The Flight
We went to the airport with bags in hand – half full with gifts for the visit (4 quarts of fresh maple syrup boiled the weekend before we left home by Jackie’s husband who owns a sugar maple farm, bottle of wine, 8 T-shirts with the logo that Brenda had helped design – her painting of SEDNA is in the logo). Jen told us the night before that it would be an interesting flight. Frontier Flying Service takes us up there on a small propeller plane that holds about a dozen passengers with the back third of the plane full of luggage for us and supplies for the village. The flight is only a half hour long but there are no roads to connect the village to anything else so everything has to come in by either aircraft or a couple of barges in the summer. Heading to the aircraft was interesting. Unlike most commercial flights, there was no security check in and in fact we were encouraged to wear any type of survival gear that we might have so I strapped my leatherman kit with flashlight to my belt buckle and put my mini med kit around my neck. Boarding the plane was like getting into a long narrow van. There was one seat on either side of an aisle. The pilot (who was also the steward) gave us our safety instructions by kneeling at the entry door (see photo) and telling us that we should locate the oxygen mask hatch by our elbow and how to use the exit over the wing. Despite many years of flying on commercial aircraft, I made it a particular point to listen very carefully to his instructions.
The Arrival
The flight was pretty uneventful but the arrival met us with that start of yet another adventure. We had received e-mail communication from Brenda (our host teacher) that she had slipped and fallen the week before and broken her leg. She insisted we come to visit anyhow and I thought it would probably be a good idea as we could help her out with basic needs given her state. The initial plan was that she would meet us at the airport with a friend to give us a lift. When we arrived, two groups got off the plane into vehicles standing by right on the runway with engines on keeping folks warm. We got off, they left, and we were standing there. The airport terminal was quite small (a one story shelter about the size of a modest cabin). It was a heated shelter and the temperatures were below zero so we thought that would be a good place to think about what to do next.
For the next 30 minutes we went through several levels of “what do we do next”. The fellow working at the airport said that Brenda had broken her leg and had gone to Fairbanks to get some more x-rays. After Robert and I got over the jaw drop from that information we started to think from first principles. Who are we coming to see?.... Brenda. Why are we visiting? ... For PolarTREC outreach. Where does she work? ..... The school. ... The SCHOOL! I looked around and saw a pay phone (thank goodness they still have such things). Next to it was a small pile of phone books. We located the one that said local directory of Fort Yukon. We found the number to the school and I dialed the pay phone. A funny answering machine came on so I left a message. Then I tried to call Brenda just in case. The same funny answering machine came on. I hadn’t been in touch with Brenda for a couple of days. We asked if we could use the office phone line to make an 800 dial-up computer call to check e-mail for messages. The link was too unstable but the attendant told us to make the phone call on his phone as the pay phone was acting funny lately. – Confusion in my brain -
After a few phone calls we slowly sorted out the reality of the situation. Brenda was actually still in Fort Yukon at the school (not Fairbanks). Through a few message relays she finally reached us (called us on that misbehaving pay phone) and told us the school was about a half mile down the road. A fellow was just coming in to pick up some supplies and offered a ride in his truck to the school. Things slowly returned to normal and we got back on course, shaky as the start had been.
The School
Except for the fact that the school was standing on stilts to keep it above the permafrost, it looked like a school you would see just about anywhere in the rural US. It was small but clean and tidy with a principal’s office and a note for guests to sign in upon arrival. The entry hall had the US and State flags prominently standing in close proximity to the glass case with all the sports trophies. It was a K-12 school with the little grades down one wing, middle school down another, and high school down a third. The principal told us to walk down to Brenda’s class and we headed right into an algebra class in session. After the huge hello and inspection and cast signing of her broken leg she set us to work one-on-one with the kids doing their math exercises. We did that for the remaining 3 classes that day.
School was only half days this week because it was spring carnival with dog races, snow shoe races, and the carnival queen and princess competitions. So after dropping off our gear at Brenda’s house we caught a ride down to the snow shoe and three legged races. There was a fresh shoulder of moose meat on the wood fired grill. Except for the details of the type of meat and the fact that it was way below zero, it felt like your typical small rural village event like the kind we often hold in Vermont in the summer. The people were a very close-knit group and everyone looked out for everyone’s needs. The kids were goofing off and the parents were catching up on the latest events in town. The similarities in behavior and customs to those in rural Vermont were more striking to me than the differences I was seeing.
Brenda’s Cabin
When we returned to Brenda’s very cozy cabin (see photos), we just took it easy. She had a broken leg and a friend had given her a 5-wheel office chair for her to take the weight off her leg. She was getting around great and in good spirits about our visit. The cabin was small but had all the creature comforts including indoor plumbing, an oil and wood furnace in the living room, a shower and toilet, and a nicely laid out kitchen.
Meeting with the First Elder
When we last communicated with Brenda (Friday 23 March), we asked her about meeting with the village elders. That evening, she invited one of the elders (Nancy) that she knew quite well to her house. We talked for hours about global climate change and what impact it was having in this area. Nancy spoke mostly of the big changes. She spoke of the warm fall, the colder deep winter, and rapid warming spring (just like we had in Vermont this year). She spoke of the change in the taste of the salmon because they are coming up rivers that are changing. The salmon are eating different things now and that changes the way they taste. We talked about our upcoming experiment, where we would be going, what we would be doing, who we would be working with. Since we were visiting Fort Yukon for the sake of education outreach and to help out Brenda with a broken leg, it made the whole situation feel very comfortable. We had no agenda to engage in any type of research in this area, we were there to talk, listen, share, and compare our lives in Vermont with the lives of these folks in rural Alaska. The elders of the village were mostly women. Brenda was born and raised in the pan handle of Florida and I spent my formative high school years in Upstate New York in a rural farm community. We were like a cackling bunch of hens with Robert chiming in talking how things are here and there. We even got into the classic conversation that older folks do about how kids these days ......
The following evening Nancy invited Robert and me to join her for one hour in the home of a second elder (Hannah). Their friend and fellow elder Annie was also there. They shared dried moose meat, smoked salmon, and wonderful stories. It was like the visits I used to make years ago with my family during the holidays when we used to go from one relative’s home to the other. Stopping by for some food and chatting with others to see how their lives were coming along. It was a special event and Robert and I feel honored to have been asked to meet with them.
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