The wedding of Rainey and B-III, part 1: getting there - I almost miss my flight; smiles, laughter and good food abound

I almost missed the wedding. At 3:23 AM on May 31, shortly after I arrived home in Wasilla from Arizona, I put up a post in which I noted that a spider had just bitten me and that I planned to go to bed for four hours, then get up, go pick up some distressed kitty cats, take care of some tasks, and afterward drive to Anchorage to catch a 1:00 PM Alaska Airlines flight that would begin my trip north, to Anaktuvuk Pass.

I arose at 7:40 and sat down at my computer at 7:50 to check my emails. I then decided to double-check my flight itinerary, just to be safe.

I opened it and damn near suffered a heart-attack. My Alaska Airlines flight out of Anchorage was scheduled not for 1:00 PM, but for 10:15 AM. It was my Wright Air flight out of Fairbanks to Anaktuvuk that was scheduled for 1:00 PM.

I dropped everything, grabbed my suitcase, still fully packed from Arizona, jumped into the car, made a quick stop at the place where the kitties were, gave them a pat on the head and told them not to worry, that Caleb would pick them up later in the day and then I would see them in just a couple of days more.

I then dashed off to Anchorage. I checked in for my 10:15 flight at exactly 9:15 - pretty much the last minute, if you have luggage.

Here I am, sitting in my seat, looking out the window at Denali, enroute to Fairbanks. Given the cloud cover, tourists down on the ground would not be able to see our great mountain.

I caught a cab from the main terminal at Fairbanks International to Wright Air on the other side of the airport and it cost $20. The driver turned out to be James Albert, the little brother of my friend, Rose Albert.

At 1:00 PM, I boarded the Wright Air flight along with half-a-dozen other passengers - everyone of whom was on their way to the wedding.

Those seen here in front of me as they pay rapt attention to the pilot's preflight briefing include Rainey's friends, Beth Marino, Joe Hickman and Neva Hickman.

I was kind of wishing that I had been the first passenger to board, so that I could have taken the right-hand seat. That way, if the pilot passed out or something, I could have flown the plane.

I really wanted to fly the plane.

I thought about asking, but then the pilot would have told me, "no!"

I would have felt silly and embarrassed.

Payuk Nay, cousin to B-III, was ready with his in-flight Wonder Classic White Sandwich Bread.

Soon, Payuk pulled out his harmonica and provided us with some in-flight entertainment. Elvira Gueco of Barrow grins from the next seat.

Beth Marino, a friend of Rainey's from college, looks out the window at what little she can see of Alaska's great interior.

She couldn't see much, because many wildfires were burning. As we flew north, it only got worse - so bad that we could not see the ground, not even the Yukon River.

After about an hour-and-a-half, the pilot flew into the pattern in preparation to land at the AKP airport.

The pilot brings us down on final.

After the wedding guests exit the airplane, Rainey hugs her friend, Beth Marino

Elvira Gueco gives an enthusiastic hug to the groom to be, Ben Hopson, III, who also goes by "B-3" and "B-III," both of which are pronounced exactly the same. Elvira is originally from the Philippines, but lives in Barrow now. She and her husband Ralph have befriended many Iñupiat. She is well-known for her cooking skills and would bring a touch of Asian to the wedding feast.

I should know the name of this little character welcoming Payuk home, but you know, my brain gets older every day.

The groom to be - B-III.

Just like Payuk, we all caught rides to our destinations in eight-wheeled Argos, the main form of summer transportation in Anaktuvuk Pass and countryside. 

The road system in Anaktuvuk Pass is pretty short - to the north, it reaches for approximately two to three miles to the dump and to the south it follows the runway and ends maybe a bit more than a mile from the village.

Even so, on a windy, 50 below day, a ride in a car, even just for a few blocks, is welcome.

Soon, I enter the house of Rainey and B-III, where I will spend my two nights in Anaktuvuk. That's Rainey's younger sister, Angela, to the right. Angela works out of Anchorage for the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation and used her frequent flyer miles to get me to Anaktuvuk. Thank you, Angela!

The fellow standing in the background is Rainey's brother, Sonny. Altough she occupies but a tiny spot at the left side of the screen, Casey Nay had done and would do a great deal of work and cooking to help make this wedding a success.

