I get an invitation to the set for "Everybody Loves Whales" and find that I have been there since the beginning - I wonder, what if?

Anyone whose memory reaches back to October, 1988, will remember The Great Gray Whale Rescue that took place on the sea ice near Point Barrow. For those whose memories do not reach back that far and who may not have heard of the event, freezeup came early that year and my friend, Roy Ahmaogak, found three young gray whales trapped in three small holes in slush ice that would soon harden.

What unfolded thereafter was the strangest, most bizarre, wonderful, nightmarish, magnificent, dreamy, spectacle of human good will, pettiness, compassion, selfishness, ingenuity, brutally competitive, cooperative display of kindness and love that I have witnessed - and it was driven by the fact that Everybody Loves Whales.

A most unlikely coalition of Iñupiat whale hunters, the oil industry, Greenpeace, the National Guard, the Reagan White House and the Soviet Union, plus a myriad of ordinary people from all over, came together to try and rescue those three whales.

For two weeks, all the other big stories of the world, including the heated political battle between George H.W. Bush and Michael Dukakis to become the next President of the United States, receded into background noise.

Media from around the world poured into Barrow as the concern and attention of an entire planet of people became focused on those three whales and the efforts to save them.

And I had a front row seat to the drama. I guess I was part of the drama, as I may have been the first person to photograph those whales and I was absolutely the first media person to do so. I alone photographed the first human contact with the whales and the resultant images got onto AP and became the first images of the rescue to be seen in the world's newspapers.

Now, just over 22 years later, Universal Pictures is making a movie based on the rescue, directed by Ken Kwapis, starring Drew Barrymore, John Krasinski, Dermot Mulroney, Ted Danson with a supporting cast of Iñupiat and Yup'ik actors and extras, led by John Pingayak who plays a character loosely based upon the legendary Malik.

Among these actors is my good friend, Art Oommittuk, who has developed a firm relationship with Kwapis. 

A couple of weeks ago, Art suggested to Kwapis that he invite me onto the set for Everybody Loves Whales. Kwapis had spent time with my book, Gift of the Whale: The Iñupiat Bowhead Hunt, A Sacred Tradtion, and told Art that he definitely wanted that to happen.

So the invitation came. On Saturday, I was able to accept it.

When I stepped onto the set, I experienced Deja Vu to the extreme. There, in a small area in front of me, was a whale hole on a flat pan of ice rimmed by pressure ridges. When I turned and looked in the other direction, there was a section of downtown Barrow, painted in the very colors that I remember from 22 years ago. It looked so real that I kept wanting to climb the stairs up to Pepe's, go inside, and order some tacos.

I had not been on the scene for more than one minute when Art spotted me and waved. He couldn't come right over, because they were shooting a scene simulating the reaction of the whalers and other rescuers as the Soviet ice breakers rammed the ice nearby. Of course, I wanted to photograph this, but Universal Pictures does not allow any but their own official still photographers to photograph such scenes, so I had to stand with my camera hanging useless at my side and just observe.

After several takes, they took a short break and Art introduced me to Kwapis.

This is them - Art Oomittuk, Iñupiat hunter, artist extraordinaire and now actor, with Ken Kwapis, renowned movie director. He came across to me as a very down to earth individual. He looked like he could have been comfortable on the real ice off Barrow. I could see that he had genuine respect for Art and that he was truly interested in anything I might have to say.

Kwapis said he had been through my book many times, and that it had played a significant role in guiding them as they created the stage for the movie.

This is Hope Parrish, set designer, holding her copy of my book, Gift of the Whale, which she asked me to autograph. As you can see, it is well marked with yellow stickies and it is the most dog-eared copy of the book that I have signed.

She told me that it had been invaluable to her, to many people working on the film, that it was the primary reference for recreating the visuals of the rescue.

The reason that I have lightened, blurred, and distorted the background is because it shows a portion of that part of the set that shows Pepe's renamed, along with a portion of the Top of the World Hotel. Universal Pictures does not want anyone to show pictures of their set to the world just yet. They want the set to be seen for the first time in the trailers that will precede the expected release in early January, 2012.

I got mixed signals about how Universal might react to seeing this small portion of the set off in the background. Some thought it would not be a problem. Some thought it would.

So I decided just to blur and distort it, for now. 

Once the movie is released and I do the big series of Gray Whale Rescue blog posts that I plan to publish then, I will post the undoctored version.

