Winter

Winter is in full swing in Alaska.  When we came seven years ago everyone told us "We don't get a lot of snow."  and it snowed, and snowed, and snowed, and snowed some more.  We lost track after 15 foot of snow that winter, but that was nowhere near the end of the snow.  More came, we just lost count.  We were assured on our return that kind of snow was not typical and that they barely even saw snow for the last few years.  Well, either they tend to undersell, or we are snow magnets because we've had lots of snow already.  We haven't seen the ground in something like three weeks.  And that's with several days of rain to work on melting the snow down.  Whatever the cause, it's still beautiful and still brings a little bit of magic with every snowflake, without me even making magic snowflakes.

While the snow may be magic, the darkness is not!  If I could make magic sunshines I most certainly would.  With winter solstice last week, there was a tiny window of hope.  Then I realized that, while solstice meant we were going to be gaining light every day, it also meant that we were only half of the way through winter.  It already feels like forever since we had real sunlight on our way home from school and that forever is only one half of the time we have to endure.  Winter is my favorite season, but the snow is much prettier when it can sparkle in the sunshine instead of the playground lights.

This pictures shows where the sun is at 1:30 in the afternoon.
I miss you sunshine!!  Please come back!

When it rains on top of snow and then freezes overnight, the
snow grows these super cool ice crystals.  I took a bunch of
pictures trying to do them justice.  If the sun had been out,
it would have been easier, but that's already a sore subject! 

Medical Care in the Village

Medical care in the village can get tricky.  We do not have a hospital or emergency room or even an urgent care facility.  We have a clinic with a very thorough and fantastic nurse (I am definitely a huge fan of his).  But, he is obviously limited in what he can do in Nanwalek.  If you need emergency care, you have to fly out.  That can get tricky, though.  If it's too windy, the planes can't come regardless of your medical condition.  Then, we are also limited by daylight.  If it is dark, they can't come either.  During this time of year, the first plane typically comes in around 9:30 or 10:00 in the morning and the last one typically leaves Nanwalek at 3:30 and absolutely no later than 4:20 under any conditions.  That's not a huge window.

That window decided to make my life a little complicated this weekend.  Saturday about noon, my belly started hurting enough to make me quite uncomfortable, but not enough to be alarmed.  As the day progressed into evening, however, it got progressively more painful.  By 6:00, Mike was googling symptoms for appendicitis (he never googles symptoms, so that itself is a cause for concern) and it got very real when we realized I had every one except the nausea and vomiting.  I also had quit eating when the pain started so I had nothing in my stomach so that missing symptom didn't make either one of us feel better.  I wasn't at the emergency room level of pain yet, but it was disconcerting to know that my window to get on a plane was closed already.  By 10:00, I probably would have gone to an emergency room if I could have and was deciding whether or not I should go to the clinic and get a medevac out.  I was feeling that badly.  Not knowing for sure what it was, though, I was hesitant to go this route.  I really didn't want to be medevaced out to find out it was something really stupid like gas.  That is my luck after all.

By 11:00 I was seriously questioning my survival.  I still did not want to be medevaced out, but was also very concerned that, if it was appendicitis, it might rupture while I was in a place with no facilities to take care of me.  Obviously, this spurred a conversation with Jesus.  "Please, God, don't let me die over here.  Like, really. [as if he doesn't know I'm serious] I can't die in Alaska.  I can't do that to my parents or my husband.  That's not okay."  So we talked some more about the faith of mustard seeds again and I struggled with how to phrase my prayer.  Obviously, I didn't want to have appendicitis, but I'm sure there are worse things.  Don't let me die is also very specific.  There is a huge expanse between healthy and happy to dead.  I didn't really like the idea of that gray area either.  So I settled with "Jesus, I trust you.  I'll be okay," and let him define okay for me.  Sometimes I may overthink things and be a little too detail oriented.  Maybe Jesus is trying to break me from this habit.  He is Lord of all.  He doesn't really need me dictating requests to him like I know best.  Who knows.  As I'm writing this, I'm thinking I was probably an idiot for not going ahead with the medevac route, but I had a good little chat with Jesus and good lesson from the experience.  So I'll say it was part of His plan and that can make me feel better about possibly being stupid.

