Transitions: Wasilla to Cross Island; same state, totally different worlds
Wednesday, September 15, 2010 at 1:29PM 
I now back up two weeks, to September 1 - a horribly discouraging day for me. It was a day that I contemplated just giving up, to just say the hell with it, to admit that after 35 years of hard, intense, work for which I have accumulated nothing but debt, I'm finished, exhausted, done, wiped out, my career is destroyed - you plunderers at Well's Fargo bank, just take the house and I will take Margie and go live under a bridge somewhere.
But I didn't think Margie would like to live under a bridge, so I decided to rethink the situation.
The thing that had gotten me so down was that I had been planning to cover the Nuiqsut fall bowhead whale hunt based on Cross Island, 79 miles east of the village and about ten miles offshore from the Prudhoe Bay oil fields. At the end of each summer, the Nuiqsut hunters load up their boats, drive them down the Kuukpik River into the chilled waters of the Beaufort Sea and then journey to Cross Island, where they move back into their cabins from where they launch their hunts.
Under the bowhead quota, Nuiqsut had four strikes to land four whales. Typically, the hunt will last into mid-September and it has been known to extend through the entire month. On Thursday night, August 26, I learned that the crew of Edward Nukapigak, Jr. had invited me to join them and they planned to leave for Cross Island on Sunday, August 29. If I could reach Nuiqsut by Saturday, I could hop on the boat and go with them.
But I couldn't get there by Saturday. I was flat broke, all my credit cards were tapped out and I had no way to pay for my plane ticket - plus, most of my good, Arctic cold weather gear had disappeared and I needed to shop for more. Even in late August/early September, one can easily get chilled into hypothermia out on the Arctic Ocean and so one must be properly dressed.
I had an invoice out that I knew would be paid soon and then I could buy my ticket, pick up a bit of gear and go - I figured by the first or second of September.
If the weather turned good, I reasoned that the Nuiqsut hunters might land one or two bowheads right away, but that would still leave two or three for after I arrived.
As it happened, when the hunters reached Cross Island, they were greeted by a rare, three-day stretch of absolutely perfect weather conditions with whales in the water and they took advantage of it. This year's hunt took place in record speed and all four whales were landed in three days - the last one on September 1, the same day that I photographed this school bus, secured my ticket north, and pulled together cold-weather gear sufficient to the task I had hoped to complete.
I was very happy for the hunters, but discouraged for myself and very disgusted with myself as well, for I should have been there. Although I knew it would take them several days yet to take care of and put up the four whales, I had missed the hunt itself and for awhile it seemed pointless for me to still go.
I decided to go anyway and to see what I could make of it.
I am extremely glad that I did, because once I reached Cross Island, I cast off my depression, immersed myself in the experience and had a truly wonderful time. Plus, as I missed the hunt itself, I now have a good excuse to return for another, so that I can round out and complete my photo essay on Nuiqsut/Cross Island bowhead whaling.
Cross Island is a cold, windy, place where, just to take a walk one must either carry a gun or walk in the presence of others who are armed.
But it is a fantastic place and when the time came to leave I was sad and did not want to go.
Anyway, this is how I got there:
On the morning of September 2, I boarded an Era de Havilland Dash 8 at Anchorage's Ted Stevens International Airport, bound for the Prudhoe Bay airport at Deadhorse, with a brief stop in Fairbanks. The plane was nearly empty, with only six passengers to fill the approximately 40 seats.
We flew past Denali on our way to Fairbanks. So many tourists come here each summer hoping to see this mountain but never get to, as it spends so much of its time shrouded in clouds.
But on this day it was out, and even the murky, plexiglass, window of the Dash 8 could not conceal its magnificence.
One of my five fellow passengers observes the mountain.
As we cross the Tanana River on the approach to Fairbanks International, the pilot has lowered the landing gear. I see a shadow plane coming our way.
It looks to me as though we are on a collision course with the shadow plane.
We are! We are going to collide with the shadow plane! There is no way to avoid it now!
