Rachelle ended up changing her return trip for six weeks later, so I called to see if I could change our tickets and stay here longer with Keri. Apparently, United outsources their “customer service” (a term used very loosely here) to India. I could hardly understand a word the guy said when he told me that it would cost a total of $450 to change ($150 per ticket). Well, forget that. We’ll just go ahead with our original plans.

Since the trip home is so expensive (you total three tickets, and it really adds up—we are paying for Keri’s in May), I got it in two parts. I paid for the Anchorage to SLC in March, and then went to book the bush part in April. (The bush part is as expensive, or more so than the Anchorage to SLC part.) But when I went to book the bush part of the trip and pulled up our confirmation, I realized to my horror that the flight didn’t leave at midnight on Monday night—it left a few minutes after midnight on Monday morning. That wouldn’t be such a big deal, except that there are no “direct” flights from our part of the bush to Anchorage over the weekend.

So we were left with three alternatives:
1. Take the long way to Anchorage, increasing the total fare by $300
2. Fly into Anchorage on Friday, and pay for a hotel and food for two days, and then “hang out” at the airport all day Sunday
3. Change our flight out of Anchorage for a total penalty fee of $450

I tried a fourth alternative: phone United and plead our case. See if they will work with us. Again, I reached India.

I knew it would take some doing, so I asked for a supervisor right off the bat. When I explained our situation and what I had mistakenly done, the guy actually laughed before he said, “Well, you can change it for $150 fee per ticket.”

Yup. I have definitely learned my lesson. I will NEVER fly United again.

Conference

Wasn’t conference wonderful?!

We were able to listen to all the sessions on the phone. We just called in on our regular line (the one we call in on for church each Sunday). They had us hooked up that way. I even listened to Priesthood Session, since it was on speaker phone in the living room.

The only problem was with the final session. For some reason, we didn’t get hooked up. Ten minutes into the session, it was pretty obvious that something was wrong, not just delayed. So I phoned the Branch President at home. (He lives in Anchorage and was watching conference with his family.) He tried to figure out what was wrong, but finally he just laid his phone in front of his television and we heard it that way. So we missed the first twenty minutes or so. And then it also cut out a few times later, so missed some other stuff—including part of the cow story (the lost calves). We’ll have to read them in the Ensign.

I am SO grateful for modern technology! It allows us to hear and see things going on around the world. I am so glad there are smart people who know how to make it happen.

My Son, the Dork

I am a fraud. I talk tough, but haven’t followed through very well.

Since I was a new mom, I always said that when my kids get into the “marriage” realm, that I won’t try to influence them to marry someone, and I will stay completely neutral until after the wedding. I guess this was an “overboard” reaction to some unhappy marriages I saw around me. There were just too many friends who I heard say something to the effect of, “I knew I was making a mistake, but I figured I had to marry him/her because…” the invitations had been sent out…the money had been spent…(and my favorite doozie)…my family really liked him/her. So I decided early that I wasn’t going to let my kids feel pressure to marry someone. I’ve always reserved the right to try to talk them OUT of something if I thought they were making a mistake—and I have interfered in that area more than once. But I would never try to talk them INTO something. I would be totally neutral through the entire event—right up until the “I do”s were said.

Yup. I talk big.

My oldest son, Chris, recently got engaged to Erin. She is an adorable girl who I only met once last summer during one of his baseball games. They were just dating as friends and there was no indication that they might get married a year later, but she made quite an impression on me. She had her younger sisters there with her simply because they like Chris and had wanted to come along. And she was great with them. She is an open person who is confident enough in herself that she doesn’t have the need to put on a show for others. She is well grounded and has a good head on her shoulders. And what I’ve learned since then is that she has an incredible family. I’m crazy about her mom. How often does that happen? The mother-in-laws well on their way to becoming best friends!

Well, this morning, I missed a call from Chris. He left a monotone voice mail which said, “Mom, call me back. Erin and I just broke up.”

I was stunned! My first thought was, “I wonder if it can be salvaged.”

I couldn’t for the life of me think what would have happened to break up over. They seemed to adore each other. They never argued—Erin wouldn’t put up with it. They seemed to communicate well. And I knew Chris must be devastated. Every day he tells me how much he loves her, how wonderful she is, how cute she looks in pigtails, how he wishes they could just get married NOW.....

I figured whatever the problem, it must be able to be saved. So I called him back to find out what had happened before I phoned Erin’s mom, Carole. Between Carole and me, I was sure we could help our kids through the problem. So much for not wanting to get involved.

When Chris answered, all I could say in my still-shocked emotional state was, “WHAT HAPPENED?!” He sounded devastated, and said, “It was the date.” I couldn’t even think straight. Did they get in a fight on their date last night? Was it a difficult day for Erin and they got in a fight about it? I couldn’t make sense of what he was saying, so I just repeated, “WHAT HAPPENED?!”

That’s when he started to laugh and said, “It’s the date. It’s April first.” Good grief—I’d been April fooled.

Yup. I raised a dork. Now Erin is getting him, so she can deal with it. And I claim no responsibility for his dorkiness.

Rachelle's Mission

As many of you know, our daughter, Rachelle, is serving a church mission in the France, Toulouse mission. Guys who are worthy and able serve for two years; girls who are worthy and want to serve for eighteen months. Rachelle has wanted to serve a mission since she was a very little girl. Her whole life, she has had that as her primary goal.

Rachelle was originally scheduled to come home near the beginning of March. But she requested an extension. Actually, citing injustice to girls, she requested a six-month extension. She was given six-weeks more. So her new return date was April 13th. But she learned that the mission wasn’t going to get another sister missionary until the end of May, which meant they would have to pull the missionaries out in one of the towns and form a threesome. So Rachelle convinced her mission president that it was a “silly” thing to do, when she was more than happy to stay another six weeks. This would allow the “ville” to stay open, and everyone would be much happier. He cleared it with us, and then took it to the Area Presidency for approval. (Missionaries are not permitted more than a single transfer extension, and she would be onto her second transfer.)

I just got an e-mail from him—and she got clearance to stay another six weeks. So she will have served for twenty-one months by the time she is finished—and she is quite happy about that. She cracks me up.

