Catch up, #1: I travel from my home to my home

I was going to write a bit more about this trip, from my community home that is the Arctic Slope of Alaska to my home where my house and family is in Wasilla, but I was exhausted to begin with and the events of the past couple of days have left me even more so.

So I will be brief, just so I can catch up in, say, three or four posts, which I will put up in fairly rapid succession.

The trip began here, on the tarmac at the airstrip in Nuiqsut, where I boarded the Beechcraft chartered by the North Slope Borough Iñupiat History, Language and Culture Commission.

Kathy Agiak, the commission chair, takes a look at her cellphone. Mine (ATT) showed bars in Nuiqsut, but all my attempts to make a call on it failed. Behind her is James Aiken, an Elder from Atqasuk.

We flew to Barrow, where two little dogs clad in dresses waited at the Alaska Airlines terminal to fly south. 

On the jet south, I sat next to Carolyn and Nick Smith, tourists from Virginia. They had spent no time in Barrow other than their wait for us oncoming passengers to board, but had been part of a tour group that rode the Alaska Railroad into Denali National Park. They were most impressed with the ride range of wildlife they had seen there, ranging from wolves to grizzly bears, and even a fox nipping at the heels of a caribou.

Everytime the caribou whipped around to face the fox, it would run backwards. Sounds like the fox, which could not bring a caribou down, was having great fun being a tormentor.

From there, they had gone on to Fairbanks, where the tour became a bus ride. They traveled up the Dalton Highway, stopped at the Arctic Circle to feed the mosquitoes and get the official certificate, then continued on to Deadhorse, where they boarded the flight that next flew on to Barrow, where I boarded.

Somewhere between the Brooks Range and the Yukon River.

Back in Anchorage, Margie drove up to the roadside pickup and I was just about to climb in with her and Kalib when I spotted this cat, waiting to be picked up. I believe that his name is Cleo, from Colorado, and that he had just moved to Anchorage to make a new life for himself, but I could be mistaken.

Margie and Kalib picked me up. I had not seen either for seven weeks. I wondered if Kalib would still remember me. He studied me carefully, and with wonder. He was most grateful to be descended from such a man.

As for Margie - see how good she looks? How happy? How healthy? Finally, after her long recuperation?

Barely three days have now past. I wish she still looked so good.

Except for Rex and Stephanie, who had gone off to Seward to study sailboats, everyone agreed to meet us at Moose's Tooth to welcome me home with pizza, and to give me a late birthday party.

We had to wait for 50 minutes to get inside. This gave Kalib the chance to stand in the light rain and study passers by.

None of us, least of all him, had any clue as to what his parents were about to give me for as a birthday present.

It was such a special present that I will end this post here, and give it a separate post, all of it's own.

I took a lot of pictures of all family members gathered inside the Moose's Tooth and had planned to run a major spread.

But I must move on.

Wife took a fall early this afternoon...

She re-injured her knee and is suffering significant pain and discomfort. It looks like she will be bedridden for the next six weeks or so.

This happened in the early afternoon and her care has occupied 99 percent of my time since, but I have to take a short break now to feed the fish, clean the kitty litter and make this short, picture-less post.

This is it for now.

I'm home

My cat buddy, Jimmy, has gone nuts - he is so thrilled to see me. He's standing on my shoulder right now.

All the cats are glad to see me, but Jimmy cannot contain himself. Muzzy is happy, too, and whopped a cat or two with his rapidly wagging tail. That didn't stop them, they fought their way past the whipping tail and came to see me, anyway.

Got lots to blog about, including some big news, but too tired to report it. It can wait until tomorrow.

Too tired to download pictures. Too tired to edit pictures. Too tired to post pictures. Too tired to write to pictures.

So no blog entry tonight - except this one, and it hardly counts.

I could get up at 5:00 in the morning and drive to Fairbanks to attend the big goodbye Palin bash, but I'm not going to. I don't care. I'd rather sleep.

It would be fun to drive to Fairbanks and eat breakfast at Sam's Sourdough Cafe, but I hear it burned down.

So I will just sleep.

Sleep... sleep... sleep...

For ten years. Maybe 20.

Forty, perhaps.

