Arctic Adventures

This weekend was the annual SIVU basketball tournament. SIVU means "the beginning" in Inupiaq. I believe it is in reference to the beginning of whale or seal hunting but I am not entirely sure. It also means the front of the boat. There were five men's teams and four women's teams. Teller, Buckland, Selawik, Kivalina, and Noatak. Every team played everybody once. It just happened to work out that the last games of the last night ended up being for the championship. It was Noatak verse Kivalina in mens and womens. The women won by seven in a low scoring tightly called game. Noatak held Kivalina to four points in the second half and the final was 41-34. Kayla is helping coach the womens team so she felt a little bit better that she was able to be here for the tournament. The mens championship was another close game. Noatak held a comfortable lead up to the fourth quarter but then Kivalina went on a run to start the fourth and Noatak couldn't recover. The final was...

Last weekend we traveled out to get our cute little Christmas Tree.  Our mode of transportation continues to be by foot or sled. We found it!  The trees that grow on the tundra are sparse looking-little Charlie Brown trees. Half the tree fell off when Brett cut it down. The sunset-at about 2:30~3:00 pm Notice our VHF radio in the background--we've got to be connected to the village!

This past weekend Noatak hosted the mixed 6 volleyball regionals. It's quite the event with teams coming from as far as Wainwright. The first and second place teams advance to states. There were 7 teams that attended. Pt. Hope, Kiana, Upriver, Selawik, Kivalina, Noorvik, and Wainwright as well as Noatak. The games were supposed to start on Thursday night but the weather was so bad that no planes were flying and only a few teams made it in. The weather on Friday was pretty bad too but a couple of teams managed to make it in the morning before the weather got bad again. Thursday nights games were canceled hoping that the rest of the teams would make it in on Friday. Two of the teams didn't make it in for the games on Friday so they had to forfeit their first games. It was a double elimination tournament so that meant that the teams that had to forfeit their first games couldn't lose or they were done. The teams finally ended up making it in on Saturday. Kiana and Noorvik had ...

Our Ride to the School Yesterday was the big feast at the school that most of the town attends to celebrate Thanksgiving and eat. First course consisted of Quaq, pronounced "coke" which is frozen fish. It was funny when we got to the school we saw about ten thirty gallon rubber maid totes full of frozen fish sitting outside the door. The whitefish was the first round. Students Passing out the Quaq I received a tail half of the whitefish. Apparently that is the better half because there are less bones. It is also the better half because that is where the "sivuks" (fish eggs) are. One of the ladies that was sitting next to me offered me some seal oil to dip my Quaq in. She also offered to help me cut my fish to. I politely declined saying that I wanted to try to do it. I struggled mightily and when she offered again saying that my fish was starting to melt I accepted her offer. Cutting up the Quaq I managed to eat most of my half as well as the sivuks. It isn't as...

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!  We just had a crazy week of weather.  After the cold, snow, and blizzards that Brett wrote about last week, it warmed up and RAINED.  The snow turned to mush, making the walk to and from school quite difficult.  We trudged through knee deep mush for 15-20 minutes.  Then the rain came and froze. So, the blizzard, then the rain had planes grounded for a few days.  All the sports events were cancelled last weekend, because no planes could get in.  People were stuck in Anchorage and Kotzebue, and, of course, all the mail got backed up.  I never quite appreciated how quickly mail comes to your house in the lower 48.  We have been waiting for a grocery order from Fred Meyer for weeks.  Our boxes are probably sitting in Kotzebue, just waiting for room on a flight.  Meanwhile, we have to try to improvise with what we have to make a dish for the "white Thanksgiving" on Friday. If you were tuned in last year, you remember the new Thanksgiving experience I ...