Payuk stirs come caribou stew. Soon, I would have a bowl. Superb, par excellence, exquisite. Not even in the finest restaurants of New York City can one find cuisine such as this.

Some readers may think that I exaggerate, but I don't.

No food is better than natural, wild, food, prepared right - and this was prepared right.

At this wedding, there would be no fancy, multi-tiered skyscraper cake with a plastic bride and groom standing in the frosting at the top. Instead, there would be wild salmonberry cakes, with salmonberry glaze, being made here by Sonny and Angela.

Even with all this cooking going on, there were war games to be played.

Rainey got out a pile of my old Uiñiq magazines to show me. The one on top is an issue I did in 1991 on Point Hope, the village where she was born and raised. Both she and B-3 were living in Barrow six years ago, when Rainey found herself pursued by many suitors.

One day, B-3 showed up at her house with two caribou that he had just shot. Then he took her for a snowmachine ride on the tundra. It was no contest after that. B-III was her man.

A year ago, they moved here to Anaktuvuk Pass, B-3's home village.

I should have used this picture in yesterday's post, when I explained what I see as the rather amazing connections that have brought Rainey, Dustinn and the family of Vincent Craig and myself all together as friends.

Just before 5:00 PM, we all left to walk to the cemetery to take part in the village Memorial Day service and feast.

Please do not suspect that I exaggerate the happiness that everyone felt this day. This is how it truly was. Smiles and laughter abounded. I saw no one get angry, I saw not one scowl nor sour face.

Life is not always this good, anywhere, but today, here in Anaktuvuk Pass, it was.

It would be tomorrow as well - despite the fact that Mother Nature would not exactly cooperate with the original wedding plan.

Later that evening - the two sisters, Rainey and Angela.

The wedding of Nasuġraq Rainey Higbee to B-III would take place the next day. If all goes according to my plan, readers can view that wedding tomorrow, right here.

Anaktuvuk Pass: remembering loved ones who have passed on

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 Nasuġraq 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.

Buddy, a dog from Wasilla, makes good in Barrow; Flossie feeds me a good Iñupiaq lunch

As I walked from the far end of the sprawling Barrow neighborhood of Browerville, I passed by the Northern Lights Restaurant. I was hungry, and for a moment I thought maybe I would go in and buy some chow mien or Kung Pao chicken.

What a foolish thought! I was on my way to the home of Roy and Flossie Nageak and I knew that they would feed me - and it would be a bigger, better, meal than I would get in a restaurant. I needed to save room in my tummy for it, so I just walked right by Northern Lights.

Soon, I was sitting on the living room couch. Roy was out for a bit, but Flossie was there and so was Buddy, a half-dalmatian dog that came to Barrow from Wasilla.

Buddy was happy to see me. He wanted to know everything that had happened in Wasilla since he left as a pup, all these many years ago.

When I told him, he simply could not believe it.

I mean, if it wasn't something that we have witnessed, who could possibly believe it?

Roy and Flossie's grandson Amare Roy, a beautiful mix of Iñupiaq and Filipino, was there. He pedaled about as Flossie pulled together the ingredients for a good lunch.

Soon, she called me to the table. Laid before me was bowhead maktak and flipper, frozen caribou, frozen fish and seal oil. That's a frozen grayling that she is cutting with her ulu. 

When I was still new to this country, I once took a seat at an Iñupiat table and my hostess asked me if I needed a steak knife. "Yes," I answered, picturing one of those flimsy, serrated things that mainstream America calls steak knifes.

Instead, she sat a big, sturdy-bladed, razor-honed, hunting knife in front of me. This, and even better, an ulu, is the kind of knife it takes to slice up Iñupiaq food. Using what Mainstream America calls a steak knife, you could not possibly cut up the maktak you see on the other side of the knife.

I soon learned to carry a good knife with me at all times. This worked out well for awhile and I stayed well-fed, but then along came international terrorism and tightened airport security. I kept forgetting to take my $50 to $70 folding knives out of my pocket and the good folk of the Transportation Security Administration kept taking those knives away from me.

So now I must borrow a knife whenever I eat an Iñupiaq meal.

I had not had such a meal for awhile. This one was excellent - and the blubber that you see attached to the black skin is not at all like beef fat and it is healthy. It is full of the good kind of chorlesteral. The black skin is rich in Vitamin C.

It is the food of the Arctic, and it is the best food to eat in the Arctic - especially if you want to stay warm.

