Mental Gymnastics

I’ve been doing some substitute teaching and tutoring while here in the bush. And it has actually been a lot of fun.

One thing I’ve found both frustrating and fascinating is that these poor kids have to do mental gymnastics sometimes to be able to wrap their brains around a concept the way it is taught everywhere else. It would be like the rest of us being expected to learn out of textbooks shipped in from a Star Wars planet…or Avitar. It just isn’t easy. Sometimes they are totally lost by an idea…but usually they come up with a very creative way to adapt it to their culture so it makes sense.

Some time ago, I was trying to explain the idea of “perimeter” to a boy. I said, “it’s like a fence around the square. How long is the fence?” He looked up at me and with total sincerity asked, “What’s a fence?”

I realized that most these kids out here have grown up without fences…anywhere. In Alakanuk they were unheard of. In King Cove there are a few…around the cemetery in an effort to keep the bears out…and the fish cannery has some for the same reason. But the houses have none.

One of the teachers was telling me about a test she gave her young kids. I think it was one of those standard tests that comes with a book. The question was, “How do you get to a hospital?” And the options were: by plane, by boat, by ambulance. Most of the kids circled “plane”; a few circled “boat”; no one circled “ambulance.”

You see, around here, if you are super sick and need to go to the hospital, they put you on a bush plane and send you off. If it is too windy to fly out of King Cove, they put you on the Island Trader…a boat that does emergency runs to Cold Bay. In Cold Bay, they have the fourth longest runway in the country—seriously. It was built during World War II as an emergency landing place for planes. It has been kept in great shape because it is now an emergency airstrip for international flights. Before they shut down the Space Shuttle Program, it was an alternate landing spot for that. In other words, you can land most anything there…which means that bigger planes take off from Cold Bay…planes that don’t have to worry quite as much about the wind like bush planes do. So if it’s super windy and travel to King Cove has been shut down, just hop on the Island Trader to Cold Bay. You can probably get out from there. So how do you get to the hospital? That's easy! By plane or boat. Ambulances are unheard of.

The other day, I was teaching an eighth grade history class. We’d had quite an active discussion about cave men, with the kids throwing out ideas of what they needed to survive. Towards the end of the lesson, I showed them a cave painting of what looked like hunters  with spears chasing bison. After a moment, one of the boys asked, “But why are they trying to kill the caribou with a harpoon?”

Mental gymnastics at work. I love it!

The Salmon Run...and Run...and Run

One of the most frequently asked questions we get about life here in King Cove is “What’s the fishing like?”

Answer:  IT’S GREAT!!!!

You can stand on the dock and catch cod and halibut. And Keri has even gone out on the ocean in a friend’s boat to fish. He’s also caught some salmon and trout in the streams. And we have a neighbor who is a fisherman by profession, and has dropped off fish, crab legs, and octopus. It was funny when his wife gave me the crab legs. She was actually apologetic because they were so small…and those suckers were over a foot long! We thought they were great! But more on crab in a later blog.

As for the salmon…WOW!

So far I’ve learned that there are actually several different species of salmon and they all “run” at different times.

The king salmon were here earlier in the year, as were the reds (named because, you guessed it, they are red instead of salmon-colored). The kings are by far the biggest…the record-holder was a whopping 126 pounds, although they are usually more like 40-something. How would you like to go down in history as the fattest guy in the river? There is a running debate on which one of them has the better flavor…the kings or the reds…but those two are definitely the favorites.

You know, if I were a salmon, I would not want to be a favorite. I’d want to be the ugly third cousin with twelve toes…the one nobody wants. The uglier, the better.  It would greatly increase the chance of longevity.

Anyway, soon the silvers are supposed to start running; also pretty good eating.

Right now, it is the pink salmon (also called humpies…they have a hump on their back) and the chum, aka dogfish. Those two kinds are the runts of the family; they are smaller. Humpies are alright to eat. But dogfish got their nickname because they are the worst of the salmon family. They are considered the lowest of all salmon…garbage meat…the bottom of the totem pole. In fact, locals refuse to eat them. So apparently, all salmon are NOT created equal. Kind of makes you wonder which kind is sitting in the grocer’s freezer.

There is a stream about 1 ½ miles from our place that is teeming with fish. What amazes me is how nuts salmon get during spawning season. I still don’t get why a fish would be so darned stubborn…or driven…or anal…or OCD…that they would insist on swimming upstream to deposit their eggs. Determined little things. And they all come at the same time…hoards of them. There are so many salmon in that stream, it looks like the water is boiling.