We were soon joined by Sarah Regan, who also had a copy for me to sign.

An airplane flew overhead.

Ossie Kairaiuak, a well-known singer and performer in these parts, and David sing a few bars in Iñupiaq of a piece that several of the Native actors on the set spontaneously came up with one day. They were filmed performing and the song is expected to be included in the movie.

Of all the stories that anybody has ever told me regarding their experience with Gift of the Whale, none have moved me more than David's. David has roots in Point Hope, but grew up in Palmer. After he read Gift of the Whale, he decided that he had to go back to Point Hope and go whaling. He did. 

He loved the way the experience connected him to his people. He plans to keep doing it.

This is Sarah Conliffe, who I met in the warmup room, where there is much good food to eat, from fresh raspberries and blueberries to peta wraps, delicately braised slivers of beef, rolls, coffee and tea.

Sarah is the costume designer and she, too, wanted me to sign her book.

She, too, described it as an invaluable resource to her - her costume Bible - I believe she said.

Unless I am getting her words mixed up with Parrish's.

I feel like maybe I am coming across as arrogant and boastful, here, and letting all this go to my head.

But it's how it happened.

I was also told that Universal did not want anyone to publish photos of the star actors taken on the set, but that it would be okay if I got personal pictures of my friends in a way that did not really show the set or the big stars.

I was in the process of taking just such a picture when one of the big name actors saw what was going on and jumped right into the middle of the picture.

Again, I got some conflicting advise - some thought it would be okay for me to publish the picture straight, some thought maybe not - so I did it like this. I could make it look better, but I have to catch a plane to Barrow, where, as usual, I will be staying with my friend, Roy Ahmaogak, the man whose discovery launched the episode that led to this movie.

Please come back after the movie is released and then I will show you who the actor in this picture is.

This is Reynolds Anderson, assistant to Ken Kwapis. It was she who met me after I reached the set and who served as my guide for the first hour or two that I was there.

I felt very badly for her at times, as she spent a lot of time just standing patiently by while I talked to other people. Plus, although the day was very warm for this place this time of year, it was not at all warm to a young woman from Southern California.

A young bald eagle flew over head.

This is cinematographer John Bailey. He also came across to me as being a very down to earth, curious, helpful person and he took the time to talk with me over several breaks.

He, too, had kind things to say about my book - and he gave me an idea and said he would help me with it in the future. I have learned never to get my hopes too high about anything until it actually happens, but it sounded good, so I will take him up on that and see if it can be made into anything.

This is Nelson, who also has been doing set work. He showed me a picture from my book that I had taken inside a home where women were sewing skins and told me how he had worked off that picture to create a living room that will appear in the movie. It will not exactly the same, but the element will be there.

I autographed his book, too.

I feel badly, and I thought I entered it into my iPhone, but I cannot remember the name of the woman with him. She also has my book, but did not have it with her. Others told me the same.

To the left is Sandra Murray, who turned the tables on me and interviewed me about my experience during the rescue. Whatever parts of the interview they might find worthy will be incorporated into the DVD and HBO package of the film. Jeff Feller manned the camera and Paul Lawrence handled the sound.

After the interview I hoped in a white van that took me to place where a cajun lunch was being served. I met Heidi there. She had papers for me to sign, stating that it was ok for them to use the interview in their package.

And now, the what if:

Everyone that I met on the set treated me wonderfully. It was flattering and it was good to see that they had been impacted by my work as a team and as individuals and had found inspiration and guidance in it to help them carry their own work forward.

This felt good to me - and it was fun. Yet, I cannot help but wonder, what if?

After my book was released, my publisher, Sasquatch Books, attempted to sell the movie rights to it in Hollywood, but the effort didn't pan out. Later, my niece, Shaela Cook, who is making a career in Hollywood, decided that she wanted to make a movie based on Gift of the Whale.

She worked hard at it, and presented it to various people in Hollywood and got some responses that were, at first, encouraging, but that ultimately led to nothing.

So what if?

What if either of these efforts had succeeded?

The story Hollywood settled upon is a love story, based loosely on one that actually happened during the rescue, one that was written up in another book.

I am not certain about this, but I understand that a photographer also plays a significant role in the film - a photographer who documented the rescue effort from beginning to end. I am not certain if this is a still photographer or a video photographer - or even if there truly is such a character - but there was only one photographer of any kind who was there at the beginning and at the end of the gray whale drama, and that was me.