Rabbit Update

I wanted to give everyone a short update on the rabbit situation:

Rabbits like peanut butter! I thought they might.

We didn’t actually catch any with the peanut butter, but they sure ate it up. They just outsmarted the traps. But our hunting crowd (Keri and Larry) figured out a way to outsmart the rabbits. We have now caught a grand total of four. This is a very good thing, because we were quickly running out of meat. And as I think I’ve mentioned, produce is even scarcer. So the rabbit is very much appreciated. (And it’s fun eating with Leigh and Larry. They are a hoot. I cook it up, and they come on over. I’ve tried a new recipe each time. So far, we all have the same favorite.)

Tips for future rabbit connoisseurs:
1. Let the meat simmer for a couple of hours, or it will be tough as leather.
2. Watch out for the bones. They are very small and it’s almost impossible to get them all—and they are sharp.

Bowled Over

I have learned a valuable lesson:

When dropped just right, a corelle bowl can shatter into approximately 2,854 tiny pieces—shards which can propel themselves across a space the size of a football field.

I’ll be sweeping and vacuuming the stuff up for months. And that’s just what doesn’t get embedded in the soles of my feet first.

This wouldn’t be such a big deal, except for the fact that we only had one bowl per person. No spares. Coming to this place with no extra bowls makes as much sense as heading out on a cross country trip through a desolate land with no spare tire. Yup—not exactly a brainiac move.

We’ve given new meaning to the phrase “family togetherness” at meal time. Just think—sitting down together, talking together, and eating together—from the same bowl. It can be very romantic; but it’s usually just really, really irritating.

But one advantage of having so few kitchen items to worry about is that every dish and pot and pan and utensil in the house could be dirty, and it will only take half an hour to wash them all. So the cozy mealtime scenario does have its advantages.

"Fun and Games"

One challenge of living in a village of Alaska is that there are very few healthy activities for us to do. There are no theaters, malls, museums, school activities, or anything else that most people do. So our family makes our own fun.

This afternoon, Tanner and Taco were messing with their poppers that they’d won at the arcade while on the temple trip. One thing led to another, and before long, they had a “battle of the poppers” going. They sat at opposite sides of the living room and shot the things at each other. Even Keri got involved. That game entertained them for quite a while.

Last night, Keri and I went out with a few of the other teachers, and we actually bought a pizza at the newly-opened one and only restaurant in town. It is a tiny place with two tables. They have pizza and hamburgers. Pizzas cost about $30, and hamburgers run from $10 to $15. And they are pretty regular fare. But we figure we haven’t been on a date in about a year, so we splurged.

Tonight we are having a movie night at our house. Tanner bought the movie 2012 (also while in Anchorage at the youth temple trip). All of the teachers are invited to come over, and we are popping popcorn and showing the movie on a white wall with a projector. Next year, I think I will make Saturday movie night a weekly event.

Survival in the Bush

Apparently, the bush of Alaska has more Search & Rescue incidents than the rest of the country combined. A guy comes to the school every year to talk to the kids about survival. The boys and I heard him, and he was full of survival tips and funny stories.

He told the kids to always carry a VHF radio with them (a kind of radio/walkie-talkie). The radios only have a 10-15 mile working radius, so the kids were taught what frequency the airplanes use that fly overhead. He said you can always get help if you get through to one of them.

Incidentally, a VHF radio is the one thing we don’t have—maybe next year. Around here, they are used like telephones, and they have multiple purposes. One day, someone got on the school frequency and called out for Keri, asking him to phone her dad. So Keri took down the number and called the guy. When the guy answered, he said, “Thanks! I couldn’t find my cell phone!” and then promptly hung up.

One safety tip the speaker passed on, is that while traveling over a frozen river, always carry a big stick, holding it sideways with both hands as you walk. That way, if you fall through the ice, it will stop you from going all the way under because it will hopefully be longer than the hole is wide, and you can pull yourself out. He’s done that for years. But when he actually fell through, it was such a shock that the first thing he did was throw the stick down so he could grab for the ice. That reflex reaction almost got him killed.

One time, search and rescue were out looking for a family that had disappeared. They were riding around on snowmobiles looking, and it was dark, so they all had their lights on. Well, a snowmobile went flying past, but they just figured it was one of the search party so they kept right on looking. Turns out later, that it was the people they were looking for. They were so frozen and disoriented that they hadn’t even seen the other snow machines. Fortunately, they made it into town (kind of bumped into it). But they couldn’t remember where they had come from, and the sled full of kids and one adult was still out there. So the search party went looking in the direction that the people had come from when they had whizzed by. They finally found the rest of the family, huddled in the sled under a tarp, half frozen. I’m still not sure what the rational was for disconnecting the sled. Maybe speed and gas consumption? Or maybe it was a frozen brain not quite working right.

He told of a friend of his who got caught in a terrible storm. He kept trying to find his way home, but just couldn’t. Finally, he was forced to stop and build a snow cave and just ride out the storm. He almost froze to death that night, but somehow managed to stay just warm enough to survive. The next morning, he heard noises outside his snow cave—an animal sniffing around. He listened carefully, and decided it was a dog—not a wolf or bear—so he carefully crawled out of his cave. He was shocked to see his own dog, but was even more shocked when his wife came walking up to see what all the barking was about. She said, “What are you doing out here?! I’ve got breakfast ready, and it’s getting cold.” The storm had been so bad that he’d spent the night in his own backyard without even realizing it.

Most high schools have “Don’t drink and drive” or “Say No to Drugs” assemblies. We have “How to survive the bush” speakers. I guess a frozen body is seen as being more problematic than a fried brain.

Traveling Tales

Some of us are having a “girls’ night” of talking and games, and it is a blast—a much-needed diversion. Well, tonight, we got talking about some of the traveling “adventures” that have happened to us flying around the bush. They are just too good to not pass along.

This past December, I needed to fly home. All I wanted to do was get to Anchorage so I could head off to Utah. Simple, right? Apparently not.