Swimming upstream would be bad enough—but to trying to do it with a crowd would really get on my nerves. If I were a salmon, I would seriously look for a nice little spot downstream to lay my eggs. A little shade, a little shelter, and I'd be in business. Let the crazies fight it out upstream. I’d have better things to do. I’m not quite sure what that would be in the salmon world, but almost anything would beat fighting a crowd for the privilege of spawning. 


I took a video of my husband, Keri, trying to catch a salmon, bear-style. It also shows a little of how packed the salmon are...the "boiling water" effect. To see it, go to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fPLfGohjjc 

Here he is with a couple of humpies he caught.

King Cove Rules!

I am in the Aleutians and I LOVE it! King Cove, to be exact. It’s on the Aleutian Island chain in Alaska. You know…that chain of islands that comes off the bottom of the state and stretches west over the ocean all the way t0 Russia.

There is SO much to tell! But I’ll have to do it in bits--otherwise, this single entry would turn into a book.

It took 4 ½ days of travel to get here. (This included a 2 day / 3 night ferry trip, which was adventure in itself. But I’ll tell you all about it in a later blog.)

My husband had been here for about a month already, and kept raving about it. I was only half believing him. The ferry docked at King Cove when it was still dark as tar outside. But when the sun came up...Wow! What a place!

Here are the highlights:

There is a stream about 1 ½ miles from our place, and there is so much salmon running up it that it looks like the water is boiling. The salmon swim UP stream to get to where they are going to spawn. Determined little things. Swimming upstream is bad enough—but to try it with a crowd would really get on my nerves. If I were a salmon, I would seriously look for a nice little spot downstream to lay my eggs. A little shade, a little shelter, and I'd be in business.

We have our own active volcano. Actually, in this part of the country, it isn’t all that impressive. I’ve been told that there are more active volcanoes in our little stretch of islands than anywhere on earth. We are part of the Ring of Fire.

And the island is green! Everywhere! There aren’t many trees around…probably because of the severe winds that come through here. They are mostly shrubs, bushes, and mossy spongy ground cover. But what we’ve got is dense greenery.

I got here exactly a week ago, and every day we've gone exploring. It is great!

We went berry picking, catching salmon (with bare hands…bear style), and went as far as the roads would take us.

Here is what I know so far:
- There is a LOT to do here!
- Spawning fish are CRAZY!
- There are a lot of bears...Kodiaks.
- The berries are huge, seedy, and S-W-E-E-T!
- It rains a ton.
- I’m going to like it here!

All of that will have to wait for later blogs. For now, here are some snapshots of our new home.

 Yup...it is B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L here!

 ...and more beauty!

 The view out our window. 

Notice the trail coming down the mountain between the buildings? 

It's a BEAR trail. 

You know how deer will create a trail in the woods that they follow? 

Well, this one was created by Kodiak bears.

This is a closeup of the bear trail.

 The other part of the view out our window.

This is a fresh water lake. In the background, you can barely see the bottom part of the volcano.

Life is good.

More to follow.

Give Me a Bush Plane Any Day

According to life insurance companies, flying small aircraft is a dangerous occupation. According to anyone in the know, traveling in bush planes is a wild ride.

A few months ago, we had a couple of friends stay over at our place in Alakanuk, and conversation turned to the adventures of bush life…particularly flying. These two work for different state agencies, but both were in the village on business, so they stayed at our place. (Our spare bed and couch are a lot more comfortable than the school floor, and we like having them around. They are a lot of fun.)

With their jobs, they fly a LOT, bouncing around to different villages, and one of them even investigates plane crashes as part of his job. They are pros when it comes to the bush league. And their high tales are crazy!

Of course, there is the standard story of a moose wandering onto the airstrip at exactly the wrong time. Neither moose nor plane survived that one. Fortunately, the passengers did.

On one trip our friend took, there was loud banging as they raced down the runway trying to get airborne. He figured it was big clumps of snow and ice being thrown up. But just as they were lifting off, he happened to glance back, and the poor terror-stricken woman behind him was hanging onto the door next to her. Her arms were about getting yanked out of their sockets as she tried desperately to hold it shut. With all her efforts being focused on trying to keep that door closed, the door on her other side was left to bang around unimpeded. They landed, secured the doors, the woman tried to strangle the pilot, and then they took off again.