Many others, from all over the world, joined in between the beginning and end points. But I am the only one who shot the beginning, the middle, and the end. The only one.

So what if it had been my book that had been made the focus of the story?

There is a pretty good chance that I would now have the necessary resources to spend a year or so trying to figure out how to build this blog and its evolution into what I would like it to become.

That's what if.

But it did not happen that way. There is no point in lamenting.

So, when the movie is released, I will go and enjoy. It will not matter to me that the story is a different story than the one that I saw unfold. I will enjoy it.  I have this feeling that the movie is going to be good - perhaps even excellent, a huge hit. I will take Margie and we will eat popcorn, and chocolate covered peanuts.

The movie will give me an excuse to do what I always wanted to do but never did - to tell the gray whale rescue story indepth, as I saw and experienced it. I did not tell it in depth in Gift of the Whale, because I had space enough only to devote one chapter to it.

There will be space enough in this blog - or whatever this blog has evolved into by then. I will spread the telling out over two weeks - the same approximate time as it took for the rescue effort to unfold.

I will tell the story then - in early January, 2012, or whenever the movie is released.

So please come back then.

The bridge above, by the way, crosses over the place where the van took me for the Cajun lunch, which was excellent. I saw Art and some of friends in there and was going to join them, but the publicist asked me to join him, as he had many questions for me.

I did my best to answer all of them.

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Five veterans: Gilbert sees bodies pile up in Korea, Iñupiat mother Irene stands with pistol on hip and baby on back to face Japanese, Strong Man returns from Iraq to walk again; two more

Once in awhile, I still dream about the war* Gilbert Lincoln of Anaktuvuk Pass says of his experience in Korea. “I always be tired when I wake up. I don’t tell my wife about it. I don’t tell my children. I don’t want to worry them.”

Lincoln turned 21 in 1952, was drafted into the Army and sent to Fort Richardson, where a rifle was placed in his hands. Born in Noatak, he had grown up with guns. As a boy, he had followed his grandmother out reindeer herding. He attended school in Noatak, and spent much time, rifle in hand, roaming about the countryside, hunting.

This rifle had a different purpose.

After basic training, Lincoln was sent to San Diego. “They were calling for volunteers, so I volunteered. I guess I volunteered for the wrong job. The next thing I heard, they were shipping a bunch of us guys out. There was a lot of people on that boat. We landed on Parallel 46, not too far from Peking and right by Seoul someplace.

“We go into the front, every third week. It is pretty rough. No place to stay. Some people call it a one way ticket.”

In Korea, Gilbert Lincoln discovered the horror of leaving on patrol with eight or nine men and returning with only half. One time, he set out on patrol with 10 men, only to come home alone. Lincoln, who was the lone Iñupiat in his company, became a good buddy with a soldier from California and another from Texas, then lost both in combat.

“After I lost those two, I didn't have no more interest,” Lincoln remembers. “The only strength I got is from my Lieutenant. He said, ‘If you don't shoot, I will kill you.’ I think he was trying to give me courage. It worked real good.”  

In Anaktuvuk Pass, Gilbert Lincoln is known as a storyteller, but he keeps his stories of the war pretty much to himself. “The only thing that keeps you up is the Good Lord, watching down. Like they say, he is right there by you, all the time. I had a pocket sized Bible the chaplain give me. I always read it.”

After the war, Lincoln returned home to Noatak. “I was glad to come home, but it was pretty rough, not too good.” Friends and family did not understand what he had been through and he had no way to tell them. “I would get flashbacks. Sometimes, when you get it, you get real jumpy, kind of nervous. It is hard to get rid of. I was afraid if I stayed in Noatak, I would kill somebody.”

Lincoln moved to Kotzebue, where he worked as a power plant operator for the White Alice Project, a radar program designed to detect incoming Soviet missiles. There he met Ada Rulland from Anaktuvuk Pass. They were married in 1962. Gilbert joined the Alaska National Guard and served as an Eskimo Scout for 12 years.

Ada brought him home to Anaktuvuk in 1972 and he has been there ever since. He and Ada raised six children including two adopted. “It’s a good place,” Lincoln says of Anaktuvuk. “Real good country.”