I spent much of the night waking up, looking at the clock, and counting down the hours until the first flight in the morning.  By 3:00 Sunday morning, I was miserable enough I probably would have gone for the medevac if I hadn't already had a conversation with Jesus about trust and hadn't been half asleep.  Somewhere around 6:00 in the morning, I realized I had been doing my math wrong and had to add an extra hour into my formula the next flight.  I was very sad.  Somewhere around 8:00, I started to feel better, but not okay.  The weather was terrible, so the planes weren't flying Sunday morning.  I couldn't get out to go to the emergency room.  The pain wasn't going away, so I gave up and went up to the clinic.  They did a thorough exam and contacted a doctor in Anchorage.  Since my pain level had dropped significantly from the night before, he said there was no need for a medevac and recommended I get on the next flight out and get to the emergency room in Anchorage.  Fortunately, we were able to fly out of Nanwalek through a little lull in the winds, got flights up to Anchorage, and got to the emergency room.  I would not ordinarily be eager to fly out on a bad weather day or go to a place so soon after a major earthquake where they are still having aftershocks, but life seems to like laughing at my expense.

I won't bore you with all the details of the ER.  It's all pretty standard. Vitals, blood work, poke and prod tender places that do not appreciate poking and prodding, pee in a cup, perhaps spill some of that on my pants (that's probably not pretty standard, but sometimes you just have to learn to laugh at yourself) and wrap the process up with a ct scan.  All that to decide that I do not have appendicitis and need to follow up with a regular doctor some time and have my gall bladder looked at.  So, I guess I'm glad I didn't go the medevac route, even if it was probably stupid at the time.  I'm pretty sure my conversation with Jesus played a pretty big role in the outcome, anyway.  For the record, I am slowly feeling better.  I feel like I've had abdominal surgery even though I didn't, but I guess the pain without the surgery is better than having the pain and surgery.  The weekend was obviously full of "only in Alaskas", but there was one that was kind of cool.  We flew back from Anchorage with Johnathan Hillstrand from "Alaska's Deadliest Catch"- not worth the pain by any stretch, but still cool nonetheless.

Shakin' Our Groove Thing

We've been channeling some classic music here in Alaska recently.  I'm sure almost everyone has heard about the 7.0 earthquake that hit Anchorage last Friday.  I doubt many have heard about the 1800 aftershocks (as of 9:00pm Mon) they've had since.  I didn't actually count, but running through the list, I think I saw about a dozen 5 pointers and at least 2 dozen 4 pointers.  The irony of the entire event was I planned on going home after school on Friday to blog about a 5.7 we had about 70 miles away from the village last week.  Obviously, that earthquake got one-upped before I could write that blog.  Mike and I didn't feel the Anchorage earthquake, but several in the village did (FYI Anchorage is about the same distance from us as St. Louis from Doniphan).  What really kind of puts this earthquake in perspective is that Mike had time for someone to come to my room where we were chatting before school, ask if we felt it and tell us about it, then Mike went upstairs to his office and called district office about 100 miles away where they were still shaking from the earthquake.

At our distance, we had no real damage (maybe a few new little cracks etc) from the earthquake, but an earthquake anywhere in Alaska always has the potential for serious damage here because of tsunamis.  Our tsunami warning system alerted immediately so we got to evacuate the school to our designated safe place on the upper road in the village at the base of the mountain.  Of course, we had snow and ice on the road from recent weather and it was raining as we were climbing up so it was extra slick.  The tsunami warning goes off automatically for major earthquakes, but I'm not sure what the cut-off range is - they didn't alert for the 5.7 last week.  They also have a buoy system in place to measure waves to detect tsunamis for warning purposes and help gauge the size, location, and timing of any tsunamis.  Then the Coast Guard also flies around to monitor the waves.  Using that information, they were able to cancel our warning early, so we only had to stand outside on the side of the mountain, with no shelter for two hours instead of three.

