Arctic Adventures

Sunrise I was catching up on my grading this weekend and a few of the assignments. We had a big unit test in reading. There was a questions about the mood that the setting of the story created, and to make it a little easier to understand, I said think about the feeling the setting creates. How does it make you feel? Well, one of my students took it very literally. He wrote, "I get a boring feeling when I read the story." Then, I was grading journal entries and one boy was writing about a hunting trip. He had include his feelings in his writing, so he wrote: "After we drove the boat to the shore, we saw the caribou trying to crawl away. My dad ran up to it and stabbed it in the neck. I felt strong because we had to carry the caribou to the boat." Weekly Panoramic

On Wednesday, we woke up to cold weather and, today, Sunday, we woke up to SNOW!  Snow here brings such excitement--it means caribou, moose, "hooking" (ice fishing), and snow machines.  The caribou are getting close.  I have had students out this week for subsistence leave.  If they go hunting or fishing for subsistence, they are excused from school.  We have a Spirit Week this week at the school, and Wednesday is "snow machine brand day."  That is the day that my kids are most excited for.  There is a big argument between Polaris and Artic Cat, and my class is split about 50/50.  One thing that is kind of neat here is that everyone "celebrates" Sunday, meaning that they do absolutely nothing on Sundays.  There is church 2 times, Sunday School, and Youth Group, but no one even thinks about work.  Here that means no one fishes or hunts either.  We were going out fishing one Sunday, because to us it's "fun."  One of the students called me and a...

If you're getting sick of the fishing post. . . here's one for you :) I had to take a trip to Kotzebue last week in order to take a test.  I flew down on Friday afternoon after school.  I stayed at a little bed and breakfast above a restaurant.  The room cost $200 a night and was the size of a shoebox, but it was clean, warm and friendly.  After I ate a yummy, greasy restaurant dinner, I walked to the AC Store.  The Kotzebue store is WAY bigger than the Native Store in Noatak, and Brett and I needed some food.  (It turns out, that with 2 people up here, we eat TWICE as much food, so the planning that got me through last year won't really work for this year.)  The food at the store is not any cheaper than the stuff in Noatak, though, and our "getting a few groceries" turned into a $300 spree.   The busy city of Kotzebue. Fall is here!  It was unseasonably warm for most of September, until Wednesday.  We stepped outside to a bitter 19 degrees.  The puddles were all...

I was going to title this post hunting, but then I decided I will wait until I actually shoot an animal before I use that title. The past couple of nights I have went out with John and Kyle looking for moose, caribou, or bear. John is a high school teacher here and Kyle is the husband to an elementary teacher at the school. I rode on the back of John's wheeler. I am pretty sore after two consecutive nights bouncing around on the back of a Honda. Tuesday night we went about five or six miles upriver. It has not rained for a while now so the trails are very good for riding on. Most of the trails are in dry river beds. When there has been a lot of rain the river beds are not dry and that makes it difficult or impossible to go very far on a four wheeler. We checked a few likely spots for moose but did not see anything until we came out to the main river channel. We stopped and looked around and Kyle had just started on the trail when what looked to be a cow stepped out of the willows a...

Early this past week in school there was a large bull moose that slowly circled half of the school before it took off in to the tundra. I happened to see the moose right before 5th hour. It was probably about a hundred yards away when I first saw it. It is hard to imagine how big these animals actually are. They are really tall too. When I got home from work that day I heard on the vhf that a high school-er had shot the moose down past the airport. Apparently he asked to use the bathroom and then never made it back to class. I guess sometimes playing hooky pays off! One of Many On the fishing side I finally managed to hook a number of Dolly Varden on Sunday. The first time that I hooked a lot of them in one day. This past weekend was beautiful weather. Mid sixties with bluebird skies, hard to beat. I was sweating my butt off on my walk to the pit to fish. Large Dolly Varden Same Dollies Kayla had to make a quick trip to Kotzebue this weekend to take a praxis test to be qualified to tea...

Rolend with a Salmon Sized Dolly Even though the fish in the photo above may not look that big, it is significantly larger than any of the "dollies" that I have caught to date. I would say that it easily surpasses the ten pound mark bordering fifteen pounds. It was a large fish. Bellyfull! No, this is not a spawning Dolly. When I cut this fish open this is what its stomach looked like. It was stuffed absolutely full of salmon eggs. Usually when I go fishing I don't like to wear my waders because it's a pain to wear them and a gun at the same time. So, to cross the river I try to find the shallowest spot and then I take off my shoes and socks and roll up my pants. On this fishing excursion I had one of my little fishing buddies, Justin, with me. Since the water is a little high right now I ended up soaking my pants to just above my knees. Justin ended up soaking his pants to his waist. The water has to be nearly freezing because it is so cold t...

This picture is courtesy of my friend Alision.  Her quote, "A couple that fishes together, stays together." I love my coworkers here!  The staff from the school held a surprise wedding reception for us tonight.  They had a nice dinner planned and even had a cake for us to cut.  They were concerned that we didn't get to save the top from our cake for our one year anniversary, since it was fake, so they gave us the top of the cake to save.  We were so surprised!  The party was really nice, and the company was splendid.  ( I will post pictures once I get them from Darlene). We got to enjoy the river for a little bit today.  It got pretty chilly and the fish weren't biting, so we weren't gone for too long, but it was nice to get out.  We walked down to the "pit," where everyone keeps their boats.  There were trout all over the place, but we didn't have much luck catching them.  Brett landed one on his fly rod early, and I hooked one later, but by that ti...

Trout I finally managed to land and photograph a trout, a decently larged size one at that. I decided that the "trout" are probably in fact Arctic Char but I am still not entirely sure. This fish is the only one that I landed but I hooked another and saw about 5 more. I went down to the channel by our house and saw one just idling near shore. I spooked it when I cast though and it took off. A little bit later I saw the same fish and then I looked closer and there were three more. This time I cast way upstream and over the fish. One of the smaller ones bit but... I didn't land it. I went upstream a little farther to where the current picks up a little bit. First cast I hook something that I thought was a salmon. It was a trout and it was fun to fight after fighting old salmon for the last two weeks. Salmon Navigating the Channel I also got to explore a lot more today. I walked to the main channel again today. It felt like I explored a lot today but I was in between boat h...

Sunrise I have still been fishing pretty regular. I haven't been able to explore as much as I would like too so it is a good thing that there are a lot of fish right by our house. Now that the salmon are dying off the whitefish and trout are starting to move in. A few whitefish I still have only managed to land only one trout. I am still not entirely sure what the "trout" actually are, if they are dolly varden or arctic char. The whitefish are all over in the river right by our house. The local strategy is to throw fish eggs out to chum the whitefish and trout. It works very well. Unfortunately when there are so many whitefish around they eat my yarn egg before the trout get a chance to. Apparently trout and grayling numbers are supposed to increase before ice up. It could be a lot of fun fishing if that is the case. My job at the school is going pretty well. The first two weeks I was in the high school for the entire day, but then my schedule changed so that I am in th...