I arranged to get picked up at Alakanuk (I had to get to Emmonak to catch a flight to St. Marys and on to Anchorage). But they didn’t give me a time—they just said the pilot would radio when he was on his way. And he did—about 20 minutes before I was supposed to catch my connecting flight. Some guy came and picked me up with a snow machine and we raced out to the airstrip, which is exactly that—no building, just a strip where planes land. The bush plane had just landed, so I helped unload the postage and a pile of packages, which the snow machine driver was going to deliver in the village.

I then jumped in the copilot seat, and we took off—headed the wrong direction. I hollered to the pilot that I needed to go to Emmonak, and he said, “Ya, I know. But we need to drop some stuff off in Nunam.” “But I need to catch a flight!” “Don’t worry—they’ll wait.” So we headed to Nunam. But not before he practiced his stunt flying—buzzing the tundra to show me a close-up of a moose and her calf, flying low over ice fishermen so I could get an eyeball-to-eyeball view.

Somehow we made it to Nunam. As we were unloading the rest of the boxes, a guy drove up in a snow machine dragging a sled with two old people who must have been pushing a hundred. He yelled, “They need a ride to Emmo. Can you take them?” So the pilot pulled two collapsible chairs out of the tail of the plane; he ran them along metal tracks on the floor and clicked them into place. The old people climbed on in.

When we finally got to Emmonak half an hour late, there was no sign of the plane. Turns out I had plenty of time to sit and visit, because the thing was almost two hours behind schedule. (Emmonak does have a shack on their airstrip, which makes waiting much nicer.) But checking in was dumb. Not because there was anything wrong with my luggage, but everyone flying had to toss their luggage onto the scale, and GET ON WITH IT! I felt like the prize steer at a cattle auction. All I can say is that my luggage has got to lose some weight.

The rest of the flight was uneventful. Of course, I came prepared. I’d learned from experience that the planes aren’t heated. You combine an Alaska winter with high altitude flying, and things get a bit frosty. But not to worry. I was layered. Long johns (top and bottom), sweats and jeans; T-shirt, sweat shirt, and jacket. So I was only cold—not frozen.

All in all, it was a pretty average flight for up here. But of course, there is the condition of the planes.

One teacher was on a small bush plane when it blew a tire on landing. The pilot was yelling, “MAYDAY ON THE RUNWAY! MAYDAY ON THE RUNWAY!” as the plane careened down the landing strip and finally tipped on its side, bending the propeller. Fortunately those things aren’t really going very fast, so no one was hurt.

Another teacher rode a plane with a broken seatbelt. It kept coming undone from the floor.

And then there is the duct tape. A teacher commented on being on a plane where a window was duct taped in. Someone else piped up, “I challenge you to find a bush plane that hasn’t been duct taped together.”

But tonight, the prize for most adventurous flight went to Theresa—hands down.

This poor girl was called and offered a job taking over a class where the teacher had just up and quit. (But that is another story of its own.) She was told that they needed her within a couple of days. So she had precious little time to prepare for the trip. She’d never been to Alaska, wasn’t sure what to expect, and it was her first year of teaching. But she was determined to do it.

Well, her flight schedule was insane! So to facilitate things, she wore flip flops so she wouldn’t have to take her shoes off and on at security checkpoints. She managed to survive the tight transfers and plane changes. She was sitting at the Bethel (Alaska) air shack waiting for the final leg of her flight, when she was approached by a native girl. The girl asked her if she was the new teacher going to Alakanuk. Theresa said she was, so the girl asked her if she could help take her baby to the baby’s father in Alakanuk. Thinking that the girl needed help carrying her stuff, she said, “Sure.” The girl handed her the child, and started to walk off.
Theresa hollered, “Wait! Where are you going?!”
“Oh, it’s OK. Just give her to her father.”
Theresa protested, but the girl insisted that the baby needed to get to Alakanuk. The father was expecting her.
“What’s the father’s name?” Theresa asked.
The girl told her.
“Don’t you want to know my name?” Theresa asked.
“Why?” the girl asked, and she walked off.
So Theresa boarded the plane carrying a stranger’s baby. When she got to Alakanuk, no one was there to pick her up, and the father wasn’t there for the baby. Apparently, no one told the father she was coming.

She eventually got to her house, and she got the baby to the father. (One of the locals saw the guy riding by on an ATV, and flagged him down. He was headed out hunting--but went home with a baby instead.) Unfortunately, what Theresa didn’t get was her luggage. It had been lost. So for three weeks, the poor girl had to walk around in flip flops and the same change of clothes; other teachers helped out best they could. Her luggage eventually showed up. It had been sitting in Emmonak the whole time—about 15 miles up river.

Youth Temple Trip

This past week, our boys went on a youth temple trip for the bush branches. It was something that had been planned before the district was dissolved and incorporated into the stakes, but they went ahead with it.

It was a wonderful experience for them! The kids all flew into Anchorage on Friday afternoon. (Keri and I took our boys to the airstrip in Emmonak by snow machine—about a 40 minute ride—where they caught the plane to St. Marys and then on to Anchorage.) The kids were all picked up in Anchorage and taken to the host homes to drop off their stuff, grab an apple, and run to the temple for their first session. There were 14 kids—9 boys and 5 girls. (Note the picture at the top.) All the boys stayed at the Harrells’ (a truly brave couple) and the girls all stayed at another home.

They had a baptism session Friday evening, and then again Saturday afternoon. They also had time as a group to socialize and hit the mall and play games together. Saturday evening, there was a church dance for the older kids and bowling for the younger ones. On Sunday, they were able to attend a “real” ward that actually meets in a building. The rest of the kids left Sunday afternoon, but our boys and one other stayed until Monday because the planes don’t run to our part of the bush on the weekend (too remote, I guess). So Sunday evening they went to a fireside.

It was an amazing experience on many levels. They were able to get to the temple. They were able to do service. And just as importantly, they were able to associate with good kids who have the same standards. Sometimes, in the bush, it can be very difficult and lonely. Not only are many of the kids the only members of the church in their village, but they are so isolated that it can feel like they are the only members on earth. And this gave them the opportunity to meet other kids who are just like them—standing tall while living in an area fraught with immorality and low morals of all kinds.