In Anaktuvuk Pass, Lincoln is known to have the gift of the storyteller.  When he goes hunting, friends and family eagerly await his return, for they know he will have some good stories to tell. He shares these stories over the CB radio. Even before he begins to speak, other villagers sit by their radios and grin, for they know that whatever accounting Lincoln gives them of his adventures with caribou, wolves, wolverines or whatever he encountered will be well worth hearing.

But he tells no stories of his combat in Korea. These he keeps to himself.

“I’m proud of my military service. I’m proud of my country, in fact. My pride comes from serving my country as a US citizen,” Lincoln says, adding that he gets very hurt and angry when he sees news reports of any Americans burning or desecrating the US flag.

“A lot of people die for that flag. I’ve seen a lot of them piled up.”

Something else bothers Lincoln.

“You never hear about Korea,” he explains. “People hardly know about Korea. I would like to see the Korean vets get a little attention.”

In the spring of 1942, the people of Barrow heard that the Japanese were coming to bomb the village.

"We hear seven Japanese planes are coming to bomb Barrow, but they freeze and have to turn back," Irene Itta* remembers. A total blackout was imposed upon the community. All windows had to be sealed off so that no light escaped outside. The famous Major "Muktuk" Marston came to town to help organize the Territorial Guard. A tower the height of a house was built from empty steel drums just outside of town. There, Guard members stood sentry, scanning the skies for Japanese planes. 

Whaling season arrived. The men had no time to stand on a tower of barrels to watch for incoming Japanese airplanes.

They turned to the Barrow Mothers’ Club for help. Irene’s own husband, Miles, was stationed in Nome with the U.S. Army. Still, she did not hesitate when she was asked to volunteer for guard duty.

Irene had a tiny baby girl, Martina, who depended on her. Still, someone had to go watch for the Japanese, and that someone was Irene Itta. Early in the morning, she reported for duty. She wore her parka, and in it, tucked snugly onto her back, was baby Martina. A guardsman issued her a pistol, fully loaded and with extra bullets, and strapped it to her waist.

"He didn’t even show me how to use it," Itta muses. 

At 8:00 AM, Itta took her post atop the barrels. She had been instructed to bang upon the barrels at the first sight of anything in the sky.

So she stood there, a baby on her back and a pistol on her hip, atop a tower of steel drums, for 12 hours straight, in the cold, scanning the sky for incoming Japanese airplanes. Fortunately, baby Martina slept a lot. When she would awake, Irene would breast-feed her, there on the tower.

At 8:00 PM, Itta was off duty. She had spotted no Japanese.

"Today, they wouldn’t do that," she states. "They’d probably want to get paid. I did it so the people can have a safe place to go. No one knows about it. It was never in the papers, not on the radio. I always tell my son, when I die, I want a special ceremony. I want a flag, I want a salute, with the guns, because I served my country in the territorial guard."

My post of November 3 included a picture of Latseen Benson who had come to the post election party for Ethan Berkowitz and Diane Benson, Latseen's mother, following their unsuccessful run for Governor and Lt. Governor. Latseen was standing in that picture and I mentioned that it was good to see him standing.

This is why. 

This is Latseen, at Ted Stevens International Airport just before the Fourth of July, 2006. He has just rolled back home into Alaska for the very first time after losing his legs to an IED in Iraq. His wife Jessica stands behind him, his mother, Diane, in blue to his side.

He is greeted by a welcoming group of his people, the Tlingit and Haida.

Williard Jackson of Ketchikan drums and sings for him.

Latseen means "Strong Man" in Tlingit. A few days later, Latseen races his way to one of several gold medals that he won in the 2006 National Veterans Wheelchair Games - held that year in Anchorage.

This morning, Veterans Day, I went to breakfast at Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant, because almost always I see a number of veterans there, identified by the words and symbols on their caps and jackets that tell their branch of service and what war they fought in.

So I thought I would spot such a veteran, or maybe a couple, and photograph them for this blog.

But when I arrived, I could see no obvious veterans at all.

"There were several here, earlier," my waitress told me.

This young man and little girl sat at the table next to mine.

As I ate, I kept waiting for an obvious veteran to appear, but none did.

Then my food was eaten. I wondered - could this gentleman be a veteran?

He looked like he could - but then veterans come from all of us, so anyone old enough to have served could look like a veteran.

"Excuse me, sir," I asked. "Are you by any chance a veteran?"

"Yes," he said. "But I served stateside."