To add to the fun, we had every dog in the village with us.  Some were friendly, but others wanted to fight with each other making it a bit dangerous for our kiddos.  Then the siren went off every 12 minutes and I swear it lasted the entire 12 minutes so that there was no break - at least that's how it felt.  My kitty was not happy about any part of the whole situation.  The siren already had her stressed out, then her terrible mother had to scoop her out of her safe and cozy dresser drawer to shove her into a carrier and take her for a ride up the side of the mountain too.  Needless to say, I was in the doghouse.  When I brought her back home, I gave her some salmon and all has been forgiven.

I stole this picture from https://earthquake.alaska.edu/earthquakes .  It shows the earthquake activity in Alaska over the past couple weeks.  If you go to the website, it also has a listing from the most recent. I don't really have a way to mark our location on the picture, but we're in the middle of that blog.

Water Works

Water Works is often used to refer to plumbing, it's even used as the title for that specific public utility card in the game of Monopoly.  During the last couple weeks, that phrase has become a bit of an misnomer in Nanwalek.  Can you really call it water works if the water doesn't work?  Here's a little timeline of our water fiasco.


Friday Night (Nov 12): The water line that runs through the creek and has been exposed for a couple years, finally has an accident and gets busted.  The water is still running, so it's not a cause of concern yet.
Saturday morning: Got a quick shower in after a morning run on the runway - little did I know it would be my last for a while.
Saturday evening: Increasing loss in water pressure until we have no water left in teacher housing.  We also got our first snow, so I scooped all the snow off of the porch with a dust pan to melt in a bucket for future use.
Sunday morning: The village does the best with the materials they have on hand for the problem (a clamp and a bunch of tape) and does a temporary patch job.
Sunday afternoon: We have water!  I think about doing laundry, but am nervous because the water pressure is still low so I decide to wait.
Sunday evening:  We have no water.  Crap!  Forget laundry, I should have showered when I had the chance.  Text Mike (who is about to get on a plane in Arizona) to let him know and get an idea of what to do about school the next day.  Take some pictures of the pipe in question, e-mail them to district office and wait for word back.
Sunday night: No word on school yet, so assume there will be school and use my melted snow to shampoo my hair and get a rough bath.
Monday morning: Still no water in the house and I'm convinced the water coming out of the faucets at school is only emptying out the pipes in the building.  Just in case, I save all of the water in milk jugs, when I check for water.  If we don't have any more water, I will be very sad that I ran good water down the drain.  School starts and Mike returns to take over the problem.  He spends the next two days on the phone dealing with it.
Monday afternoon:  Send kids home early.  The Borough (our version of a county) decides what part is needed and agrees to buy it and send it over on the plane on Tuesday.
Tuesday morning: No school - surprise!
Tuesday noonish: The barge shows up with it's load of treasures for the community.
Tuesday early afternoon: The plane company calls to say they have the part and will send it over on the next flight.
Tuesday late afternoon: The plane circles the runway, does not land, and flies back to Homer.

After the rough fix Sunday morning

Tuesday later afternoon: We call to ask about the plane and they say they cannot land on the runway with the barge on the beach.  Of all days for the barge to be on time, it picked today!
Tuesday evening:  It gets too dark for the plane to leave before the barge is finished.  The part will be on the first flight in the morning.
Wednesday morning: No school.  We get the kids ready to leave for a Middle School basketball tournament.  I never thought I would see the day that I would be excited about getting to take a shower in a middle school locker room.
Wednesday afternoon: We fly out and the part gets put on the broken pipe.  The community has water and I am headed to a locker room shower and looking forward to every second of it.
Wednesday late afternoon:  In another part of town, workers driving pilings in for a new building puncture an underground water line.  No water, again.  Community scrambles and puts together a quick fix.
Thursday morning: They have school
Thursday evening: Quick fix quits.  No water, no school Friday.
Friday: Finally, water is on and stays on!!