The boys came home all excited and chatty about what they’d done, who they’d met, and what a great cook Sister Harrell is. They had questions and comments about the fireside they had attended. And they were thrilled because as a group, they had done enough baptisms to make a ward.

But the truly amazing thing is what went into this trip to make it possible. This trip took an enormous amount of work and planning. People gave of their time and themselves, and they housed and fed the group of energetic and hungry teenagers. But another logistical difficulty was getting the kids there in the first place.

Getting to Anchorage from the bush is not an easy feat. There are no roads, so the only way in is by plane. And flying around the bush is a very expensive venture. It would have cost us $1400 for our boys to go. But some amazing members in the bush donated their frequent-flier miles so that all the youth who wanted to and were able, could attend without it costing them anything. And the people who donated miles didn’t even have anyone attending. They were going to kids whom they may have never met. Our boys were able to go on the trip because of a man by the name of Blake Hillis. I’ve never met him before and don’t even know what part of the bush he is from. All I know is that he is a kind and generous man who donated enough miles to get two boys to the temple and back.

So just know that the Lord has many anonymous heroes helping with His work—even out here in the bush.

Zombie Fish

I’m sure you will all be happy to know that zombie fish are alive and well here in the village of Alakanuk. Actually, throughout the Yukon River and beyond.

Yes, it is true. They are known as blackfish. But the truly strange thing is that people catch and eat these mystical monsters. In fact, I hear they are quite tasty. The problem, as with any supernatural fiend, is how to get it to the state of being dead. You see, these fish can live quite well out of water. True. Apparently, they have the benefit of both lungs and gills. And after being frozen, they come back to life when thawed. Also true. If cats have nine lives, how many do blackfish have?

The boys made blackfish traps in Yup’ik class. The picture is of Taco with his trap. It works like this: You set the trap in the river, fixing it in place (I’m not sure how), and just leave it there. The fish come swimming along, and they follow the wooden “funnel” right into the trap, where they swim around, unable to figure a way out. (They are mystical—not smart.) Sometime later, you return and pick up your trap, which is full of fish. They are rather small, only about 6 – 8 inches long, so the trap can hold a lot of fish. Then you eat them—assuming you can get them dead first.

The Yup’ik class is going to take a field trip where they set out their traps, and see how many fish they can catch.

Their Yup’ik teacher said that one time, he was in a hurry, so he took the blackfish he’d caught and just threw them in the freezer all together. A couple of months later, he took the solid block of frozen fish out and plopped them in a pot of water to thaw them and then cook them. When he came back a little bit later, there were a bunch of fish flopping around on the floor. They had come back to life and flopped their way right out of the pot. Kind of creepy, if you ask me.

While I realize that this makes them perfect for the frozen north (they can survive the winters because when the rivers freeze, they are still alive come spring), it makes me a little wary of making a meal of them. This breath-out-of-water and come-alive-again fish is just a little too weird for my liking. Maybe a wooden stake through the heart might do the trick. Works for vampires. A box of toothpicks should do nicely.

Spring Fever & Rabbit Stew

Excitement abounds here among the hunting crowd (the hunting crowd being Keri and his hunting buddy Larry). They caught a rabbit!

A couple of days ago, Larry showed up at the house with a grin and a bunch of nylon cord. He’d rescued a set of blinds bound for the dump and put them to use one last time by unstringing the cords—and made them into rabbit snares. So Keri and Larry took off for the trees and spent several hours setting traps. The next day, when no unsuspecting bunny had inadvertently run through the snare, Larry baited them with wilted spinach. And today, success! There stood Larry at the door holding a big snow white rabbit by its back feet. He’d gone out to check the traps—and they’d gotten one!

So Keri butchered the thing and I helped him stretch the skin (now there’s something I never saw myself doing). We are all going to eat rabbit stew tomorrow after church. Leigh and Larry Myers are the other couple in the village who are members of the church. So we get together every Sunday to listen to church on speaker phone, and then have dinner. They are good friends. I like them a lot.

This evening, Keri and I went out to check the traps again. But I think Spring Fever has hit a little before it should, and that makes us do weird things. It was 25 degrees above zero outside, so beautiful and spring-like that I dressed down—jeans only, no snow pants; no hat or face mask; and ankle socks instead of my long socks; my spring boots instead of Tanner’s warm ones. Well, about 100 yards out I missed my hat when the wind started whistling in my ears, but I didn’t turn back for it because the sun was starting to go down and we still had a hike ahead of us. And I noticed the lack of snow pants when I started wading through knee-deep snow in jeans and also when I fell flat on my face. And apparently, my sock and my left boot didn’t like each other, because they would not cooperate. My sock kept catching on my boot and being pulled down, so I didn’t have a sock on for insulation and I was walking on a ball of crunched up fabric.

Turns out we didn’t catch another rabbit, but Keri built up the walls around the snares. They put a border of sticks on one side of the snare with the idea that the rabbit can only get to the spinach from the other side, thereby having to reach through the snare. Tomorrow, I’m going to leave some crackers with peanut butter and see if that doesn’t get their attention. Peanut butter is smelly. Sure they normally eat vegetables. But who says they wouldn’t like a change of pace? Just because they aren’t offered desert doesn’t mean they won’t like it. So I will try to remember to report on the success of a change in diet in the rabbit world.

I was about frozen by the time we headed back. My kneecaps were ready to fall off, and I couldn’t feel my ears. As we trudged along, we heard yelling and screaming coming from the direction of the school. When we rounded the corner, there were about a dozen kids playing their version of kickball in the snow, and another bunch on the playground—wearing no hats, and coats flapping open. Seems I’m not the only one around here affected by a sudden case of Spring Fever.

Tales of Monkey Tails

OK. I have got to pass on words of wisdom from my son. The other day, Tanner and I were lounging around talking, and the conversation wound around, covering all sorts of topics like conversations tend to do.

Well, we’d been talking about the pre-existence, valiant spirits coming to earth, whether or not there would be animals in heaven, were animals as valiant as people when they were spirits, and on and on. Then somehow, the conversation took a turn and it came up that I am sometimes klutzy.