Perhaps. But at any moment, had the need arisen, he could have been sent into harm's way.

This is him, Ray, U.S. Army, who served in the early and mid-90's, all of it stateside. He is with his niece, Amber, better known as Pickles. They were about to head out to see a movie together and were excited to get going, so I asked no further questions.

I was embarrassed to discover that I had forgotten to put a card in my camera. I had to resort to my iPhone. 

And on the Parks, Pioneer Peak in the background, this Marine passed me. I know nothing about him - when he served, where he served. All I know is that he goes by "Semper fi," as noted in his rear window. 

*The stories of Gilbert and Irene are a from a series on Native Veterans, with initial funding from the Alaska Federation of Natives,  that I did over a decade ago. Gilbert, Irene and Miles have all since passed on. Irene got her flag and her burial with military honors.

Sadly for me, I did not learn about her death until after her burial, or I would surely have been there to photograph this honor that she had earned.

I had planned to run a dozen or so such stories in this post, but I just don't have the time for now.

While I took the series as far as the available funding would allow, I never finished it. There were a number of folks who expressed an eagerness to help me find funding, but none succeeded. Still, as the opportunity presents itself, I continue to work on this. 

I will photograph veterans, Native and otherwise, anywhere and anytime that they become available to me. To the degree that they wish, I will tell their stories as well.

I am sad, though, that I was unable to get the funding that would have allowed me to continue seeking veterans out in small villages across the state, because so many, especially from World War II and Korea are gone now. And those from Vietnam are going at an increasing rate.

As the opportunity presents itself, I will continue to work on this project - for as I long as I am able, funding or no funding.

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To help him stand up to the trials ahead, Larry Aiken begins a self-portrait and gets a kiss; Art Oomittuk and his mask: Kalib falls asleep

Three or four days ago, I received a Facebook message from Larry Aiken, a friend of mine from Barrow, who whaled with the Kunuk crew during the years that I followed them. He had come to Anchorage, where he expects to spend the next nine months in treatment for esophageal cancer. He had known for a few months that something was badly wrong and the doctors had done some tests - except for the one that needed to be done - an EDG endiscopy, a scoping of the esophagus from the throat to the stomach - but had not found a cancer.

Larry insisted that they send him to Anchorage, where he got the EDG and the fast growing tumor was found. Monday, he starts radiation therapy and on Tuesday, Chemo. 

He knows that he faces an ordeal, but his doctor has been encouraging, friends and relatives back home are raising money and praying for him and he has faith that he will beat it.

Larry is a talented artist. To help build his courage, he decided that he would paint a self-portrait of himself harpooning a bowhead whale. He would begin by sketching the scene out and then would paint it in.

Yesterday, from inside the room where he is staying at the Springhill Suites hotel located near the Alaska Native Medical Center, he sketched this scene. The man behind him with the shoulder gun is George Adams, the captain that Larry now whales with.

So we decided that I would take a picture of the sketch as it now it is and later of the painting that it will soon become.

But when I set about to take the picture, I found the situation vexing. The light in the room was not good. Plus, I wanted the dolls and other items of Native art in the showcase behind him to show up in the picture, but when I found the angle that would have Larry, his art and the dolls more or less lined up, I discovered that the lights on the ceiling cast a horribly distracting reflection upon the showcase window.

I did not immediately know how to deal with and so I did what I usually do in this kind of situation - I just started taking pictures that I knew were no good, hoping that the answer would come to me as I shot.

Instead, I saw the hands of a person enter into the scene from the right and I knew that the whole person would soon follow.

Another distracting element!

And then the whole person materialized. It was Martha Whiting from Kotzebue, a lady who I have known for decades and who also knows Larry and knows what he faces. Martha stepped into the picture, knelt down beside him and kissed him on the head.

And so there you have it - Larry Aiken, with the beginnings of his self-portrait. In the showcase window behind him hovers a symbol of his own culture - the culture that will give him strength, matched with Martha's spontaneous showing of the kind of love and support that will also help him get through this.

Martha gives Larry a hug. I should note that Martha is the Mayor of the Northwest Arctic Borough. 

For decades, Larry has been a volunteer with the Barrow Search and Rescue and in his work with them has been instrumental in saving many lives. Last winter, he did a rescue inland on the Slope in temperatures in the -70's.

In about April, although he did not yet know why, Larry found that he began to tire easily. The endurance that he had always had was not there. He went out on a couple of hunting trips from which he had to return early, with the help of others, because he grew too weak to continue.

