Arctic Adventures

Bubba was Finally Caught Here Fishy, Fishy Checking the Ice Around Holes From Kayla: One of the high school classes learned how to make atikluks this year. One girl made one for our new baby. It was so sweet! I told her we will cherish it forever: Atikluk From Brett: After almost a month of beautiful weather the weather turned crappy. It has been warm now for the past week. The daytime highs around 40 and then gets down to around freezing at night. Yesterday it started to rain when we were out fishing. I am hoping that I will be able to fish in open for trout before we leave. Once the river blows out I am not sure how long it will take to go back down. Some students visited from Juneau as part of the Rural Alaska Exchange program. They set under the ice for one of their activities. I went and checked it with one of the teachers on Monday. It had a bunch of whitefish in it. I decided to take some and try to make "Panaaqtuk" (dried or half dried whitefish), and try my han...

We have been making the most of the beautiful days. The sun has been shining and the temperatures are rising! The sun is setting after 11 and rising before 7! It won't be long before the ice is too soft to fish from and the ground is turned into a large puddle. I've had lot's of tired kids in class, as their "hours are getting mixed up." They are staying up to late with the light. (There is a village curfew-all elementary students are supposed to be in at 9:30 and high school by 10) The snow is starting to melt! The temps have risen to the 30s during the day, lately. ~with my hand knitted headband, made by one of my loving students! Notice the open river behind me!

I went up to the school the other day for our "night of sewing." Velma has been teaching me how to make an atikluk, or traditional shirt/dress. She came running down from the gym area, "Oh my! Those kids put a hole through the gym door!" We went down to check it out and-"Surprise!"-ladies jumped out from the corner. There were about 25 people there, including some elders that I don't really even interact with often. We sure had fun! I told them, "I've ever been to a baby shower like this one! Ladies on Noatak are crazy!" We sure laughed the whole evening. It was really sweet; Velma started off the evening with a little speech about me and how excited they were to have our baby here next year, with all of his/her "aanas, tattas, aunties, uncles and friends." She alked of the communication differences and said, "Maybe when grandma and grandpa come to visit, the baby will answer with eyebrows and they won't know...

Moose Creepin' Tomorrow is the last day of trapping. I hope I catch something. It's still freezing butt cold here. Woke up to -20 this morning. Johny Horton wasn't far off when he said, "It's springtime in Alaska and its forty below." It warms up nice during the day though. Skiing the River Loop Kayla with a Grayling One more Fish The whitefish were swimming right under the ice so if you leaned over the hole you could see them bite. Still no trout. Kayla wore all of my stuff out fishing. She forgot her ski pants at the school, my jacket was bigger, and my boots were warmer. Dinner

Rainbow around the Sun Went out pretty much all day on Saturday. Checked traps in the morning. After lunch set a couple more out for the last week of the season. Kayla had a work day but we went out fishing after she was done. We didn't catch any but it was still entertaining because if you laid down and stuck your head in the hole you could see all the fish. I think I saw a trout but it didn't bite. Kayla Trying to Hook One The whitefish are particularly light biters. Even though the fish were everywhere they were really hard to hook because they would just nibble and spit the hook right away. I was looking down the hole and trying to tell Kayla when to set the hook but we didn't manage to catch any. :( It was fun to get out fishing for a little while again. Sunset Over the River A Few Whitefish My Homemade Jigging Spoon

Last Tuesday Stan and I went on a moose hunt. We loaded up the sleds after work and took off towards the upper Eli and federal land of the Noatak National Preserve. Apparently there is a subsistence tag that you can fill if you didn't harvest a moose in the fall. I didn't get a moose in the fall so we were on our way. It is about a 25 mile trip which translates to about an hour ride by snowmachine. The ride was reasonably uneventful. Most of it was across the "flats" as it is called which is a wide open area between the Noatak river and the mountains. There are very few trees and very few hills, hence the name. We did see a set of bear tracks which is pretty early for here. We also saw a lot of wolf tracks but none of them seemed very fresh. We took a short break as we came over a rise overlooking the Eli. We couldn't see any moose from there so we headed into the trees down to the river. Stan had spotted a large heard of moose in the area a few weeks before when ...