Looking for Alaska (61 page)

I started deleting again, and as they flew by—“Subject: The Fat and Cellulite Reducing System!”—I saw this: “Wow. Welcome to Alaska.” I retrieved it from the Trash, and it was from a Dean Cummings, a teacher in a small Eskimo village named Deering. I'd not heard of Deering, but I found it in my
Alaska Atlas & Gazetteer,
page 132. It is much closer to Russia than to Seward, about 170 miles from Russian waters in the Bering Strait and Russia's first landfall, Big Diomede Island. It's a bit over thirty miles south of the Arctic Circle, about 125 miles northeast of Nome, and 536 air miles from Anchorage. Of course there is no way to drive a car there.

I read this Dean Cummings's E-mail, [email protected].

Peter Jenkins! I haven't heard that name for several years. I live in a small, remote Eskimo village in Alaska for going on three years now. I teach grades 4, 5, and 6 in a coastal village of 150 people.

But before all that, let me tell you where I know you from. I went to school in Florida, at University of Central Florida. Just before I graduated, my buddy Damon and I drove across the U.S. in my Chevy. We spent three months with vague plans of going to the Grand Canyon. But at each stop along the way, we met people who would recommend a new place to us, and almost without fail, we'd take their advice.

Incidentally, one of the hottest tips we received was from a guy in Nashville. We were visiting my uncle Harry in Franklin, TN, and we met this guy in a music store in Nashville. He showed us his scars from the sun dance ceremony at Rosebud Indian Reservation, then told us to go see Rex Toulusee at the Havasupai Reservation on the south rim of the Grand Canyon. But that's a whole 'nother story in itself …

Anyway, when we returned home three months and 17,000 miles later, my roommate Jay gave me your book to read. He said, “Hey, man, this dude reminds me of you.” So I read your book
A Walk Across America.
I enjoyed it immensely. I also learned from it.

Six months later, I finished college and stayed around for three more months to take a photography class and save money. Then, it was off to Alaska, going for broke all the way to the Arctic Circle.

So tonight, when I heard your interview on APRN [the Alaska Public Radio Network], I knew I had to write to you. I'm at the school where I work. This place is amazing. Like yourself, I enjoy a place more for the people I meet and the relationships I discover than for the awe-inspiring natural beauty it holds. We have more than our share of both!

Good traveling while you are in Alaska. If there is any way I can help you while you're here, let me know, and I look forward to hearing of your travels. Dean Cummings.

Dean sounded legitimate. I'd been hoping to meet some teachers in Alaska. I'd heard all kinds of stories about teachers and their adventures and misadventures. Often Alaskan dreamers from the outside, from Florida or Ohio or Texas or wherever, get a job teaching in some radically isolated Native village in the Aleutians or in the bush. Some bring the “I'm going to save them” attitude, a sun-lit vision of “noble savages” in a village that they can save from their primitive state. More than one teacher with a contract has landed in a village and never gotten off the plane. Many last only a year. I wondered what this Dean's story was, how naive a dreamer he was. He could not have come from an environment more the extreme opposite of Alaska—hot, paved Orlando, Florida, the home of the fantasy park. Alaska's a fantasy for many, and much of it is a park. I'll take Alaska, and so would Dean.

Later that night after I unpacked and hung out awhile with Rita, whose peaceful spirit I'd been craving on the road, I E-mailed Dean back. I just asked him to tell me about his Alaskan world. What I received, in a long E-mail, was an unexpected and illuminating journey through Deering's, and Dean's, year.

Subject:
It's cold up here.

Hey, Peter, thanks for writing back. Deering has 150 people in it, 45 of them are school age. The school here has four full-time teachers. Pat Richardson teaches pre-K thru third grade with about fifteen kids. She's been here for sixteen years or so. She spends summers in Oregon. Her husband also lives here in the winter. I teach fourth thru sixth grades with fifteen kids. I also coach the cross-country running team, the wrestling team, and the Native Youth Olympics team. Also, I'm in charge of various other activities and fund-raisers. My favorite one is the wrestling club, which is basically my whole class. We sell pop at basketball games and wrestle every once in a while.… Eric Smith teaches language arts, social studies, and shop to the seventh- to twelfth-graders. Michael O'Neal teaches math and science to the same group. That whole group is about fifteen kids, so they split them up into junior and senior high.