Plus, my tummy had been feeling irritated for a couple of days. This good, oily, food calmed it down and made it feel much better.

Flossie offers a piece of frozen grayling to Amare, but today he wants a hotdog.

Flossie slices up a hotdog with her ulu and then the three of us chow down. My fingers quickly became too oily to handle my camera, so I put it down.

After we had eaten, Flossie brewed tea.

And cookies go good with tea.

This is what it looked like out the window. The sun has been down now since November 18, but, as you can see, it is on its way back. It will rise for about half-an-hour on Saturday, January 23 - tomorrow. It's time above the horizon will then increase for about 15 minutes a day until midnight on May 10. It will then slide across the northern horizon of the sea ice and then not set again until early August.

Sadly, I will not be able to photograph the return of the sun. Lavina is having labor contractions, more than a month early, and while they are far apart and the hope is she can hold off for another week or more, I am going home. I have accomplished all that I needed to accomplish this trip and, as much as I would like to photograph the returning sun, I want even more to be there when my next grandchild is born.

I want Margie to be there, too, and Mary, Lavina's mom. So I really hope this new baby waits awhile - but, just in case these contractions grow strong and push it out, I am going home so I can be there.

After Roy returned, everybody gathered around my laptop to see a picture spread that I did with images that I took of them last summer.

Roy and Amare, with Flossie in the background.

Joe the Water Man pours coffee at Pepe's; Emily plays Little Dribblers as she prepares for surgery; Little Alan - his grandfather watches old Barrow movies

It was a good and productive day - but I took very few pictures as I have already done all the images for this project.

I did photograph Joe the Water Man, however, as he poured coffee this morning at Pepe's North of the Border Mexican Restaurant, where I ate a breakfast of ham, eggs, hash browns and wheat toast.

Not so long ago, there was two ways to get water into your home in Barrow. You could go to Freshwater Lake, cut out some blocks of ice, put them on your sled, bring them home, lug them into your house, put them into the water barrel to melt - or you could call out for the kind of service provided by Joe the Waterman.

If you called Joe, he would show up wearing no parka, no hat, not even a sweatshirt - it did not matter what the temperature was; even when it dropped into the minus 50's, Joe wore only a t-shirt and jeans (but always a good pair of gloves).

When I would see him this way, I always worried about the outcome should he break down somewhere on a truly bitter day, lose the heat in his truck and have too great a distance to cover on foot to the next heated structure to get there before the cold got him.

Praise be! It never happened.

He drove the truck for his mother, Fran Tate, and now he waits tables and helps her run Pepe's, which has brought her world-wide fame as the owner of the farthest north Mexican Restaurant in the world. Johnny Carson even brought her on his show once, and she brought an "oosik"... wait... wait... wait...

I should tell this story with a picture of Fran, who is now well into her 70's and still running the show.

I did not see her today, but maybe I will catch her before I leave. I don't know. I might, I might not.

Here's Joe at the cash register, where he just took my money. Concerning the characters on the shelf behind him, he said the seven to the right are the cooks who work at Pepe's and the paunch-bellied blonde to the left "is my mom."

A decade or so has passed since Joe quit driving the water truck, but people still call him and ask him to bring them water.

This is ten year-old Emily Brower, and she had stopped briefly at the home of her Aapa and Aaka, Savik and Myrna Ahmaogak, to pick Myrna up and take her to Wednesday evening church services.

Emily was born with a cleft-palette and has had five corrective surgeries and will soon be going to Anchorage for another. After that, she will get braces. She has made huge progress and I believe she will continue to do so.

Emily is playing Little Dribblers basketball. "I love it," she says.

This is Emily's cousin, Little Alan Beall, who is also going to church with his Aaka Myrna and his Aunt Jo-Jo Brower, Emily's mom.

Little Alan's mother, Shareen, reports that lately, Little Alan has begun making regular visits to the home of his Aunt Jo-Jo, Uncle Arnold and cousin Emily. He enjoys the feeling of independence that he gets when he leaves his mother behind and goes off to visit without her (Jo-Jo comes and picks him up).

Lately, his hair had grown long but he did not want to let anyone cut it. So he was told that if he wanted to keep visiting his aunt and uncle, he had to let Uncle Arnold cut it.

So he did. His hair is short now. His visits continue.