Then, earlier this month, during the same time that I was in Kaktovik, he was at Barrow Rescue Base when word came in on the radio that a propane tank had exploded inside an aluminum boat that had gone out for the fall hunt. One other boat had been in sight and the occupants had seen flame blow out the windows and shoot up through the roof. The boat itself had risen an estimated four to five feet above the water, then had fallen back into the water.

Now, the boat was drifting, dead in the water. The crew could not be seen.

Although the rescuers have faced many things over the decades, this was a new situation and the news was greeted almost with disbelief. Larry did not feel that there was any time to waste and soon he was out on the water with two other volunteers and three EMT'S they had picked up from the fire station.

When they approached the boat, it was quiet and still. They could see no one. A sick feeling came upon them. Then a hand appeared at window, followed by a face. All the occupants had survived, with no life-threatening injuries - although bones were broken and skin was burned.

Along with the other rescuers, Larry did his part to supply the victims with medical care and get them back to shore and to the hospital.

During all that time, he did not feel weary. The exhaustion that had plagued him earlier had retreated.

Once it was all over and he was home, the adrenalin left. He laid down upon his bed and collapsed.

The next day, he flew to Anchorage, where his cancer was discovered.

Another person that Larry sent a Facebook message to is Othniel Oomittuk of Point Hope, better known as Art. As it happened, Art was in Anchorage working as an actor in the major feature film, "Everybody Loves Whales," about the Great Gray Whale Rescue of 1988.

Ever since receiving that message, Art has been giving Larry his full support - spending time with him, taking him shopping and out to dinner. Most importantly, he has been his friend.

As Larry visited with Martha, Art disappeared for a few minutes and then reappeared with this mask that he has been making.

The face is made of ugruk (bearded seal) skin and the hair comes from a sheepskin rug that once sat on the Amsterdam floor of his European girlfriend.

Larry and Martha study the mask. Art is known around the world for his fine art.

Art in his mask.

Afterward, I took Larry, Art and Lloyd Nageak, who is staying with Larry until his girlfriend can come down from Barrow, over to meet Marige, Jacob, Lavina, Kalib and Jobe. It was a good visit, but we must do it again when Jacob and Lavina will have a chance to cook and feed them properly.

After they left, Kalib fell asleep in his new chair. The chair is based on the movie, Cars, once his favorite. Kalib has now moved onto a new favorite, one about Vikings and dragons. One of the stars of that movie is a black dragon by the name of Toothless - who does indeed have fearsome teeth - and who, in personality, character, and movement, seems to be a recreation of my good black cat friend, Jim.

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Farewell to Mabel Aiken - a kind, gentle and caring lady

This morning, I sit alone in a quiet motel room, yet in my head I hear hymns, sung the Iñupiaq way, and I feel a strong connection to many souls, who on this day will gather together in a church in Barrow to hold services for and pay their respects to a very dear lady by the name of Mabel Aiken. If it were at all feasible, I would be there with them, but it is not.

I wish that I had a picture of Mabel in my laptop computer so that I could post it here, but I do not. I do, however, have this picture of her husband Kunuk and many members of her family and crew at the edge of the lead, as they watch the approach of a bowhead whale.

When I took this picture, Mabel was not physically present, but she was still very much with her family and crew. Back on land, she was busily overseeing the base operations necessary to sustain them on the ice. Through the VHF radio, she kept constant contact and whenever they needed anything, she made certain it was ready to go, to be packed onto a sled and sent out. She cooked, she sewed, she prayed. She gave them encouragement.

She was not physically present on the ice, yet her presence could be felt at all times.

From this time forward, Mabel Aiken will no longer be present in the physical world, yet her spirit will be felt every day. 

Mable was a gentle, kind, soft-spoken, caring woman who was always good to me and I am blessed for having had the opportunity to spend some time with her in this life.

To Kunuk, to all the Aikens and to all those who knew and loved Mabel - may The Creator be with you on this day and bring you comfort and solace, even at those moments when it may seem that comfort and solace cannot be had.

As you sing so beautifully and with such soul and passion:

God be with you, 'til we meet again...

I love you all.

To those readers who never knew her, just know that she lived and that she made the Arctic a warmer place and all the world just a little bit better than it would have been without her.