Fingers crossed, it will stay that way.

A little video showing the rate of water loss right after the rough fix.  It got much worse as the day progressed.

Winter Games

Winter is a cat.  Of course, I would be able to find a similarity between anything and a cat if I tried, but in this scenario, I think it really is a suitable analogy.  First, it sneaks up on you out of nowhere and pounces with great ferocity.  While you're still reeling from the attack, it runs back in the bushes and hides out for a while.  Then, when you've decided it has given up and gone home, it sneaks out and smacks you on it's way back into some other bushes to hide.  It's like we are winter's mice and it's going to tease and play with us until we don't know if it's coming or going and give up in exhaustion.  I know that seems a little dark, but hey, so is winter (pardon the pun).

If we're talking about sunlight, winter is in full-swing.  I'm already apologizing to the sun for all of the negative thoughts I had this summer and am begging it to return early.  However, if you're just looking at the weather, it either doesn't know if it's coming or going, or is playing a very vicious game of cat and mouse.  Our fall temperatures lasted far longer than normal.  We were somewhere around a month behind Doniphan getting the first frost of the season.  But, when the frost came, it pounced and brought really cold temperatures all at once.  There was no gentle transition from fall to winter, just a "Bam! Here I am! What do you think of that?!"  We had highs in the low 30s with high winds making it feel even colder for about a week, and then it was back to the upper 40s like that frigid week never happened.  Then, it crept in and dropped a baby snow on us early in the evening.  It was big wet flakes that only built up because it came down so heavily.  By morning the temperatures were up and there was absolutely no trace of any snow left.  (There wasn't any trace left on my porch as soon as it stopped snowing because I scooped it all into a bucket to melt so that I would have water - but that's a very long, yet to be finished story.)  Now we are back in the 40s hanging out like nothing ever happened while Missouri got tons of snow!!!  This is not fair.  I'm not sure who I need to lodge a complaint with about this cruel irony, but I will have a strongly worded letter waiting once I figure out where to send it.  I wonder what Terry Wood is up to these days?  He may be a good place to start.

Teacher in Charge

I'm sure many have heard me say I have no desire to be a principal.  I have never had a desire to be a principal.  I sometimes question the wisdom of getting my master's degree in admin when I don't want to be a principal.  So, who did my principal decide to leave in charge while he was living it up in Arizona?  This girl.  Not only did I not get to go to the super education conference in a beautiful resort, I got to be the go-to person for all of the problems in the building.  A week being in charge has had no effect on my feelings about being a principal, except to reinforce them.

To begin with, we were already short staffed.  On a normal day, we have five regular classroom teachers, one native language teacher, and me as the sped teacher and three approved substitutes.  Our custodian resigned the week before so I started the week with no custodial staff.  Two of our five teachers went on the trip to Arizona thus taking up two of the three substitute teachers.  The third substitute came back from a trip to the doctor with instructions to do nothing for 45 days.  After covering the two teachers out for the trip, we had no substitutes.  On Wednesday, one of the three remaining teachers had to attend a training, but we had no subs to call so we were scrambling throughout the day to keep her class covered.  At the end of the day, though, we could all take a deep breath and go home feeling satisfied because we had made it all work.  Job well done.  Then Thursday happened.  Two of my three remaining teachers called in sick.  We had no substitutes to call.  Then, one of the scheduled substitutes did not show up.  Summary of all of those numbers: I had four teachers out of the building with only one substitute in the building.  We were really scrambling to make that day work, but we did and all was well with the world.

Until the weekend.  Then we had a water issue that put the school and half the village with no water.  So I'm stuck texting Mike and sending pictures trying to figure out if we can have school on Monday with no water in the building.  When Mike's plane landed Monday morning, I greeted him with a hug and said, "I'm glad you're back, and it has nothing to do with liking you." 