Tanner said:
Actually, Mom, I think you were supposed to come to earth as a monkey, but God had mercy on you. God said, “I can’t send that poor creature down as a monkey and expect her to handle a tail; that would really throw her off. I’d better send her as a human so she only has four appendages. Five would really do her in.”

I about fell off the couch I was laughing so hard.

Beached Whale Sighting

There was a beached whale reported just outside Alakanuk the other day. You might ask yourself what the blazes a beached whale was doing up the ice-covered Yukon River. Well, I’ll tell you—she was stuck in waist-deep snow. Seriously. I should know—I was there—and I was beached.

We were skiing along a couple of days ago, and Keri decided we should take a slightly different route. Well, that slight difference just about put me 6 feet under—under the snow, that is. I hit a soft spot, and my skis sank in and came to a dead stop, but my body kept on going. I tried catching myself with my poles, but they disappeared up to the handles. I know this, because I could see the handles sticking up a few inches from my face, which was now planted firmly in the snow. I tried getting up, but every time I moved, my skis sank in further and my legs got more twisted. And I couldn’t reach my feet to pop my skis off. I resembled a pretzel.

That’s when a plane just about ran us over. You see, I happened to get stuck at the end of the airstrip, so the plane buzzed our heads as it came in for a landing. (And this wasn’t one of our bush planes, it was a big one. It must've held twelve people, maybe more.) How embarrassing.

Keri popped out of his skis and waded over to me—the closer he got, the more he sank. After much grunting and nose scrunching (he always scrunches when he’s concentrating), he was finally able to get my skis off. But now, I didn’t want to move. When he yanked my poles out of the snow, I could see through the hole—and it looked like a long way down. Turns out we were skiing on top of a mess of bushes and scraggly trees. Since I didn’t want to crash through and be stuck ‘til spring, I decided to try and roll over to where it was packed solid. (We knew it was solid because there were fairly fresh snow machine tracks.) Problem was that it was slightly uphill...and there was nothing to grab onto...and I could hardly move because my snow clothes were suddenly restrictive...and they felt like they weighed a ton. So I did the only thing I could think of. I laid there and laughed—hard. The whole situation just hit me as being ridiculous. And the harder I laughed, the less I could move.

That’s when the plane took off—again, right over our heads. I was lying on my back, and had such an up close and personal view of the plane’s underbelly that I could count its rivets.

But that gave me incentive to inch myself to solid snow and get out of there. I didn’t want to be around when Search & Rescue, the Coast Guard, and the Marine Animal Rescue Society show up in response to a pilot’s desperate plea to help save the beached whale. THAT would have been embarrassing.

Potlatch

In February, we went to a Potlatch in the village. It’s a night of native dancing. Kind of like a Hawaiian luau, but indoors and without the food. The thing ran two nights, and each night was about 8 hours long. It went from 6:00 in the evening until about 2:00 the following morning. We left about 11:00 both nights. (I know—pathetic; we just couldn’t stick it out.) It was actually pretty fun—especially since we know so many of the people who were performing.

People come from neighboring villages, and it's a big party. Each village holds two Potlatches every winter. They don’t have any after the thaw, because it is a busy time until the next freeze. During the summer and autumn, they are fishing (they actually go to fish camps where they stay and catch fish and prepare the meat, etc.), they are hunting and preparing meat and skins, and they are gather berries. So they don’t have time for celebrations. Besides—during the winter, it is much easier to travel to other villages for the Potlatches because the rivers are frozen over, and they can use snow machines to get around. And the Potlatches help break up the monotony of the long winter. They practice for several weeks beforehand. Just a couple of weeks after the one in February, they began practicing for the next one.

It's a big deal when a child performs at their first Potlatch. It's like a debutante dance, or a Spanish quinceaῆera, except it's for boys and girls. The child and his/her parents make special matching costumes, and they have special dances that they do together. The family brings a LOT of gifts for people who come. It is a very expensive event. At the one that we went to, I was given some warm knit gloves and a cool crocheted potholder. Keri was given a hat with ear pieces and some socks. Taco was given candy. And we were given sodas and cups of water. You multiply that by 200 to 300 people, and that is a lot of gifts being handed out. There were also some very expensive gifts that were given to the elders—like tools, torches, spears, stuff for ice fishing, etc.

After the child’s first Potlatch, when they have been presented to the village, then they are able to dance in any Potlatch. It was fun to watch our friends and their children.

The dancers move their body and use a handheld feather thing. Drummers chant and beat a type of drum made of a covering over a giant wooden ring. Each dance is quite short, usually only lasting a couple of minutes but the dancers repeat the dance as long as someone in the audience yells “more” or “again” in Yup’ik. (I can’t remember the words.) Most of the time, they are up there doing the same dance for about 20 minutes or so, but on some of the dances, the dancers repeated it for over 45 minutes. They looked exhausted.

The pictures show: part of the parking lot at the Potlatch (nothing but ATVs and snow machines). In the group shot, it shows my friend Stephanie and her daughter (in dark purple, and Stephanie wears glasses and has her hair piled on top of her head); her husband is kneeling on the ground with their son (also in purple, and her husband has glasses). It is their son and daughter’s first Potlatch. The other group picture shows Stephanie and her daughter (both in pink) dancing the second night.

I took some videos of it, because Stephanie’s camera broke and they didn’t have any pictures of their kids’ first Potlatch. That would be like not getting pictures of a high school graduation. But it was too big to e-mail, so I put it on YouTube. If you want to see some, just pull up YouTube.com. Then put AlaskaGirl8 in the search bar at the top, and it will bring up my Potlatch videos. There are seven of them, and they are all short.

Just Call Me Frosty

I have made a discovery that will turn the psychiatric world on its head. That is:
Cabin fever leads to temporary insanity. And I have the story to prove it.

Here we live in the frozen tundra, but I got such a severe case of cabin fever that the fever part must have affected my brain. I was BEGGING to get outside. Unfortunately, “getting outside” around here is a team sport. It is stupidity to try it alone. And although I may have become insane, I’m not stupid. I needed an outside-buddy to come be miserable with me. The nature of the terrain, the freezing temperatures, the grumpiness of the wildlife when they run across humans, and the chance of getting lost all make it necessary to go with a buddy. That way, if you die, you have company.