The bite of winter, coming on - Update, 1:01 AM, Monday: Violet is her name

Originally posted at 4:58 PM, Sunday, September 26.

The wind was tearing when I drove out of Wasilla Friday afternoon, gusts slamming so hard into the car that at times it felt like we were going to be blown off the road. Worse yet, it had whipped up the powdered-sugar fine glacier dust and filled the air with it, irritating my throat and lungs and, judging by his little cough, Jobe's too. Our valley trees had been stripped of much of their fall color. The air felt cold, too, the way it does just before winter sets in. Margie dropped me off at the airport and soon my flight was being hammered and buffeted as it climbed through the turbulence roiling off the mountains, but at altitude, the air was smooth. As we descended into Fairbanks, we again encountered turbulence so strong as to cause the stewardess to be lifted from the floor and me to fear for her safety. I had an hour-and-half layover in Fairbanks, extended by delay into two-and-half hours. In the wintertime, when we drop into Fairbanks from South Central, we expect the temperature to be colder there. In the summer, we expect it to be warmer. The weather my last two stops in Fairbanks, the most recent just two weeks ago, had been very warm. But on this day, as I walked back to the plane and took this picture, I was struck by the cold bite in the wind. Winter must be coming on.

There was no snow when I arrived in Barrow. When I first became familiar with the town, back when I was producing the original incarnation of Uiñiq magazine, the snow had always set in for good by now, usually about the 20th of the month. Sometimes, I would hear some of the older elders speak of how things had warmed up, how, when they were young, snow and freeze-up would often set in by the end of August. In recent years, it has often not set in until early October. When I woke up Saturday morning, I found that the snow had come.

I walked to Pepe's for breakfast and saw that the moon was up.

Coming home, I walked by the Chukchi Sea of the Arctic Ocean. The water was dark and turbulent. The wind caught tufts of foam and sent it flying by, in delicately frozen tufts.

The Friends of Tuzzy Library had brought me up to talk about doing Gift of the Whale and to show slides from the book. As starting time drew near, the wind was tearing, snow was flying and I wondered if any more than the five or six people who had already gathered when I took this picture through the library window - very near to starting time - would show up.

As it turned out, people did come, pretty close to what would be the full, comfortable, capacity of the library to hold them. We ate a potluck dinner and then I spoke and showed my slides. It was great fun. They gave out door prizes afterward, including a few copies of Gift of the Whale. Anna Jack, here with husband Simmick, won the first copy. She told me that was good, as she had worn her first copy out. Authors like to hear this kind of thing.

This young lady, held in the arms of her father Bryan Thomas, was youngest person to buy a book, which she had me autograph. I feel terrible, as I have forgotten her name. I thought I would remember it after I addressed a book to her, but I didn't. I don't know about this getting older stuff.

Afterward, I stepped outside. The snow had momentarily stopped flying. This is the bowhead skull that sits between the entrance to the Tuzzy Library and the Iñupiat Heritage Center.

As I walked back to the house of Roy Ahmaogak, my host, I heard a knock on a window to the side. I looked and saw the gentleman at right waving, and gesturing for me to come in. I did, and James and Ellen served me tea and ice cream. Thank you, James and Ellen. Thank you, Friends of Tuzzy. Thank you, Barrow. Thank you, Arctic Slope. I just got a call from Melanie. She says it snowed in Anchorage this morning, but didn't stick. Wouldn't it be nice if we got to enjoy a real, old-fashioned, Alaska winter this year? Except that we don't have any firewood. The summer that just ended was just so tight that we weren't able to get any. We had better get some, soon, though.

The update:

As it happened, two hours after I made this post at 4:58 PM, Sunday, Roy Ahmaogak drove me to the Barrow airport, helped me carry my bags into the Alaska Airlines terminal, disappeared and then quickly reappeared to tell me that Bryan and his young daughter whose name I had forgotten were also here at the terminal.

Here they are: Bryan and one year old Violet, whose name I know now and have recorded in my history of the world as I experience it.

Then I was out on the tarmac, walking toward the Alaska Airlines jet that would take me to Anchorage. As I walked toward it, I wondered if, anywhere in this world, there is another land so magnificent, great and wonderful as Alaska.

I do not wish to offend any of my Outisde readers, but, no, I don't think there is.

And lucky me - right here in the midst of it!! Surrounded by it - traveling through it, calling it home - my home, that I still yearn to know so much better than I do.

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