On another trip, our friend was sitting in the copilot seat. Just as they were taking off, he realized that the engine blanket was still on. (He realized it—not the pilot.) The blanket is something they use here to help keep the engine warm when they are sitting between flights. But blankets are definitely not meant for flying with. Could be disastrous.

The same guy investigated a crash where the pilot forgot to lower the landing gear. Oops. But once hitting belly to ground, which damaged the propellers so they couldn’t work properly, he was foolish enough to try to get the plane back into the air. That’s when things really turned bad. They got airborne just high enough to make a spectacular splash when they came back down, this time nose first. No one survived that one. Turns out the plane was full of a special cargo—they were smuggling alcohol in. Unfortunately, the cargo wasn’t the only thing full of booze that trip. (Alcohol is illegal in most villages in the bush—so they just make their own moonshine; they call it homebrew. But people will pay top dollar for the real stuff. A shipment like that can rake in a bundle—as long as it doesn’t end up splattered all over the tundra.)

Balance is a big deal in planes—and the smaller the plane, the bigger the deal. You have to have things equally distributed, or the plane gets a little ways in the air and simply rolls to its side and takes a nosedive. That happened a while ago to a State Trooper and his dog. Poor dog. But all survived.

You might think that these tiny planes don’t come with autopilot…but in fact they do. It’s called a bungee cord. Yup. Pilots have been known to get airborne, hook the controls to a bungee to keep them in place, and lean back for a snooze. This practice is frowned upon, however, because it tends to make the passengers nervous. But fly enough, and you will run across it.

Bush planes are often held together with baling wire and duct tape—literally. Windows duct taped in, doors wired shut, seat belts tied in a knot… (For more bush plane adventures, see “Traveling Tales” posted on March 26, 2010.)

And when we are flying out of the village, our departure time is only a rough estimate. It’s like calling for a cable repair guy and being told he’ll be there sometime between 8 and noon. Here, they radio when the pilot is on the way to the village. Then you have to high-tail it out to the airstrip, or you get left behind.

But we are currently in the lower 48 for the summer. We came down here to be with our kids. So now we are driving cars…on crowded freeways…at fast speeds. It makes bush plane travel seem tame in comparison.

Last week, we went camping with our kids at Bryce Canyon in southern Utah—an incredibly beautiful spot. But more on that later. It’s about a four hour trip, and we had to take both our car and truck, because there were too many of us for one vehicle. Our daughter and her friend (one of her companions from her mission) drove the pickup truck, and the rest of us went in the car.

We were planning to head home on Saturday, but were trying to accommodate everyone. My husband wanted to go on one more hike, the girls wanted to get home for an activity, and so forth. Our plans changed a half dozen times in a few hours…the girls were going to leave early and drive the truck home…then everyone was going on one more hike except for me (I was too sore to do another hike), so I was going to drive the truck home…then back to the girls driving because we were all going to go…and we finally settled on my husband and youngest son staying for the hike and driving the truck back and the rest of us leaving early in the car.

We got home just fine, and a couple hours later, my son called to say they were on their way.

About an hour or so after that, they called again. It was my husband. He said, “I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is, we’re still alive. The bad news is, we don’t have a pickup anymore.”

They had been driving along going 80 (yes, that was the speed limit), when there was an explosion and the truck dropped and veered left hard and sparks were flying——all at the same moment. Fortunately, he had both hands on the steering wheel, and he grabbed tight for control. Somehow, he managed to keep the truck upright and ease it off the road without over-correcting.

Turns out, the wheel exploded off the truck. Not the tire——the entire wheel. But the truck caught the edge of it, laying it flat and riding it like a sled down the freeway. This prevented the truck from hitting asphalt, which would probably have sent it into an 80 mph roll. The way it snagged the wheel also prevented it from sliding back and being run over by the rear tire, which also would have sent the truck into an 80 mph flip. But somehow, they came out all right.

I can’t believe everything that was involved…all the “what ifs.” If our daughter had been driving, I’m sure it would have been disastrous…if I had been driving, I don’t think I could have controlled it…if the wheel hadn’t been snagged just so…if he hadn’t had both hands on the steering wheel…if it had happened in a narrower strip of road…and the list goes on.

I think there was a legion of guardian angels involved in that episode.

When it comes to travel, I’ll take a dilapidated bush plane any day. It’s safer.

Pictures of the truck after riding the wheel like a sled down the freeway at 80 mph.

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