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)