I spent some time tonight watching old Barrow films from the 40's and 50's with Savik, who recently returned from Anchorage where he had kidney surgery. "Now, I have to build up my strength," he told me.

Here, he watches as a woman from the days of his youth is tossed high off the boatskin blanket at the whaling feast of Nalukatak. When I first met Savik over a quarter-of-a-century ago, he was still recovering from having broken both legs doing the blanket toss in Wainwright.

At a different point in the film, we watched as people clad in their Sunday best parkas poured out of the Utqiagvik Presbyterian Church. "There's Mom!" he said as several women exited together.

We also watched as a runner came into the village off the sea ice, carrying the flag of his whaling crew. This told the village that the crew had just landed a bowhead.

Today, the landing of a whale is still announced in this ceremonial way, but everybody knows as the news is instantly broadcast over VHF radio. Usually a youth carries the flag as he races to town on his snowmachine. 

In those days, Savik told me, the young man always ran with the flag. He did not even take a dog team. Trails can easily be ten, 15 miles long and the sea ice very rough.

Those runners were tough guys.

"Praying for you, praying for you,

someone is praying for you

Your path may be darkened

Your friends may be few

but someone is praying for you."

Savik has gone to bed, but his TV is still on - a recording of a singspiration in Wainwright, and the song from which the verse above comes from is being sung - first in Iñupiaq, then English.

2009 in review - April: begins with moose in the yard; ends on a crazy-hot day on the Arctic ice

April began with a mama and her calf, dining in our backyard.

This is Jim, an amateur weatherman who I sometimes come across while walking. Our winter was drawing to its end. Jim had recorded 57 days below zero at his house, several in the - 30's and a few in the - 40's. Total snowfall had been eight feet.

Wasilla, of course, is in one of Alaska's moderate climate zones.

It discourages and depresses me to walk through Serendipity too often, but occasionally I do. I did this day and Muzzy came with me. I don't know how he manages to store up so much pee, but he marked every single property on his side of the street as his.

When we entered break-up for real, I got my bike out and started to pedal. You can see I still had the brace on my right wrist. I did not yet know it, and would have thought the opposite, but bike riding would prove to be great physical therapy for my wrist and shoulder.

As long as I didn't crash.

Becky, a young neighbor who lives on Seldon, gave Muzzy some love.

I saw this little character in the Post Office parking lot.

This happened on one of those mornings that I had to get out of the house and go get breakfast at Family Restaurant. These two guys had a nice little conversation and I am certain that it was friendly.

This guy stepped onto the side of the road to remind everybody they had to pay their taxes. Thanks to my injury, I had made very little money in 2008 and hardly had to pay any tax at all.

This year, I have made a decent income, but 2008 put me so deep into the hole that it does not feel like it at all. It feels like I am drowning, going under and maybe I am.

It would be okay if it were just me, because I could move into a shack and blog about it, but I hate to take Margie there. She has gone through so much and given up so much just to be with me these past few decades. She deserves much better than that.

It looks like tax time will be hell.

But I have 3.5 months to figure it out, so maybe it will be okay.

Many times in my career, I have brought us to the very brink.

And always, something has come along to save us.

By Easter, the snow had largely left our yard. We hid Easter eggs in the bare parts. Kalib went out and found them. We did not really hide them that good.

Kalib was pleased to discover that he could use guacamole to stick a chip to his face.

As I prepared to go north, Kalib played harpoon the whale. Kalib was the harpooner, Muzzy the whale.

Size ratio just about right.

I was glad to be going north, but it was very hard to leave this guy.

To me, what you are looking at is still a bit unbelievable. I had never imagined that I would see such a thing. The date is April 27, the place, Barrow, Alaska.

Barrow does not look like this on April 27. In Barrow, everything is frozen solid on April 27. On April 27, the temperature is either below zero F, or just a few degrees above. The wind drives a continual flow of snow low over the hardened drifts.

But not this April 27. On this April 27, the snow was melting. The air felt warm. No one living had ever before seen such a thing here, nor was there any record of this having ever happened, prior to this year. No one living who knows this place at all would have believed they ever would see such a thing.

It was causing problems for the whale hunters, making ice conditions dangerous.

