We celebrate my birthday in Anchorage to the taste of Arctic char from Kaktovik

On the evening of my birthday, I drove into Anchorage where most of the rest of my family already was. Margie had been staying with Jacob and Lavina since the day that I left for Kaktovik, as Jobe had been a little under the weather and she needed to take care of him while Lavina worked.

Soon after I arrived, Lavina threw a few of the Arctic char that I had brought back from Kaktovik onto the grill.

These particular char were given to me by Marie Rexford. Elizabeth Rexford also gave me a generous number from the cache of she and husband Fenton.

Oh, boy, was it tasty! Char is one of my favorite fish - right up there with salmon, halibut and trout.

Thank you, Marie, Fenton and Elizabeth - your generosity made my birthday extra special.

I will still try to work a few char fishing pictures in here, maybe tomorrow, maybe Sunday, maybe Monday.

I am told that Kalib still wields the spatula - usually on a weekend morning when he is cooking eggs, but I have not personally seen him carry the spatula for awhile.

It had been rainy and cool when I drove out of Wasilla, but when I got out of the car at Jacob and Lavina's house, the sun shone brightly upon me and I was surprised by how hot it felt - just like I remember from the southern Arizona desert.

Well, maybe not quite that hot.

We ate on the table that graces the back deck of Jacob and Lavina's house. When I sit here, I am always amazed at the typical American suburban environs my son and daughter-in-law have planted themselves in and how comfortable they seem within.

After dinner, a few of us sat in the living room and talked while others readied something out in the kitchen that I was not supposed to see just yet.

It was Lisa whose stories dominated the conversation, and they were mostly about the dogs that she had been caring for while their owners were away. One day, she came to the house to find that one of the dogs had pooped on important tax papers. She had to save those papers, and the process involved rubber gloves and drying and sterilizing things and it was not pleasant.

Charlie said the dog had only done what everybody wants to do.

After she told the story, Jacob came out with Jobe. Jobe tackled Jacob.

Look up there, on the wall. It's Jobe's Apache cradleboard, the one made especially for him by one of the most skilled cradleboard makers on the White Mountain Apache Reservation - his Aunt LeeAnn.

Jobe will never sleep in it again.

That makes me kind of sad, yet I so greatly enjoy watching him grow, learn and experience.

Margie came out, pulled the curtains and turned out the lights. Then Melanie entered from the kitchen, followed by Kalib, Margie and Lavina. She carried the object that I had not been allowed to see until now. It was a flaming cake that she had made, just for me.

Count the number of candles and you will see that on my birthday, I turned younger than I had been for five decades.

The little ones watched intently as grandma inhaled a deep breath. Could he do it? Not quite!

So Kalib, the expert candle blower-outer, finished the job.

Once again, I drove home by myself. Jobe was doing quite a bit better, but Lavina's good friend, Sandy, has hit her due date and could go into labor at any minute. She wants Lavina with her when she delivers and Lavina has promised that she will be. 

Jacob had to leave for Kipnuk early in the morning, so Margie stayed to be on hand to care for the little ones should another little one choose the next day to be born.

This is what I saw as I neared Wasilla, just a few minutes before midnight.

Midnight won't look like this for much longer.

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Happy birthday, Robert John Gordon!

This is Robert John Gordon and today is his seventh birthday. Happy birthday, Robert John Gordon! We share birthdays, you and I. Robert lives in the Brooks Range village of Anaktuvuk Pass, but I took this picture in Kaktovik, outside the community center, just a little before midnight on July 8, the day that I arrived in Kaktovik.

Here is Robert again, standing amidst loved ones at the graves of Thomas K. and Simon Gordon. The woman wearing the parka and standing behind Robert is Mayuin Gordon, wife of Thomas and adoptive mother of both Simon and Robert. She had been out on a hunting trip with her family on August 1 of 2008 when her husband slipped on a steep bank and fell into a deep pool of cold water that he could not get out of.