Weekly Panoramic We are finally getting some snow. We got about 8 inches yesterday and another 4 today. Blizzard warnings until Friday. The wind was gusting out of the south bringing in warm air full of heavy wet snow. When we arrived at the school the south facing sides of our bodies were caked with snow. It is funny how you get used to the temperatures so quickly. Lately the temps have been around zero. Yesterday morning when we walked to school it was about 30. I was sweating my butt off by the time we got to school. Moon Over Mountains One of the activities that was part of Inupiaq Days was Caribou cutting. Kyle and I got the hides. He wanted to tan them to try to make some leather things. I went to the school to help him stretch and scrape the hair off the hides. We wasted a lot of time trying to scrape the hides when they were still green. After the hides had dried some the hair came off the hides pretty easily. The hair is incredibly dense. It makes sense because the caribou nee...

These photos are courtesy of my friend, Alision. They are all from over a month ago, but I figured you would still enjoy them. Now the ground is covered in snow and the temperature is hovering around 0. October ice in the river. . . along with some fish-sicles. October frost from the playground. First frost behind the school. Our Beautiful New School Here's a picture of the "pit" where they always park the boats. This is where we walk to often. A view of the village from the plane. You can see the pit and the road from there to the village. Also the "airport," or airstrip. The daily Era flight Flight coming in August Noatak River The whale bone by the river, on the way to the store. August Tundra Fish-drying rack

Thursday and Friday of this week were Inupiaq Days at the school. The entire school takes two whole days to participate in native cultural activities. Some of the activities that the elementary kids participated in were, story-telling, trapping and survival skills, NYO (native youth olympics), beading, Eskimo dancing, Inupiaq language, whale hunting video, braiding and doughnut making. The high school students participated in a few other things including, net setting (under the ice), Atikluk making (hoodie type shirt that is often decorative), mitten making, caribou/fish cutting, niksik making (jigging stick), and native cooking. In the native olympics some of the games are high kick, finger pull, leg wrestling, wrist pull, and bull fighting. I was put in charge of trailing the Kindergarten class around all day. It was pretty funny on recess when one of the students came up to me and said, "Percy boxed me in the face and look!" He had lost one of his teeth. Anothe...

Weekly Panoramic It has been pretty uneventful around here the past couple of weeks. Fishing has really ground to a halt with most of the fishing holes freezing over. Caribou still haven't shown up. I still need to get an auger or spud for me to get serious about ice fishing. I did go to the the school shop this past weekend and manufactured a rough prototype geppu to use. Geppu I was able to get out and make an attempt, last weekend to fish the last little bit of remaining water that is left. I was frustrated to find the the main channel was frozen over in a few places (since then we have been able to cross on the Honda). Basically I ended up going for a long walk carrying my fly rod. There wasn't much of anything happening as far as the fishing went. I did find that it is not exactly bold to cross the ice upriver and walk downriver banking that there would be ice for me to cross somewhere downriver. Unfortunately for me there was not any ice for me to walk across. I was to la...

Our Smokehouse Last weekend Kyle and I tried our hand at fish smoking. We decided that we were going to try to fabricate our own little smokehouse and smoke some salmon. The week before this I went out fishing a couple times targeting salmon destined for the smokehouse. At this point in the year it is very hard to find fish that are in good shape. I ended cutting only 4 fish out of 20 some that I caught. A lot of the fish that are still alive are so moldy and deteriorated that they would not be fit for human consumption. (Although that phrase has a slightly different definition here.) I pulled one salmon out of the freezer. That was a fresh salmon caught earlier in the year. You can see the difference in the color of the flesh. The fresh salmon has a nice healthy darker orange look to it and the old salmon is a pale, sort of sickly looking color. Old Fish and Fresh Fish I think that we left the fish in the smokehouse for a little too long. Most of the pieces were pretty tough to chew....

Here are the pictures from our surprise "wedding reception" that I promised! We had no idea what was going on! The whole clan. Front row: Stan's parents, Doris, Darlene, Donna, Laura, Alision, Brett, Michael, Craig (principal); Second Row: Stan, John, Lori, Norman, Timm's parents, me; Back Row: Timm's Dad, Timm, Mark T. Caleb (Stan and Doris's son) with Timm Me, Alision, Lori, and Donna They even had a cake for us I was trying to make a deal with Brett. . . It didn't work. . . But we made peace