The Barrow Whalers travel 1,023 miles to Nikiski, where they lose badly in the first half, but fight back hard through the second

I met the Barrow Whalers at the Wal-Mart near the Dimond Center in Anchorage at about 8:30 PM. I had planned to meet them shortly after 6:00 PM, the time that their Era Aviation flight from Barrow had been scheduled to land at Ted Stevens International Airport, but that flight was over two hours late.

As the coaches bought a good supply of water and Gatorade for the next day's game, the Whalers ate Subway sandwiches on the hood of one of the three vans that had been rented to take them to Nikiski - over three hours away.

The Whalers hit the road a minute or two before I did. My electronic gas gauge showed that I only had 150 miles to go before empty, so I would have to stop and gas up. I wondered if I might possibly catch up to them before they reached Nikiski.

Unless they stopped somewhere, it seemed unlikely. Coach Voss told me that the plan was to drive straight through - as even that would not put them there until after midnight. Then they would need to haul their gear into the school, down through the hallways and up the stairs to the wrestling room and there establish their beds.

Their Nikiski hosts planned to bring breakfast to them at 8:00 AM. The game would be at 11:00.

When I pulled into the Girdwood Tesoro station, 50 miles out of Anchorage proper but still with the municipal boundaries, I found that they had stopped there, too.

They left even before I could turn on the unleaded regular pump. I spent at least ten minutes gassing up and buying a few goodies. Still, there were hills to climb ahead, I figured they would not be going that fast and thought I would catch them.

After I got going, I discovered much of the route to be covered with heavy fog. 

Traffic was light. I passed a total of four or five slow vehicles and no one passed me, but I did not catch the Whalers. As I neared Kenai, Sally Go Round the Roses came on to station 91.5. I had not heard this song at least for years and think more likely for decades.

Maybe two decades, possibly even three.

When I heard it, in my mind I instantly saw the streets, buildings, vegetation, houses, hill, bay and ocean of Eureka, California, as these things had looked in 1963, when I was 13 and the song popular.

I had always liked it, been enchanted by it - and this was as I heard it on my transistor radio of the time, and on our tiny AM car radio.

Now, it was being played in stereo on our modern, much superior radio and I was totally entranced. Mesmerized. I did not want it to end, but to play and play.

This morning, I downloaded it off iTunes. I have probably listened to it 20 times today, as well as other versions by Grace Slick and the Great Society,  Question Mark and the Mysterians and Pentangle and some other versions as well. I enjoyed them all - but none of the other three could compare to the original by the Jaynetts.

When I reached the Nikiski High School, I expected to find the vans there, but I did not. I found only a surprisingly large high school enshrouded in fog so thick that it could not be seen from across the parking lot.

About 20 minutes later, at approximately 12:30 AM, the vans rolled in. They had pulled over at a rest stop along the way but, given the density of the fog, I had not seen them.

I had felt so tired as I drove through Kenai that I briefly thought about abandoning my plan to stay with the team in the school and go for comfort in a hotel, but decided to stick to it. I brought an inflatable bed and pump that Jacob and Lavina had lent me. 

After I had picked these and things and Margie up at Jacob and Lavina's on Thursday, I drove to Melanie's house to drop off a table that she had found in Wasilla on Craigslist. Melanie, Rex and Charlie had removed the table from the car and one of them had set the pump down in the driveway, meaning to pick it up afterward, but nobody thought about it again until I drove over it while backing out the driveway.

It did not appear to be damaged, but when I tried to inflate the mattress the pump would not work. So I borrowed another, but there were players waiting behind me. I felt guilty, because they needed their sleep to prepare for the game, so I stopped inflating the mattress a bit before I should have.

The bed sagged in the middle. This impacted the quality of my sleep.

I got out of bed somewhere between 7:00 and 7:30 and found coaches Igou and Battle going over plays the whalers would use this day.

Coach Battle briefs the offense.

Just before it was time to go on the field, I found quarterback Eddie Benson adjusting the foam protection that Coach Houston had helped him place over the cast that protected his broken arm.

Football is a team sport, yet, before each game, a player must go alone into his own mind, into his own psyche and soul to prepare for the battle ahead.

The fog had begun to ease a bit, but was still heavy. The grass was wet and cold. Darius Samuelu prepared to don his helmet and join his teammates.

As the Whalers warmed up and stretched their muscles, Roger Ferguson passed in front of my camera.