Twelve-year old Simon followed him into the inescapable water, and it is my understanding that he did so in an effort to rescue his father.

Kaktovik has a population of just under 300 people and when Mayuin returned driving the boat without her husband and son Simon, the entire village came to her and then went back to the scene to find and recover the bodies.

Thomas had been a leader in the village and I can tell you from my own experience with him that he was an exceptionally warm and kind man. He was beloved in the village and the people also had high hopes for Simon, as they watched him grow.

Their loss left the community in deep and lingering sadness. Thomas had been a guitar player, and loved to perform gospel music. So, last summer, both to honor Thomas and Simon and to bring healing to the community, the village held the first Thomas K. Gordon Memorial Gospel Jamboree. Yes, there was gospel singing, but also community games, played on the beach and at the community center; there was a feast, a bonfire, a talent show, snert tournament and an Arctic char fishing derby.

The healing extended beyond Thomas and Simon to all those who had lost loved ones and families.

People cried, but they also laughed.

Had I have known, I would have been there, but I knew this year and so came for the second jamboree.

It was a wonderful experience. Needless to say, I took lots and lots and lots of pictures and it had been my hope to do a decent summary on this blog. However, deadlines are weighing heavy upon me. In addition to the healthy communities Uiñiq that will include this story, I have another Uiñiq on Kivgiq that is JUST ABOUT press ready.

What I have discovered is that JUST ABOUT - layout all done, most of the photos adjusted, most of the text written - can still mean days, even a couple of weeks, of work ahead and once that is done I must go to Kotzebue to do a job that has nothing to do with Uiñiq. Sometime in August, I plan to visit Atqasuk and maybe Arctic Village and then, somehow, I must have this healthy communities Uiñiq press-ready by the first week of September.

So I think I will wait until after Uiñiq comes out to post this story. By then, I hope to have figured out how to make and present the electronic magazine that I want to create. If so, then I plan to go back and rework some of the Uiñiq stories for that. This way, the stories can be shared with people who will never see Uiñiq magazine. 

As for those who do see Uiñiq, I will be able to share more pictures that space will have prevented me from including in Uiñiq.

So that is my plan. 

There is no way to know what will actually happen until it happens.

That goes for tomorrow and the next day, too. 

The fence beyond the graveyard is a snow fence - built to catch the constant fall, winter and spring drift so as to lessen the amount of deep drifting within the village.

I should note that when I first met Thomas Gordon, in September of 1986, he was living in Mayuin's home village of Anaktuvuk Pass. Each September, the people of Anaktuvuk eagerly await the migration of caribou that pass through and by their village.

Before passing through, the caribou tend to gather in herds just to the north of the Brooks Range. By their own traditional law, no one is to disturb or shoot a caribou until the first group enters their valley and passes by the village. This is because a gunshot or disturbance might frighten the lead caribou and cause them to change routes. Once the leaders have passed through, the rest will follow, no matter how many shots are taken. In that year, the people had observed the caribou gather as normal, but they did not come to the village. They chose another another route to the west.

There had been sport hunters camped down where the caribou had gathered. They did know of local, native, traditional law nor did they care about it. When they saw the caribou, they did not wait for the leaders to pass by and enter the valley.

They shot.

So, without caribou, Thomas and his friend Harry went out to hunt moose, and I followed. We did not find any moose. It was frustrating, but Thomas never grew angry. He did not swear. He did not say anything bad about anybody - not even the sport hunters whose shots may have turned the caribou from the village.

He was sad, but his humor remained good.

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Last Friday, a sleepy man flew to Kaktovik

Despite multiple attempts, I was unable to put up a single post during my stay in Kaktovik - thanks to Squarespace.* So now I back up to Friday, the day I left, a day that began miserably. This was because I did not get to bed until 1:00 AM, but set my alarm for 3:55 AM.

It was not necessary for me to set the alarm at all, because when I must wake up at such an hour, I really don't sleep at all. I might drop into a semi-doze for five, ten - and if I am very lucky - 15 minutes at a time and then my eyes open and I check the time.