Deering is built up on a “spit,” right on the coast of the Kotzebue Sound, which is not far from the Bering Strait. It's tundra all around us, right out of the textbook. The people here subsist on seals and caribou and salmon. The fishing and hunting up here is incredible. Before I got here I'd done almost no hunting or fishing. The other day, Eric and I rode our snow machines up the river valley—Deering lies at the mouth of the Inmachuk River—and saw close to twenty-five moose. We have a resident herd of musk oxen. They were reintroduced to the Seward Peninsula, I think about twenty-five years ago. They have thrived. One herd lives just outside of town, less than ten miles usually. Two falls ago, one even ventured into town. We had to call Fish and Game. They sent a guy out with a tranquilizer. He shot the animal, then we (myself and four others) loaded him onto a front-end loader and carried him a mile out of town. He's alive and well still.

Last fall, the herd wandered onto the bluff just west of town and milled around the cemetery for about a month. They are definitely here to stay. My friend Diane spins qiviut, their insulative underhair, into yarn. People go out and collect it on the willow trees after they have rubbed it off there. I have a scarf made out of her yarn, and it is warm! (Just a little scratchy.)

Jim, the hunter, got two wolves last week. He hunts for a living. Spring, when the rivers open up, he takes his four-wheeler up and down the rivers, or he travels by boat. Last summer, he found a complete mastodon skull. In the past, he's found teeth, skulls of extinct bears and Ice Age bison, and even the skull of a saber-toothed tiger! He's always got some new discovery to show off.

The village is Native. With the exception of the teachers and their families, and one other guy, Charlie Brown, the maintenance man, everyone here was born in the area, grew up here, and mostly, they don't plan on ever leaving. So, yes, I have seen some incredible things, and I feel very fortunate to have spent the last three years of my life here. I don't have any immediate plans to go anywhere, either. Still so much more to see.

Before I even finished the E-mail I got on the phone and called the airlines. There were flights from Anchorage to Kotzebue, and then I could get a six-seater into Deering. I read on.

Just yesterday, I went exploring and discovered some amazing geologic features. I traveled about forty miles south of town on my snow machine in twenty-below weather. The source of the river is twenty miles out of the village, and I'd never been beyond that before. What I saw back there floored me. Treacherously deep ravines, and magnificent lookouts. My plan for this winter is to make it as far back as Imuruk Lake. It's a large lake, over five miles across in both directions. I want to camp back there. First, though, I want to become familiar with the country between here and there. Getting lost is a very real concern here, with distances being as great as they are and normally no one around.

I made it to a landmark known as Asses Ears. It was named by the turn-of-the-century gold miners. You see, after the golden beaches of Nome tapered off, the gold miners kept trekking north. They came to Deering, then known as Ipniatchak by the Natives. The gold miners established a port here and did quite a job of exploring. The relics they left are reason enough to visit Deering. Three bucket-line dredges still stand at various places on the river. A whole ghost town of cabins still remains, and its history is recent enough that some Deering old-timers can still recall working there.

You never know what will come over the computer via E-mail, and who's sending it, but I was impressed that this Dean Cummings, a teacher originally from Florida, seemed to have intimate knowledge of life in a small Native village as it revolved around the school, and even more around subsistence.

This time of year is caribou and wolf and wolverine hunting time. The limit of caribou is six per day, and many is the sled you'll see returning from the backcountry piled high with meat. The lifestyle here is still very traditional, so the men hunting and returning with a sled full of caribou are probably supplying meat for several families at a time. Later in the winter, as the days get longer, people will be ice fishing for shee fish. These are twenty-to-forty-pound whitefish that even kids can catch. Last year, we took about a dozen kids camping in subzero weather to catch shee fish, and every single kid caught at least one!

With spring come the breakup and the return of the birds. We all enjoy catching ducks and geese. The ocean doesn't break up until after June. It's still safe for snow machine travel even after the snow has melted and grass is greening and spring flowers are visible.