A is for apple . . . and Arizona

Nanwalek is an Apple school so we have all kinds of technology and toys.  Every student has an ipad, every staff member (included aides) has an ipad, and teachers have macbooks that somehow have to learn how to share a classroom with their inferior cousins, the regular, non-apple computers.  We also have a couple regular Mac desktop computers (or whatever Apple calls them) and a few super cool little gadgets called spheros or something that look like a ton of fun.  Every year we have a chunk of funding provided to purchase apps and also get on-site visits several times a year from Apple staff to help with any issues and provide training on how to use all our great toys for learning.  Our kids have done some pretty amazing things with this stuff.  It's pretty nice!

When I think of Arizona, I don't usually think of apples, though.  I don't usually think of any vegetation when I think of Arizona, actually.  I'm sure this is a bit unfair to Arizona, but it is a desert.  Apple, the computer company, though, doesn't seem to mind the desert thing, so that's where they decided to have their education conference.  Mike and a couple other teachers got to attend since we're an Apple school and had a ton of fun, so I hear.  I was not invited to the party.  Mike got to go through another Apple school and discuss some of the things their doing with the technology and then attend the conference where they had all kinds of fabulous PD for everyone.  He also spent a large part of his time sending me way too many pictures the resort and conference and their fantastic meals - grrr!  So while I'm looking at just how fabulous everything in Arizona was, I'm left behind as teacher in charge to deal with any snags that came along.  Bigger GRRR!  That adventure, however, is another blog entry all in it's own.  When I get a chance to get the pictures off of my phone, I will post all of the pictures my little stink bug sent me so that you just how onery he was.  GRRR!

Halloween Festivities

This last week has been very busy, being the week of Halloween.  Halloween is a big deal in the community.  I haven’t done an official survey, but I would venture to guess half my students or more like Halloween more than Christmas. We started the festivities with the annual Halloween Carnival last weekend.  Teachers and community members all had booths with games or food for everyone to enjoy.  The basketball team ran concessions and the jail, where you could send anyone to the slammer for $1.  I did some time there myself and “carved” my name in the wall (they put up a piece of paper for all of the inmates to sign).  The kids could also play hallway bowling, pin the bow tie on Mr. Bones, a cakewalk, basketball, frog toss (don’t worry, the frog wasn’t real - no frogs were harmed at the carnival) and then there was my game.  I am not creative so I searched the internet for fall festival ideas.  I found a ping pong tic tac toe game that I thought would be fun.   We quickly decided getting three in a row was unreasonable so we just considered getting the ball in one of the nine cups a win.  Since there was no three in a row element, when I tried to explain the game, most of the parents said “Like beer pong?”  Leave it to my luck to find a way to inadvertently bring a drinking game to a school function.

We then had trick-or-treating Wednesday evening.  Mr. Crain made an announcement in the morning letting the kids know that trick-or-treating ended at all of the teachers’ houses at 9:30.  Several teachers expressed their appreciation, because the kids really get into their trick-or-treating.  A few of the kids brought the cutsy little pumpkin buckets for their candy, but most used their backpacks or pillow cases.  The nolstagia in me loved the pillow cases but I know it was more about practicality.  The cute little buckets aren’t nearly large enough to hold all of the candy they would get.  I saw a couple backpacks that were almost full by the time they got to us.  Nanwalek does this trick-or-treating business right!  So much so that I was happy to have parent teacher conferences on Thursday and Friday instead of school.  I’m hoping they have depleted much of their candy supplies over the long weekend and the sugar rush is over by tomorrow morning.

DJ Bones rocking it out with the disco lights!

Fall, Kind Of

With the rainy season comes lots of rainbows,
apparently there's not enough room for them all.

It's sort of fall now.  The weather has been warmer than usual for this time of year.  Our high for today was 51 and, while our lows have gotten into the 30s, we haven't had a frost on the ground yet.  Bede just got it's first dusting of snow Monday - I will take a picture as soon as I can catch it not hiding behind a shroud of clouds.  Six years ago, we had our first snow on the ground, not just in the mountains, by Halloween.  We only have a few days left to see if this year will follow the pattern.  The rainy season has arrived, but it was late to the party as well.  We now have more rainy days than dry ones, but it took a while for that to happen. 