Still, I set the alarm just in case I should somehow actually fall into a deep sleep.

It didn't happen, though.

At 3:54, I was watching the clock. I could have turned it off, but Margie needed to wake up, too, and it was easier for me to let the alarm wake her than to wake her myself.

Margie has been blessed with the gift of sleep. Her head hits the pillow and she's asleep, usually until its time to get up.

I have been cursed with the curse of insomnia.

Worse yet, the less time I have to sleep, the more insomniak I am.

I often wonder how I function at all.

As for Jim, he sleeps at will and also takes many cat naps.

Soon, I was in the car with Margie, driving to Anchorage, to the airport, to hop on my first Era Aviation flight, the one that would take me from Anchorage to Fairbanks.

I desperatedly wanted to sleep on that flight, but I could not.

In Fairbanks, I switched to the plane that would take me to Kaktovik. I was the only passenger, but the plane was full - full of freight.

For those of you who may wonder why everything is so expensive in Rural Alaskan places like Kaktovik, this is why. Except for a barge load or two in the summer, this is how goods travel - including all fresh food, milk and such.

Even with bypass mail, this is not a cheap way to stock the shelves.

Again, I wanted to sleep but again, I could not. Still, I kept my eyes closed. I figured that would help. Accompanied by the roar of the engine and the props beating the air, I held my eyes closed as images, often bordering on dreams, played in my head.

Images of the living, and images of the dead; pictures of places, from Alaska to Arizona, to India and Canada and Greenland and New York City and San Francisco - all sorts of images of people and places, swirling about in my head as the plane carried me over Northern Alaska.

I wanted to hold my eyes closed forever.

I knew I could not do that. So I decided I would hold them closed until I felt the plane stall and the wheels hit the runway in Kaktovik.

But I couldn't do that, either. At a certain point, I knew we had to be drawing near to Kaktovik. We had to be passing over the Brooks Range.

"Eyes!" I ordered. "I have seen the Brooks Range many times! I do not need to see it now! It is better for you to stay closed, so that I might get what little rest I can."

My eyes did not listen.

They popped open.

And there, beneath the plane, stood the Brooks Range.

Very soon, the plane was descending, the Beaufort Sea below.

Then, it was dropping down over the westerns fringes of Barter Island, the northern-most point of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, upon which sits Kaktovik.

Then came the stall, and the bump of the wheels. Now we were rolling down the runway, past the massive hangar built by the Air Force in the early 1950's, when they force-moved the Iñupiat of Kaktovik out of their homes so that they could build this airport where the old village had stood.

More on this later.

I was hungry by now, so, after Crystallee Kaleak and Annie Tikluk found lodging for me in the Assembly of God Church and I got settled in, I walked to Waldo Arms and ordered an omelette.

As I ate, someone came in and peeked through the telescope that points out the Waldo Arms window toward the sea and shore, to see if perhaps there were polar bears out there.

He spotted none.

And then, I was standing on a beach, camera in hand. People were smiling, and waving. I will explain in a subsequent post.

I was about to state that I would explain in tomorrow's post, however, tomorrow is a very special day in someone's life, someone who had a most important role in the happenings that unfolded in Kaktovik, so maybe I will dedicate tomorrow's post to him, instead, and save my larger explanation for the next day.

*Squarespace has an iPad app, but it is a pretty lousy app. I did not have access to wireless where I stayed, so, when I would get a chance, I would go to the school and usually sit on the steel stairway and log on to North Slope Borough School District public wireless.

I built three different posts in the Squarespace app but at the end of each attempt was rewarded only with a rotating, circular, arrow above the word, "publishing." After the failure of my first attempt, which included three photos, I figured maybe Squarespace just could not deal with that tiny amount of information on a slow connection, so I made a new post with just one photo.

After that failed, I made a thrid post that contained only words and no image at all.