I would like to say that this was a complete fluke and that no one will ever see it happen again - and it did finally freeze up again - but, these days, with the summer sea ice receding to unheard of levels, with polar bears and walrus losing the summer ice they need to live on, with animals, fish, and birds that have never been here before coming up from the south, with new species of plants taking root...

Willie Hensley of Kotzebue came to Barrow while I was there and did a reading, slide show and book signing for his autobiography, Fifty Miles From Tomorrow.

I bought a copy, had him sign it and then read it on the jet to India.

It kept me completely absorbed.

What a childhood he had, living the old time Iñupiaq life - and then to go on to fill a lead role in the movement that led to the Alaska Native Land Claims Settlement Act and after that to become a politician, corporate leader and now an author.

This is one of those books that anyone who loves Alaska should read.

Might I also suggest that you read Gift of the Whale, too, if you haven't already?

You don't need to buy it - go find it in a library somewhere.

After several days in Barrow, I bought a ticket to Wainwright, thinking that after I spent a short time there, I would buy another to Point Lay. But I was about to discover that now that only one commuter airline serves the Arctic coast, they don't even let you do that anymore

If you want to fly from Barrow to Wainwright and then on to Point Lay, you have to buy two round trip tickets from Barrow, one to each place. That is kind of taking a trip from San Francisco to Portland and Seattle, only to find you have to buy two separate round trip tickets, one from San Francisco to Portland, and then back to San Francisco and then to Seattle.

And the prices!

If I had done both villages, my trip from Anchorage to Barrow, Wainwright and Point Lay would have cost me more than the round trip I had pending that would take me from Anchorage to Bangalore, India.

HOW RIDICULOUS IS THAT??????

In the photo above, the airplane is landing in Atqasuk, enroute to Wainwright.

For you in the south, please remember, no roads connect the villages of the Arctic to each other.

Whyborn Nungasuk boarded the plane in Atqasuk, headed for Wainwright. For those of you who have read Gift of the Whale, Whyborn is the man who organized the search for Harry Norton. He is one of those people that I am always glad to see.  I thought he must be going to do a little whaling, because Atqasuk is a land-locked village and Whyborn has often whaled in Wainwright.

"You headed to Wainwright to go whaling?" I asked.

"Not whaling," he said, "to talk about Jesus."

That night, they were having the regularly scheduled Wednesday singspiration at the Wainwright Presbyterian Church. I stopped by, to listen the listen to the gospel singing.

At a certain point, Whyborn got up to make a testimony. He told of a recent fall whale hunt that he been on in Barrow. A whale had been taken, and then roped to the boats that would pull it the landing site. Whyborn was in one of those boats, but something went wrong and he was accidently jerked out out of that boat by the rope and into the water.

He went under, and he stayed under long enough to begin to drown, perhaps to drown altogether.

As he drowned, he found himself in a pleasant, warm, place. "There were beautiful flowers, and beautiful butterflies, flying," he said. "Jesus was there."

Whyborn liked that place. He was glad to have arrived.

Then hands took hold of his parka and pulled him out of the water. Those who pulled him out revived him.

When he came too and saw that he was still alive, Whyborn looked at his brother, who had helped to save him.

"Why did you bring me back?" he asked. 

"Death," Whyborn said, "holds no fear for me now."

My wrist was still in a brace. My shoulder still hurt 100 percent of the time and felt fragile to me. I had a fear that I could not stand up to the rigors of the whaling life. I did not plan to go on the ice.

But on April 30, Jason headed out to make a boat ramp where the lead had briefly been, where he hoped it would open again. His younger sister had been planning to go out and help, but she had hurt her wrist, and couldn't.

So a snowmachine was available. I climbed on that snowmachine and found that if I did not grip the throttle in the usual way but pushed it forward with my thumb supported against my brace, I could drive it. At first, I tried to fit a glove over my hand and brace, but the weather was so warm that I found I didn't even need the glove so I took it off.

The fellow with the red on his hat in the background, that's Iceberg 14 co-whaling captain Jason Ahmaogak. The young man chucking the block of ice out of the boat ramp is Jerry Ahmaogak.

This would prove to be one of the hardest whaling seasons on record, all up and down the Arctic coast.

But in June, well after the hunt would normally have ended, Jason would guide the Iceberg 14 boat to the only whale that Wainwright would land. Jerry would harpoon it. Young Benny Ahmaogak, who is also out here building the boat ramp, would fire the shoulder gun.