Fort Yukon - Full Day Visit 28 March

Walking to School
I walked to school on Wednesday. Brenda didn’t have a car as such things are quite expensive (more on that later). It was only a mile and I used to walk that distance every day twice a day back and forth from the University of Delaware. The biggest differences were the temperature (-25F), the road conditions (hard packed with snow spread with small traction stones), the bike paths (replaced by snow mobile trails), and I had 4 layers of clothes on. I had my laptop with my talk in my back pack and my camera in hand. I took pictures of the everyday things I saw on my walk to school; things one would normally see in a small rural village in Vermont: neighbors homes (see photos), the approach to main street (photo left), the post office, the radio station, the church, the state office, the country store (photos here and here), and the school (photo right). They were different in some ways, but in many ways there were so familiar to the things I’d see in my little town of West Hartford, Vermont. The more I walked around and talked with folks, the more I began to see a commonality between life in a rural Vermont town and that in an Alaskan village. Places like this don’t look pretty in the post card sense. The land is hard and structures are built to be practical, not pretty. My village has trailer homes with piles of junk cars in front so I was trying to see past the superficial.

The People
Just like in Vermont, folks are suspicious of outsiders. They have their communities, their traditions, their culture, and they like their privacy. They keep hush-hush on stuff that folks aren’t supposed to talk about. But most importantly, they are some of warmest loving souls you’ll ever meet. If you get to sit down and just talk with them about their lives, you’ll appreciate the emphasis they place on the important things in life. Brenda has spent several years in this village. I saw how the locals interacted with her. I could see that she really had earned a considerable amount of trust because of her open and honest form of communication and her love for the students – her tough love as she calls it. These universal impressions left a very warm feeling in me.

The Talks
As part of our outreach Robert and I each gave a one hour talk. I spoke about the SEDNA project and our efforts to understand the changes going on in the Arctic especially that the sea ice is thinner now and there are issues to consider that never had to be considered before - issues like the fact that less ice means more waves and more damage from storms. I also talked to these high-energy students about the fact that these changes will happen as they become adults and through their life time. I asked them to try to think of ways that they could make a difference and asked them to think of ways of channeling all that energy (and frustration) they have into solving one problem in a way that would make life in their village a better place to be.

Robert gave his talk about life in Vermont. He talked about all the things that were similar (hunting, fishing, snow mobiles, lots of trees, sports) and things that were different (maple sugaring). He tried to give them a flavor of what life is like in Vermont and how in many ways the rural lifestyle has a commonality that can be shared between Vermont and Alaska especially in the more rural locations.

Brenda said we did a good job. We had kept their attention for one hour each and she said that was a good measure of how well the talk was received.

Buying Goods
While Brenda was wrapping up her teaching after our talks, I went to the town store to get some supplies for her as she was limited in mobility with her broken leg. The store looked like a typical country store in Vermont and I had to keep reminding myself that I was not in Vermont. National public radio was on the PA system with highlights of the news. The shelves were stocked with a little bit of everything and they even had the 48” long fluorescent light bulbs that Brenda needed for her living room. It reminded me of the saying at Dan & Whit’s in Norwich, VT: “If we don’t have it, you don’t need it!” They had all the latest in technology including the computer screens and credit/debit card systems. The cost of things was the only thing that let me know this wasn’t Vermont. A bag of Doritos costs close to $7 because everything this time of the year comes in by airplane. Gasoline for snow mobiles and cars costs ~$4 a gallon and heating oil was in the same price range. These prices more than anything revealed the remoteness of the village.


Tribal Meeting Event
See Robert’s entry on the PolarTREC website for this incredible event.