When the ocean does break up, the boats start coming out. Seems like the favorite season here is oogruk hunting time.
Oogruk
is the native name for bearded seals. These behemoths can weigh close to a thousand pounds. I went out with a couple of friends last year looking for oogruks. We took this flimsy, eighteen-foot aluminum skiff far offshore into the ocean and thick ice flows. We'd motor up to a solid-looking piece of ice and cast an anchor up. Then we'd all climb onto the floating island of ice and find a high spot to look around from. That was a truly memorable day in my life.

By this point, I had decided I was definitely heading to Deering. I took a break from reading and E-mailed Dean, thanked him for his fantastic communication, and asked when would be a good time to visit. I read on.

One summer I didn't leave. I stayed in Deering. Even though it's June, we're still riding snow machines. I went camping with a guy named Subluk Barr, his wife, Dodo, and his brother, Connie. We rode snow machines out onto the ocean and down the coast about thirty-five miles. Once we left Deering, there were no other people. We camped out at the mouth of Cripple Creek. Then we inflated a Zodiac with a nine-horse engine to get to the mouth of the Goodhope River. That's where the fun really happens, because this time of year, all the migratory birds are returning and building nests. For generations, the birds have fed the people up here. We tramped around on the island carrying shotguns and plastic grocery bags. Eggs. That's what we were after. The four of us walked until our legs were sore, wading through deep muskeg and swamp, and collected eggs from the nests of seagulls, geese, and eider ducks. The goose eggs especially were a find. You could recognize the nests by the down, and when you put your fingers down inside, the warmth held in there was just amazing. It really felt like there had recently been a blaze in that spot; the earth the nest was on was still warm. That down is such an amazing insulator. We stayed out there three nights and just returned to Deering on Monday, June—what was it?—the seventh, I guess.… Foxes came close to our camp. Moose could be seen just across the creek, and the sun never set. It won't until July 10. The ride on the ice was pretty hairy. It's getting late in the season. Subluk and Connie kept telling me that their dad was known for traveling in these kinds of conditions, and they had learned from the master. I did feel safe, even crossing big cracks, with black water down below. Just give it some gas and close your eyes! Subluk is fifty-one, Connie is in his forties, and they really have been doing this all their lives. It was Subluk and Dodo's twenty-eighth wedding anniversary too. We ate lots of eggs while we were there, and Dodo plucked two brants and made soup too. Last night, I roasted a Canadian goose. Tasty!

If someone had told Dean at the fraternity parties at the University of Central Florida that he'd write an E-mail like this about his Alaskan experience, he would never have believed it. Alaska is bigger than most any dream; like mine, when his dream came true, reality was much better than the dream. What a rarity, but that's Alaska. I read on.

Late summer is fishing time. The salmon are coming up the rivers. We mostly see seine nets here. My first year here, I went out with five women. (Fishing is women's work.) We pulled in about three hundred salmon in one netful. My friend Omie and her sister Eckie showed me how to use an ulu to filet the fish and hang them to dry. After three nights of backaching labor, I finally cut all of my share of the fish, and I ate good for months. Also, even though I could never quite meet their standards of ulu proficiency, I did learn enough to turn heads on the riverbanks in more urban areas.

Fall time is moose hunting. Eric and I got one last September. I sent a hundred pounds or so to a sausage place in Anchorage. That's been one of my staples this year. Not to mention the steaks and roasts and soup I've been eating!

Also during fall, people pick berries by the bucketful. First, blackberries and salmonberries. They call salmonberries upiks. Then, blueberries, and finally, cranberries. Also during this time, various other plants are harvested. I have a friend here named Millie. She goes “trading.” Apparently, it's an ancient tradition. The mice on the tundra gather the roots of the mussu plant. They store these in their holes. Well, Millie cuts up vegetables such as carrots and celery and goes looking for the mouse caches. She knows just how to spot them and distinguish them from the other nondescript little rises on the tundra. She cuts open the mouse cache and takes the mussu, leaving her vegetables in trade, always careful to cover the hole just how she found it.