Just like before, the publishing arrow just rotated and rotated and rotated - for two days it rotated. yet never published the post. Sometime before the end of fall, I must make the time to research some other web-hosting platforms. When I find the right one, I will move this blog and my future electronic publishing efforts to it.

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We dine at the hog shak; dog lunges at bike - I am off to Kaktovik

Atop the bluff overlooking the once fine meadow that, despite the developers promise that they would leave a nice lake behind, is now a barren gravel pit Margie and I spotted a new kiosk. The sign in front of it said, "The Hog Shak"

So we pulled up to find out what it was all about.

Turns out, it is a new eatery featuring hog products.

So we both ordered a hog sandwich and a bottle of water.

As we waited, I looked in my rearview mirror and saw these two passing by.

This is Eric, who founded the hog shop three days ago, and his mom, Margaret, who is giving her son a helping hand to crank up his new little business.

The hog sandwich was pretty good, too. I kind of wanted a hog burrito but Margaret was still making the tortilla dough.

After I return from Kaktovik, I intend to try a burrito.

Late Thursday night, as I was pedaling my bike home on a shorter-than-usual ride, this dog charged me. I could see that it was just a silly pup and it did not frighten me, but it did give me some interesting moments.

Joseph was out walking his dog. The pup went and gave them some interesting moments, too.

If all goes according to plan, by the time this posts, I will be in Kaktovik. Now - perhaps you see a picture at the top of this post that I took with my iPad inside the Era Aviation flight that just brought me to Fairbanks, enroute to Kaktovik. Using the Squarespace iPad ap, I just tried to add it to the bottom of this post, the rest of which I put together last night before I went to bed for three hours.

*After I added it, it simply disappeared from the working window of the Squarespace ap. I opened up Safari and saw that it had gone to the top, sideways. So I came back to the Squarespace ap window to see if I could fix the problem, but the photo still does not show here, at the top or the bottom.

Given the general troublesome nature of Squarespace, I am not really surprised.

*This is the image that was at the top, as described above. As that was how it happened and how I described it, I was just going to leave it that way, but it bother me too much to look at it. So, I just now happened upon an online computer here in Kaktovik on which I could work on this without using the Squarespace ap and so I moved the photo down to the bottom where I had tried to place it in the first place and rotated it.

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UK coffee treat; a shadow, biking through the shadows

When I pulled up to the drive through window at Metro Cafe yesterday afternoon and went to pull my wallet out, Elizabeth told me to put it back. Carmen had received a letter with a purchase order for a Metro punch card from Martin Garrod of the UK.

Carmen came out and read the letter. It was a very nice letter. She said she will make me a copy of it.

Here is Elizabeth, bringing me my coffee as Carmen talks with Martin on the phone... I jokes! I do not know who Carmen was talking to.

Thank you, Martin! It was a big and welcome surprise and the coffee was excellent.

Martin sometimes leaves a comment after a post.

I feel rather bad about comments right now, as it has always been my intent to keep up a daily dialogue with those who leave comments, but my days are so packed and I am always so far behind schedule that most days I just let the comments stand for themselves, without responding to them.

I hope that sometime in the future I can do better.

Be assured, I appreciate all comments that are left here.

If everything had gone according to my plan, I would be hanging out at Era Aviation in Deadhorse right now, waiting for the airplane that I had expected to take me to Kaktovik where I was scheduled to land at 3:45 this afternoon.

However, an order for pictures that must be delivered before I can leave came in yesterday and it involves some searching and lot of sorting, editing, and processing. I thought I could get it all done by 1:00 AM and then get a little bit of sleep and make my 9:30 AM flight out of Anchorage, but I couldn't. So I postponed my trip to Kaktovik by one more day - except that tomorrow I leave on the 6:30 AM flight, which means I must get up about 4:00 and that is going to be tough - but my scheduled arrival is 10:30 AM and that will give me most of the day to get a little work done.

Late at night, I got on bike and went shadow biking.

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