Fall in Alaska is definitely different from fall in Missouri.  We don't have deciduous trees in the village to enjoy the changing of the colors, but there are some aspens and birches outside of the village that are pretty - for a two week window.  If you don't get out of the village in that window, you miss seeing the leaves change color.  There isn't as much variety in the colors that we have in Missouri, either.  On a really good year, Missouri will have bright reds and yellows, and brown leaves.  Here, all of the large plants turn yellow, with only a few little plants turning the pretty reds.  Then, they lose their leaves very quickly and now it is just wet and gray and will stay that way until May.  

But wait, there's more.  It doesn't show up well in the picture,
but there's actually a fourth rainbow coming up to make two
V rainbows sets.  Does that make it a double double?

 

Fall berries.  I forget what they're called.  According to the
internet they're edible, but I haven't been brave enough to try.

We get some pretty spectacular sunsets
when the rain stops enough for the sun
to shine.

 

A little bit of fall color, but not much.  The red plants are only
a few inches tall.

 

Seagull swarm!  Anytime the seagulls are around, I always
ask them not to poop on me.  I'm pretty the risk of that
happening was very high on this day.

More seagulls swarming.  There are only
a few left in the village now.  Most have
already moved on for the winter.

 

 

 

Alaxsxa

Last week we had a theater group present for the school and community.  They weren’t able to do the full show because of time restraints (the flew over, set up, performed, tore down, and flew out in one day) and the issues that come with having to bring anything you want to use for the performance on a plane.  Instead, they performed select sections, showed recordings of previously performed portions, and gave brief descriptions of omitted segments.  Sometimes, you have to get creative to make things work out here.  The play was titled Alaxsxa after the name the native Alaskans gave the land before Russians came.  The play was an intermingling of Alaskan history and the personal stories of two of the actors, an army brat coming to Alaska and an Alaskan native from the same community.  As they went through the stories they were able to share the different perspectives and discuss some difficult topics and issues within Alaska.  At the end of the play, they had an open forum discussion with the community and then our seal dancers performed a seal dance, a sea-gull dance and another super cool dance that I don’t know what it’s called.  We really enjoyed watching the dancers and Mike looked like he enjoyed joining then when one of our middle school students pulled him up to join the group.  Unfortunately, my camera and I are having some conflict about how it’s handling what it thinks are low light situations so I don’t have any good pictures of that part of the dance.

PFDs

Thursday PFDs began direct depositing into accounts of Alaskan residents.  You are probably asking yourself "What the heck are PFDs?"  Well, you may have heard people say things like "They pay you to live in Alaska."  While that's not really accurate, PFDs are the source of that common misconception.  When Alaska discovered oil, they came into a nice chunk of change and the problem of what to do with it.  The state decided to use part of the funds for state improvement projects like roads and decided to set aside a portion of the proceeds to invest.  The Permanent Fund was created to manage that process.  They began investing in various things (stocks, real estate, etc) and actually invested so well that there have been years the state has generated more income from the Permanent Fund than from oil production.  By 1980, they had done well enough to decide to give some of the proceeds from those investments back to Alaska's residents.  Thus begun a tradition that is probably bigger than Black Friday.


Every October, Alaskan residents receive their PFDs and have to decide what to do with that extra money.  Dividends typically range between $1000 and $2000 per resident, and children count.  So if you are a married couple with four kiddos, you are looking at getting somewhere between $8000 and $12,000.  We will not qualify for permanent funds for another two years.  You have to be a resident for a full calendar year, beginning January 1st, before you can apply the following year.  If you move here January 2nd, you gotta wait.  You also cannot receive dividends if you were incarcerated during the year either.  I guess the state can't be sure you would have remained a resident had you had a say in where you lived.