I’d asked around, but no one seemed to want to take up cross country skiing—mainly because it involved going outside. After many not-so-subtle hints, a bit of nagging, and an episode of tears, Keri finally agreed. The problem was that he rarely got home before dark—and usually arrived long after. And “getting outside” is not only a team sport, it’s a daytime sport. Otherwise, you find yourself hanging around wolves and other cute and cuddly fanged beasts. So he began heading in to work earlier. Much earlier. That first morning, he got up at 4:00 AM so he could get enough work done to come home before dark. That is about the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard of. I think he likes me.

Even with the 4 AM start, he had a hard time getting home—but he made it, with about an hour and a half of sunlight to spare. So we grabbed Taco (Jeremy) and took off. (Tanner wanted nothing to do with it. Apparently he is immune to cabin fever.) It was marvelous swooshing through the snow and just being outside! Who cares that it was 20 below zero—40 below with wind chill. We were having a blast.

The trip was problem-free for about five whole minutes. That’s about how long it took me to realize that I couldn’t see. Seems my glasses don’t take too well to sub-zero temperatures. They somehow formed a layer of ice over the lenses. And since I am legally blind without them, and couldn’t see with them, it posed a bit of a problem. But I refused to turn back. I just alternated between looking over them, under them, and through tiny cracks in the ice. Occasionally, I stopped to chip the ice off, and I’d get a couple minutes of sightseeing in. But the ice didn’t stop at my glasses. It covered my body. My hair and jacket turned white with ice. (Notice the picture at the top? That’s me.) Keri started calling me Frosty.

Even so, it really was wonderful to be outside. We skied through the trees and scrub brush for a mile or so, dropped onto the Yukon, and headed back up river on the snow-covered ice. Eventually, we got back on land and kept going parallel to the river, looking for the turnoff to take us back to the village. Meanwhile, the sun went down. And it was dark. This was a bit worrisome. But it also turned out to be a good thing, because with no sun, Keri was able to spot the rotating light of the Alakanuk airstrip. It was behind us. WAY behind us. Apparently, we’d shot right past the village. We were on a fast and furious trip to the North Pole.

By the time we got home, we were frozen and exhausted. I was actually glad to be INside again. I collapsed into a chair, and since Tanner had stayed home, I elected him to pull off my boots and snow pants while I sat there and thawed. I ended up with frostbite on my left ear. (FYI: frostbite hurts!)

We slept well that night. And the next day, I covered up my left ear really well, and we took off on skis again. It really is great to be outside!

The Moose is in the Mire

Keri and his friend Larry have been trying to get a moose since they got here. But the moose have been doing an even better job at hiding. Finally, with hunting season almost done (it finished the end of February, which happened to be on a Sunday), they made one last ditch effort to bring home the bacon—in moose meat.

The last Saturday of the month, those two left early in the morning, and they were gone for almost 12 hours. If we’d been almost anywhere else on the continent, I would have been suspicious of them hanging out at a local diner laughing it up, and then putting on quite an act when they came home empty handed. But we have no diner. Or movie theater. Or mall. Or library. Or anywhere else that one might go to pass the time. Besides—no one can fake the exhaustion they had. When they returned, Larry went to bed for two days. His back had given out on him. And Keri was a wreck. And they were both frozen. They’d shot a moose, but it took off into the bushes. They tracked the thing for over two miles in knee-deep snow. Sometimes, they were having to crawl through the brush. It’s amazing what spaces that animal could fit through. Finally, when it began to get dark and the wolves were coming out, they headed for home empty handed.

The next day, we were faced with quite a dilemma. Go look for the moose on the Sabbath, or keep the letter of the “Sabbath day holy” law and let meat go to waste. We decided that it would be worse to let meat go to waste. So Keri, Tanner, and Taco headed out in search of the elusive moose. (The picture is of Keri and the boys just before they left on their moose search.) Several hours later, they too returned empty-handed. They’d picked up the trail right away, and followed it easily at first. Well, easily is a bit of stretch, considering they were crawling through brush and digging through snow.

But it seems the moose gradually began to get stronger until the trail stopped. Which is good news for the moose. So we are assuming that it healed and will live a long and prosperous life—until next hunting season.

Think Your Church is Noisy? Bet I Can Top That!

Today, we had a change in our Branch Presidency. When they dissolved the District and divided the branches among the three Anchorage Stakes, that presented a problem in our branch. Our Branch Presidency all live in Anchorage (they have to for logistical reasons), but they are responsible for the people in the branch. But our Branch President lived in the wrong stake. So they had to replace him. We now have a new Branch Presidency.

We have our meetings over the phone. Everyone calls into a conference line and inputs a special PIN, and we are all joined on the same line. We are all supposed to mute our phones unless we are making a comment (like during class time) or actually speaking or teaching. But sometimes, people forget to mute or the mute doesn’t go through. Then things can get pretty interesting.

Anyway, today’s Sacrament meeting was largely about the switch. The previous presidency and the new presidency all spoke, and several wives too. We had people speaking from Hawaii (one of the new counselors is on vacation), driving cross country (the other counselor was travelling back up from the lower 48), Anchorage, and across the bush. But they weren’t the only ones contributing. Others participated quite by accident. We had the usual echo and background noises of static and clicking (like the movie Signs), and today we also had running and screaming children, sneezing, static and feedback sound that hurt our eardrums, and a flushing toilet. But the thing that was the most distracting was when someone slid their phone into their shirt pocket, and it picked up their heartbeat so loudly that it drowned out the person speaking. It sounded like Edgar Allen Poe’s “Tell-Tale Heart.” That’s when the branch president interrupted the meeting and asked everyone to mute their phones.

So next time you hear a baby fussing or kids whispering, don’t sweat it. At least your meeting isn’t like something out of the Twilight Zone. I’ll take screaming kids or flushing toilets any day. Just don’t give me the BA-BOOM...BA-BOOM...BA-BOOM...

You Want to Know Cold? I'll Tell You Cold!

