;)
This is the post that I had planned to put up Tuesday morning, but I could not get online.
I arrived in Anaktuvuk Pass on Memorial Day afternoon with several friends and relatives of Ben (B-III) Hopson the Third and NasuÄĦraq Rainey Higbee, who would wed the next day.
There was much good food in the house - caribou stew, caribou meat, fresh rolls and such and I had already fed myself a good sampling of it when I learned that the community was going to gather at the cemetery at 5:00 PM, to remember loved ones buried there and to feast in their honor.
When the time came, I joined several members of the wedding party and we walked over together.
When we arrived, I saw a group of people gathered just off the southern edge of the cemetery, the mountains of the Brooks Range rising behind, in front of and all around them. They were praying.
The man leading the prayer was Dr. James Nageak, an Iñupiaq hunter, scholar, retired university professor and Presbyterian preacher. That's James to the left, wearing the green coat.
He thanked the Lord for the lives lived by all those buried here, and for the beautiful land and the animals that had sustained them and that continue to sustain the people of Anaktuvuk Pass today.
After he finished, the Reverend Keith Johnston, right, who now serves as pastor for Anaktuvuk's Presbyterian "Chapel in the Mountains," read scripture.
;)
Then the feasting began. Although I had already eaten, I ate again. I had more caribou soup, I had fish, wild berries, Eskimo donuts; I made certain to get some of the bowhead maktak that had been boiled into uunaalik, seen here just to the right of the spaghetti.
The spaghetti, by the way, is caribou spaghetti. It was superb.
;)
Rachel Riley asked me how my shoulder was healing up. Rachel was in the Barrow High cafeteria on June 12, 2008, when I took my fall, shattered my shoulder, got loaded into a Lear Jet ambulance and was flown on a $37,000 + ambulance ride to Providence Hospital in Anchorage, where I went through two surgeries and had my natural bone replaced by an artificial, titantium, shoulder.
I told her that it had healed well and I was doing good, but that it would never be what it was before. For all it's technical medical wonder, this titanium just cannot match my natural bone. Yet, I am greatly thankful to have it.
Rachel then explained to Ada Lincoln exactly what she had saw that day when I fell off the rolling chair while taking a picture (and Rachel, by the way, is in the last frame that I shot just before the chair rolled out from under me).
;)
A boy walks through the cemetery, looking at the graves of relatives and friends.
;)
Raymond Paneak took me to the grave of his brother, George, who died on September 19, 2009, at the age of 60. George had been Mayor of the village and was an active leader in the Healthy Communities movement, a grass-roots effort to stem the harm and damage that the abuse of alcohol and drugs has caused in the Far North.
;)
Freida Rulland, left, showed me the grave of her father and my friend, Paul Hugo. A good twenty-years ago plus, Paul took me to many places in these mountains, by snowmachine, eight-wheeled Argo, depending on the season, and on foot in search of caribou.
We found a few, too.
He had also kept me as a house-guest in his home. We had eaten pancakes in the morning, caribou in the evening.
Although I of course knew that he had died, it none-the-less shocked me to see his name stenciled into the cross that marks his grave.
He passed away on October 9, 2009, at the age of 49.
I told Frieda and her sister that I would stop by and say "hi" to their mother, but my trip was short and I was busy every waking minute of it and I never got a chance.
I expect to be back in Anaktuvuk before too long, though, and I will then.
Freida's sister, Amanilla Hugo, stands to the far right.
;)
Two little ones, growing up in Anaktuvuk Pass.