Since the dividends bring a large sum of money to Alaskan families the same time every year, there are PFD sales and promotions everywhere!  I would venture to say these PFD sales generate more income for Alaskan businesses than Black Friday sales.  The grocery stores are crazy busy, included the village grocery store.  (Have I mentioned lately how much I already dislike shopping?)  The village runway was busy all day Friday with people leaving the village to go shopping, mostly taking trips to Anchorage.  Attendance at school will probably be lower next week because those families will still be out taking care of their errands.  PFDs are such a big deal in Alaska, they are actually the number one issue in the gubernatorial election this fall.  Now, if I could just get voter registration to realize my polling place is in the wrong fly-in village and that fly-in village is around  250 miles away from mine as the crow flies, I might be able to get to vote in that election.

One of many magazines and fliers advertising
PFD sales.  Totally bigger than Black Friday!

Strange Mathematics

In math class we learn that you can't add apples and oranges.  They are two different things, thus unlike terms.  Alaska would like to challenge this mathematical theory.  Here fish = bears.  Since the fish are beginning to die in pretty big numbers, the bears are coming down to the creek to feast on their finned friends.  Mike has set his game camera out and checks it regularly.  He's trying to stay on a weekly schedule, but has found himself battling with the desire to check after only a couple of days.

The bears have brought with them a few "only in Alaska" moments.  I have the bears to thank for the best tardy excuse I will probably hear in my career.  We had a parent call to say their kids would be late for school because a bear was in the yard so they couldn't leave the house.  We have also had to have an announcement at the end of the day to warn the kids to be careful on the way home because they had seen a bear on the north end of town.  We seem to have a mamma bear who has gotten lost.  Instead of hanging out by the creek to eat fish, she is hanging out by the dump to eat trash.  She has two cubs with her so the community doesn't want to put her down if they can avoid it.  We are hoping when they hibernate this winter, they will forget their source of tasty tidbits.

Hey!  What's this think doing on my tree?

"Who's a pretty bird?  I'm a pretty bird!  Oh, I'm sorry.
Were you expecting a bear picture?"
The seagulls have replaced the squirrels from back home for
triggering the game camera.

Fishy, Fishy!

Mike with a Silver salmon at First Hole

Every year, the salmon begin making their way back to the streams of their birth.  They will fight the good fight to get up that stream, regardless of the obstacles, so that they can spawn and bring new little salmon into the world.  As this process begins, their bodies also begin to change.  Their bodies will start to change color with the meat getting softer with the color progression.  When they have spawned, they die.  It's not a quick death, though.  They really start to decay before they die.  I've seen salmon that were completely white with flesh soft enough it looks ready to start falling off the bone and still very slowly swimming around.  It seems like a very sad, cruel circle of life.

Me holding one fillet from that salmon

The salmon typically begin coming up the creek in June and will continue through October.  The creeks have been very full of salmon for a while and they are now starting to die in pretty big numbers.  Their smell makes trips up the valley a little less pleasant this time of year, but the bears seem to like it anyway.  With there only being the two if us, it didn't take a lot of fishing to get our winter's worth of fish for the freezer.  The fact that they will die pretty quickly anyway does make me feel a little better about taking them out of that cruel circle of life, but not enough to keep me from making an idiot out of myself.  We were down at the lagoon on low tide when I saw a beautiful male red salmon struggling to get upstream in water that was only a couple inches deep.  He didn't appreciate my efforts to help and fought me the entire way, but I scooped him up and carried him across a good sized stretch of dry land to get to a deeper fork in the stream.  I then held him upright in the water until he regained the energy to keep himself straight in the stream.  I'm sure the local guys fishing out of their canoes in the lagoon were shaking their heads at what they saw, but that's okay.  That fish may only have a few days left in him, but I did what I could to make them the best they could be.  Mike is still trying to decide whether or not he should claim me.