We live in the bush of Alaska, just below the Arctic Circle, and our furnace broke this morning. It’s getting cold fast. I just broke a chunk of ice off of the inside furnace room. I’d go to a movie or the mall to warm up, but there isn’t one. And even if there was, it would require travelling in the open on the back of a snow machine.
So next time you scrape snow off a windshield and climb into a not-yet warm car, just be glad it’s enclosed. And meanwhile, enjoy your heat!
Sorry—I’m looking really hard, but I just can’t find the humor in this one. I think it’s been frozen out of me.
(By the way—I can tell you most positively that Hell has nothing to do with fire and brimstone, and everything to do with ice. Come visit sometime and I’ll give you a sneak preview.)
Gotta go put on a second layer of socks.

Mummification 101

Step One: Dump boiling water on your hand. (Why was I boiling water? See "Queen of Boiling Water" below.)
Step Two: Stick hand in a bag of snow. Try to avoid the yellow stuff.
Step Three: Trudge through biting wind in temperatures that freeze your brain, frost your skin and make your teeth ache—with your hand buried in a bag of snow.
Step Four: Bang on the clinic door and beg entrance.
Step Five: Sit for an hour while the health aide methodically takes vitals and a thorough medical history. Meanwhile, repeatedly send husband outside for more snow.
Step Six: Another eternal wait for the doctor to call with treatment plan. Pick dog hairs from bag of snow (or are they wolf?).
Step Seven: Finally! Cream and bandages—and much relief. (Bless the inventor of Silver Sulfadiazine.)
Step Eight: Vow to find an easier and preferably pain-free way of avoiding dish duty in the future.

The Queen of Boiling Water

I have one purpose in life, and that is to boil water. True. I spend all day long boiling water. And then I filter it.

I boil water for washing dishes, rinsing produce, cooking food, making hot chocolate, making juice, and just plain drinking. Actually, I have a complex system. OK—maybe complex is going a bit far, and it’s not really a system so much as a daily routine in drudgery. But hey—it keeps me busy.

My day is complete when I maintain two filtered water pitchers in the fridge, two plastic “standby” pitchers of unfiltered water on the counter, and a big pot of boiling water. Yup. That’s the pinnacle of life.

So basically my day goes something like this: boil water, make breakfast, boil water, do the dishes, boil water, fill the pitchers, boil water, start on lunch, boil water….. You get the picture. I’m the queen of boiling water.

But this past Christmas, the familiar routine took a temporary twist—and I wasn’t even here to see it. I’d had to return home because of a family emergency—so I spent Christmas with my mom.

During one of my more-than-daily phone calls home, I asked my son what he had planned for the day. He replied, “Probably setting up the tree again.” “Again?”

Turns out that when my husband was decorating the school for the holidays, he ran across a perfectly good artificial Christmas tree. The only thing it was missing was the base. Well, base or no base, that is quite a find, considering that we live in the tundra where the closest thing to a Christmas tree is a short, scraggly bush-looking thing. So, following his “waste not, want not” philosophy of life, he hauled the thing home to grace our living room. Getting it there was no problem. Getting it to stay up on its precarious pole was another matter all together. But he is an ingenious soul who can fix most anything. And when it can’t be fixed, there’s always duct tape. Yup. They taped the tree to the couch and the wall. Only problem was that if they made any sudden movements, sneezed, or breathed hard, the thing came tumbling down. And since the house held nothing but active males, there was a bunch of chasing and wrestling going on. So the tree spent a lot of time horizontal, and they went through a ton of tape.

Their holiday routine became: boil water, set up the tree, boil water, set up the tree, boil water, set up the tree…

Isn’t change wonderful!

I Can't Believe it's Butter!

Keri went to Anchorage for about a week, and arrived back home looking like a smuggler. He walked through the door, and I barely got a hug in before he was emptying the pockets of his snow jacket, snow vest and snow pants. That man must have been carrying 20 pounds of butter on his person!

He spent his last two evenings in Anchorage doing nothing but shopping. My hero! (Actually, he was shopping until about 3:00 AM both nights.) We are almost out of food at home, and buying stuff in the village is outrageous. A gallon of milk costs $12. Stuff is just downright pricey. But since that is a problem through the whole of the Bush, Anchorage is set up to accommodate it. They have some big stores (like WalMart and Fred Meyers) that have 24/7 bush order departments. You simply stock up your shopping cart, and they box it up and ship it off for you COD (cash on delivery). I hear there is also a post office open 24/7 for those who want their stuff shipped faster. It’s cheaper to shop that way than to buy it in the Bush.

The last night, he got all the produce and frozen stuff. He’d taken two empty totes out with him on the plane. He filled one tote with long-lasting produce (like potatoes and carrots and stuff) and mailed it back. The other tote, he filled with frozen stuff and short-lasting produce (like lettuce and kiwis) and was going to take it on the plane. Word to the wise—don’t try shipping bananas. No matter how you pack them, they just don’t survive. You get to the other end with brown mush. Anyway, the airplane tote was about 20 pounds too heavy—so he took out the butter and filled every pocket and crack and crevice in his clothes with the stuff. Then the tote weighed in perfectly. The plane was just as heavy, but at least the tote passed inspection.

You’d think carrying butter on the body might be a problem. You know—melting? But it actually works just fine on these flights, because the planes aren’t heated. You combine an Alaskan winter with high altitude flying, and it gets pretty nippy. So we wear long johns, sweats, jeans, snow pants…. We layer up for survival—not comfort. It’s definitely not the way to lounge back and relax. But it’s a great way to smuggle 20 pounds of butter.

Sick? Just drag yourself through the snow!

The picture is of Keri and his friend Larry Myers standing in front of our snow machine just before they went hunting a week or so ago. Unfortunately, they didn’t get anything. How is it that this place is flat, with small trees and scrub brush, and yet the giant moose can hide so well? Just doesn’t make sense. They were rather frustrated. Especially when they got lost—three times. They ended up in a different village and went to a teacher’s house to warm up before heading back. Good thing they had a GPS to check, or they’d still be out there. They are going again this week when Keri gets back from Anchorage.