And yet, it is a gentle collision.
We spend 20 minutes on the ground in Fairbanks and then leave for Deadhorse with even fewer passengers than when we landed. I worry about this, because I don't know how an airline can long operate with this kind of passenger load and I want Era to keep this flight going.
"Don't worry," the Stewardess tells me. "We will be full coming out of Deadhorse."
All three of us passengers then pay rapt attention as she delivers the preflight briefing.
When I first got a bike as a young boy living in Missoula, Montana, I hooked up with some friends and we spent the day riding our bikes all over Missoula together. It was one of the most fun days I had yet to experience in my life.
Not long after I first purchased my now crashed airplane, the Citabria that I called Running Dog, I stopped to spend some time in the village of Anaktuvuk Pass, located elsewhere down there in these same Brooks Range mountains.
As it happened, there were two other men living in the village who also had Citabrias. One day, we all hooked up together and we went flying in our separate Citabrias all about these mountains, cutting through various valleys.
I felt just like I did on that day when I was a boy and rode my bike with my friends, all about Missoula, Montana. But now it was the Brooks Range Mountains, Alaska.
Do you begin to understand why I miss that airplane so much? Why I dream of it night after night?
Coming in on final to the Deadhorse airport, a pipeline beneath us.
Touch down at Deadhorse - the airport that serves the Prudhoe Bay oil fields.
I catch a ride to the North Slope Borough's Service Area 10, where Dora Leavitt of Nuiqsut operates a radio communications center for the Nuiqsut whalers, as well as for those at Kaktovik, 100 more miles to the east. She radios Edward Jr., who sends a boat to pick me up, along with some needed supplies, at West Dock, a slow, strictly restricted-speed, forty-minute drive by pick-up truck from the Com Center.
West Dock.
It is Eric Leavitt who comes to get me. He has packed some freshly-boiled uunaalik from the Nukapigak whale for Dora into a cooler to keep it hot. He hands me a piece.
Oh, my! I had not eaten fresh uunaalik in a long time. Tender. So good.
We pass under the bridge and then head out into the ocean. The absolutely perfect conditions that allowed the hunters to land their four whales in three days - record time - are gone now. It is windy and the water is rough. The boat bounces hard across the waves. I do not take pictures, because I have to give my full attention to protecting my cameras and laptop computer from being pounded into oblivion.
I do this by pulling them close to me. I use my body as a schock absorber.
We reach the island just as everyone takes a break. I go into the Nukapigak cabin and make myself at home. That's captain Edward Jr. on the left, his brother, Thomas, and Eric.
Soon, the work of butchering the last of the four whales commences again. I go out and put myself in the middle of it.
Reader Comments (5)
I think the last photo in this series is quite amazing. I am so used to machines doing all of the difficult work that this still give me hope. You-Scan cannot help to pull a whale onto shore!
there's few things worse, bill, than the burden of financial worries. (health problems are the very worst.) wish there was some easy way to fix it but there's not. thanks as always for your total honesty in describing your feelings. your sublime photos are testament to your great reverence of life. hmm, would be nice if you could teach photography somewhere...high school? adult evening school?
great pictures and i'm glad your mood lifted.
Who else but Bill can make the regular flight part of the adventure. Glad your spirits lifted once you got underway. I hope some things come through for you that give you a more steady income stream so you;re not regularly out on the edge. I've been there and I k now it is absolutely frightening.
Charlie - One thing about Iñupiat people is they tend to be both very practical and innovative, so when it is practical to use a machine, they will - but still the work remains hard, lasts long, and requires many hands and backs to cooperate and pull together.
Ruth - Nice thought, Ruth, but I don't want to teach. I would then be tied to a classroom for a certain number of hours every week and that just would not work for me.
Twain - Thanks.
Mocha - Yes, it can be so frightening. It has come to feel like a way of life to me. I have a good contract right now, but the burden it must support is just too enormous. Baring something like a miracle, it is only a matter of time.