Salmon swimming upstream

They just keep coming

Stepping Out

All work and no play makes for . . . a very tired person.  We've both been so busy with work that we haven't had much time to do anything else.  Eventually, though, every girl has got to get out.  I'm not a normal girl, though, so you're not going to see me begging for a fancy dinner or movie.  If I'm stepping out, I want to go out, like literally - outside.  We were finally able to find a little time to run up to First Hole and up to Christopher's cabin.  We haven't been able to spend a whole lot of time up there, but it's been nice to get outside and enjoy the beauty God has created for us.  I was able to snap a few pictures and we were able to put a little food in the freezer with our trips.  Mike caught some salmon and I picked some blueberries.  The bears are being little pigs, though, so they didn't leave a lot of berries behind.  It's like they're trying to put on weight or something.  It won't be long, though, and they'll be heading down to the creek to get some dying salmon.  So, before we were done, we also put out a game camera.  Hopefully we'll have some pictures of bears to show soon!

One tasty tidbit missed by the bears!

My bowlful of berries - it's not much but I can make
some muffins and pancakes.

Moss in the sunshine.

Watermelon berries!  They don't really taste like watermelon.

Various seaweeds and kelp washed up on the beach.

The lagoon at high tide.

We've had beautiful weather for the past
several weeks!!

First Day Blessing

Being from the south, I'm very accustomed to religious beliefs finding their way in the school one way or the other.  Up until a few years ago, our school year officially began with prayer before the back to school staff breakfast.  We've also always had a group of strong Christian leaders in our student body to share their faith in the school.  I am very much missing the daily morning announcement "FCA would like to invite everyone to join them for prayer in the Senior hallway." I don't miss feeling the need hurry to get in and out of the staff bathroom before they prayed (I always felt like I was disrespecting their prayer time), but I do miss that being a part of my school's daily routine.

The community here would fit well in the Bible Belt with their own faith practices.  Attendance is typically lowest for the school during the week before and the week after Easter because so many students are in church.  I think that's a pretty nice problem to have.  So, of course, they are going to start the school year out ensuring they have God's blessing, figuratively and literally.  A community member prayed with our students before the school day began.  Then Father surprised us with a visit to bless the school building itself, one room at a time.  Then students and teachers who wished to be blessed lined up so that he could sprinkle holy water on them and bless them each individually.  With that start, I'm pretty sure it's going to be a good year.

Barging In

A smaller barge that lives in Nanwalek.  It's owners also
own one of the stores so it makes a lot of grocery runs. 

The Helenka B fully loaded.  There's another small propane
truck hiding on the other side of the large truck.  You can also
see a semi-trailer behind the big propane truck (they used the
same truck to pull them both off).  And someone somewhere
just got a nice new minivan!

Anyone who followed our trip to Alaska several years ago is familiar with the Helenka B.  She's the former World War II minesweeper, turned commercial barging vessel I talked about in "De Barge, de Barge."  She's not, however, the only barge to service the community.  Being a community on the water, Nanwalek is very familiar with barges.  In fact, there are a couple who call Nanwalek home. They are much smaller than the Helenka B, but definitely have some advantages.  If you're bringing stuff over on the smaller barges, you pretty much only have to wait on the weather.  The drivers are pretty flexible and will usually make things work around your schedule when the weather allows them to.  The large barge (that's fun to say) doesn't have to wait on the weather, but it comes when it's ready.  If it doesn't have enough of a load for the owners to consider it worth the time and energy, it doesn't come, regardless of your sense of urgency.

They have to help the big trucks get up off of the beach.

The smaller barges can also be a little pricier, typically starting at $600 a trip and going up from there.  The same load may cost $1000 on the smaller barge and be as little as $200 on the large barge, but you have to be willing to work with its schedule.  Besides your sense of urgency, the size of your load will also determine which barge you choose.  If you're bringing over three propane trucks to fill up the propane farm, obviously you'll use the Helenka B.  She can hold all three propane trucks, another semi-truck trailer loaded down, the equipment necessary to pull those trucks off the boat and up the beach, and have room to spare for pallets of other miscellaneous freight.  She usually comes to the village about 3 or 4 times a year with the propane trucks and whatever else anyone has managed to add to the load.  Regardless of what it's bringing, it's always fun to watch.