Taco (Jeremy) got sick, and it went straight to his chest. He missed two weeks of school because he had a horrible cough. The second week, I tried getting him into the clinic in either Alakanuk or Emmonak (a neighboring village), but there were so many people sick that I couldn’t get him in. Finally, after a week of trying, the clinic in Emmonak said they would work him in. (I think she felt sorry for me, because I called every day and I think she could hear Taco coughing in the background.)

So Keri took the morning off work, and we bundled up and climbed onto the snow machine to drive through the tundra in Arctic winter weather over the frozen Yukon River—to have our son checked for pneumonia. On what planet does that make sense?

The trip would have taken about 30 minutes, but we got lost—twice. So it took a little longer. Taco was sandwiched between Keri and I, and I had to reach around him every time I whacked Keri for getting us air born from driving too fast. But we made it.

Taco was put on antibiotics and steroids, and he is starting to get better now. (When he found out he was being put on a steroid, he said, “Cool! Does that mean I’ll get strong?”)

Church--on a Conference Call?

Church is really interesting here, and we just had some big changes made today.
First of all, we are in the Anchorage Bush Branch. It is huge—several thousand square miles big. It is over 500 miles long, running from Anchorage to the Bering Sea—and I don’t know how far it runs going north/south. But that makes for a VERY large branch, area-wise. And that’s just our Branch. There were six branches in the Bush District. I have no idea how big the District was. But today, we got the big news at District Conference, that the District is being dissolved! We are all being incorporated into the three Anchorage Stakes. They are each getting two branches (there are six in all). When it was announced, my first thought was wondering if we were going to be kind of like the ugly stepsisters—in the way, unappreciated and misunderstood. At least when we were in the District, we were all in the same boat. But each of the Anchorage stake presidents spoke, and they all seem excited about getting the branches. And all the speakers (previous District Presidency and new Stake Presidents and the General Authority) said it will be wonderful for us to be part of a stake—that there are a lot of benefits that we haven’t been able to have before. So I guess it will be good, or they wouldn’t have made the change.

Our church is different from any other I’ve been at. We listen to all the meetings on the phone—a conference call. Sometimes it’s hard to hear. Sounds like something between static, beeps, and “Signs” (you know—that scary movie with all the clicking over the baby monitor). But we can usually get the gist of it. This week, Keri is in Anchorage for some kind of training, so the boys were listening to Priesthood by themselves at our house. Well, not quite by themselves. I usually eavesdrop too. Well, today the Priesthood lesson was about Free Agency and the Garden of Eden. This past week, Tanner had had a question about that very thing. (Why did the Lord give two conflicting commandments that made it impossible to follow both?) So I un-muted the phone and asked the question. The men spent the rest of the meeting answering Tanner’s question. Well, later today, Keri had a temple recommend interview in Anchorage with President Jacks (the Branch President). Keri phoned me and said that Pres. Jacks wanted to talk to us. I said, “Am I in trouble for butting into Priesthood meeting?” President Jacks just laughed and said, “I don’t think you’re the only woman who listens in. And it’s great that you’re involved in your sons’ lives.” But he did let me know that both the District President and the General Authority were on the line and heard too. Goody. But it’s OK, because Keri admitted that he’d listened in to Relief Society so he could hear how my lesson went. (Try teaching a lesson without hand outs or a chalk board or anything like that. It isn’t easy.) As for President Jacks, he just wanted to ask us to talk in church next week. So we will be giving a talk on the phone.

It has its challenges. But hey—WE get to go to church in our pajamas if we want. Things have a way of balancing out.

Alakanuk--Where the blazes is it?

Here is Alakanuk from the air. The big building is the school; teacher housing is to the right. We are by the Bering Sea just below the Arctic Circle. No—not the Arctic Circle with ice cream—the Arctic Circle that’s cold. We have a special kind of ice cream here. It’s called Eskimo ice cream. It used to be made out of melted whale fat with crushed up fish and berries mixed in. Now-a-days they use shortening (like Crisco) instead of whale fat. But they still mix in ground up fish and berries. I hear it’s good (although I don’t know a single white person who has actually tried it). So far, I’ve avoided the experience.

Alakanuk is a tiny village nestled on the banks of the Yukon River. Well, maybe not nestled exactly—more like “dug in” or “hunkered down” or “standing against all odds.” But it is tiny and it is on the Yukon. All the buildings are built on a platform, or a series of stilts, and stand a good three to six feet off the ground. You see, most every year, the Yukon floods—so they build up to save themselves from getting washed away.

You can see a satellite photo of the town by going to http://earth.google.com/ and searching for Alakanuk, AK (after you download the program). Most of you have probably used it before, but if you haven’t: in the top, right are the navigation buttons; click on + to zoom in closer and – to zoom out. The site is awesome. You can even visit the Grand Canyon or Eiffel Tower or anywhere you want to go. You should try it!

Cross Country Skiing

Lesson one of cross country skiing: A temperature of twenty-below-zero is not intended for humans. Polar bears, maybe--but not humans.
Lesson two of cross country skiing: A wind chill can drop the temperature another twenty degrees. Then it's not even fit for bears.
Lesson three of cross country skiing: A low honking/growl sound in the trees can make even the most novice skier fly over the snow. Especially when the noise sounds like a possible bear, and your twelve-year old is 100 feet ahead by himself. Luckily it turned out to be a moose with a nasal problem.
Lesson four of cross country skiing: Never let your twelve-year old get 100 yards ahead by himself.
Lesson five of cross country skiing: Distance changes. The trip back is a LOT longer than it was going out.
Lesson six of cross country skiing: It is a cold and exhausting, but fun thing to do!
This picture is of Keri, Debi, and Taco on the frozen Yukon River. We are having fun (in case you can't tell).

Our trip to Alakanuk, Alaska took two days, five flights, and four plane changes to get here. Unless you count our luggage. Then it took two days, seven flights, six plane changes, and three trips to the Alukanuk airstrip.
But we made it.
We got there in November just in time for Thanksgiving. This picture shows Tanner and Taco in front of the "big" plane. After this, we got on a small bush plane that maxed out at six people. (I sat in the copilot seat.) It was an adventure.