Sleep...........

My wife beside me.

A cat or two sprawled about here and there upon the bed, upon me.

A boat ride on the Kuukpik River, a harmonica at the Singspiration

Immediately after I snapped this frame, I decided that it would be my one picture for the day, no matter what else I shot. It is Jimmy Nukapigak of Nuiqsut, who has just picked white fish from his subsistence nets and is heading up the Kuukpik (Colville) River to Niglig. 

Also visible is Fred Brower, also from Nuiqsut, and Darin Morrey, from Anaktuvuk Pass in the Brooks Range mountains.

Jimmy lived in Barrow when I first met him, but Nuiqsut sits in his ancestral homeland and he moved back several years ago. He does not miss Barrow. He prefers village life, and enjoys being able to get out on the river and to head into the country, just like that.

Morrey was very impressed with the size of the river and of the fish, because the waters that flow through Anaktuvuk, which sits atop the continental divide between the Arctic Ocean and the Bering Sea are streams - shallow, cold, swift and pure.

Me, I was most impressed with the fresh-grilled whitefish that I ate at Nigliq. It had been cooked with bacon and...aaaaahhhh... food in town never tastes that good, not even when cooked by the finest chef in the world.

I know - this makes it two pictures. My discipline has been lost. It's just that after I placed the river picture, I got to thinking of another of Jimmy that I took Wednesday night as he played his harmonica at the Singspiration held at the Nuiqsut Presbyterian Church, even as others sang, played guitars and spoons, too.

I wish that I could tell you what gospel song was being sung at this moment, but I can't remember.

I can tell you this, though, in every song there was power and spirit. The one that moved me the most - right to the point where I could not stop tears from coming down my face - was How Great Thou Art. 

Elvis Presley may have made this song famous, but until you have heard the Iñupiat sing it, you have not yet heard it.

I am not proselyting here, because the fact is when it comes to religion, God, and death, it is all a great mystery to, an unkown for which I do not claim to know any answer. For those few of you who may have known me way, way, way, way back when I was a missionary myself, this statement may come as a shock, but it is the truth. 

It is all a mystery to me.

And to the rest of you who know me but did not know me back then, the revelation that I was once a missionary probably comes as a shock to you.

Sooner or later, I will get into this subject.

But when I hear the Iñupiat sing Gospel, I believe - 100 percent - in the power and strength that comes straight out of the heart and spirit of those who I hear sing.

Tomorrow, I go home. As always, with mixed feelings - so eager to see my wife, family, cats and Muzzy, too.

So sad to leave the Slope.

I hate to sound silly and sentimental, but in this hard, tough, cold place where nature is so brutal, there is something special, something warm and it belongs to this place and people and it cannot be found anywhere else.

Just here. And when I leave, I will miss it.

Isabelle gets ink: the crew flags of her father and "Aapa"

Shortly after the day began, I stepped into the hall of the Nuiqsut school building and there was Isabelle Ilavgak, sitting at the reception table. "I got ink," she said, "want to see it?"

It's the designs from the Wainwright whaling crew flags of her father (top) and (grandfather). She is going to add the family name, "Ahmaogak" at the bottom.*

There is more to the story, of course, but there is one place I want to go right now and that is straight to bed. 

*I have now had a little bit of sleep and will update this just a little bit. When Isabelle showed me the designs yesterday, I recognized the top flag as being that of Iceberg 14, the crew of the late Ben Ahmaogak Sr., now co-captained by Jason, Mary Ellen and Robert. I also knew that as the brother of Isabelle's father, Fred, whose flag is the whale below, Ben would technically be Isabelle's uncle, but I was a little confused because she described the Iceberg 14 flag as being that of her "Aapa," or grandfather.

When I made this post last night, I was so exhausted I could not even think.

But sometime in the night, as I fell in and out of sleep, I remembered hearing Isabelle call Ben "Aapa" and his wife Florence, "Aaka," or grandmother.

And, in a comment below, Isabelle's cousin, Maak, who is also my Iñupiaq sister by informal adoption, made it all clear.

Thank you, Maak.

No matter how much I learn, I always know just a little bit. Always, I have much more to learn.