Then, the older, more experienced, bigger, heavier, deeper Nikiski Bull Dogs broke through the fog and charged onto the field.

Team captains Lawrence Kaleak, Nathaniel Samuelu and Eddie Benson took the field for the coin toss. The Bulldogs won. They chose to receive.

One could look at images such as this along with the final score of 47 - 7 and conclude that the Bulldogs trounced the Whalers.

No doubt about it, the whalers took some hard blows - including one to the shoulder of Jacob Harris.

Yet, after falling behind 40-0 by the end of the first half, they listened when the coaches told them to look at the second half as a new game, reach into their souls for their inner strength and go out determined to fight and win that two quarter game.

They regrouped and hit hard.

Despite the bleak score, they did not give up and made many excellent plays, including this one when Benson hit James Snow with a fifteen yard pass. 

Snow snatched the pass...

...he turned...

...and charged forward for a gain of I don't know how much, as I have not seen the stats, but he did gain a first down.

Blood was drawn on the face of Ulu Tuai.

A bit later, a swath of skin was torn from his arm, just above the elbow. As coaches Battle and Houston patched him up, Tuai urged them to hurry, as he wanted to get back into the game.

Even before Houston could finish binding his wound, Uluakiaho wanted to get back on the field.

They were down by 40 points, but... hey! Do the Whalers look like a football team? They do to me.

The whalers got on the board when Jones hit Jhonel Moreno in the endzone for six. Jones then kicked the extra point. 

I am proud to say that although the Whalers did not win, they fought through every minute of the game and they tied the second half, 7-7. Victor Unutoa carries the ball.

Afterward, as they always do, they gathered for a prayer.

And they raised their helmets, just like they did last week, when they won.

As I walked from the field back to the school to gather my stuff together, I saw two dogs, riding through the parking lot in the back seat of car.

Soon, I was on the road and in Kenai I saw these two young women in a convertible that must have a permanent Alaska license plate by October 13.

These days, there is no way to know for sure, but I suspect that even before that date they will cease to drive with the top down.

That van in front of me? That's the final vehicle of the caravan of Whalers, driving back to Anchorage where they will overnight and leave early in the morning back to Barrow.

What a beautiful drive it was!

I should note that during the game, the emcee announced that the Barrow whalers had traveled 1028 miles as the crow flies to play this game.

Next week, they play Delta and I sorely want to go, but I have a commitment in Barrow and will not be able to.

They must win, because although I have concluded that I cannot finish this essay to the depth that I want this season and will have to find the way to continue it through the next year or two, I want to photograph them again this season.

If they win next week, they will go on to the playoffs, October 2 in Kenai. I talked to them. They do plan to win. I plan to be in Kenai.

I can't quite explain it, as I do not know any of these young men that well, but I find that there is something that I like about them.

I missed Adrian Panigeo - number 15. He was out on crutches - for the rest of the season. I have never seen a tougher high school player with any more heart than Panigeo, so I hope to photograph him some more in in the future as well.

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Preview of Nannie Rae's Cross Island birthday party; Kalib and Jobe return to the blog

In about one hour, I must leave for an overnight trip to Nikiski, where I will spend the day tomorrow, so I am just plain out of time to put together the Cross Island post that I had planned to do today. The fact is, while I had hoped to have done a complete initial edit of my entire Cross Island/Nuiqsut take by now, so far I have gone through less than one percent of that take.

Once I do go through it, there are huge sections of it that I will not post at all, but will save exclusively for Uiñiq magazine. As for Nannie's birthday, I plan to put it in both the blog and Uiñiq, but in Uiñiq I will probably have to limit it to one or two pictures, whereas here I can post a few.

Here, at least, is a preview of what I plan to post Monday, when I will return this blog to Cross Island/Nuiqsut for two or three more posts:

It is Nannie Rae Kaigelak, with a few of those who gathered in the Cross Island cabin of successful whaling captain Billy Oyagak to celebrate her 22nd birthday.

So I will dedicate my Monday post to a spread that will focus not only on Nannie's birthday, but on a particular Eskimo drum that happened to play a role in that birthday.

If you love Cross Island and you love Nannie Rae - and a great many people do - or even if you have never met Nannie Rae and all that you know of Cross Island is the tiny bit that you have so far seen on this blog, be sure to come back Monday.

In the meantime, come Sunday, I will let Barrow Whaler fans know how the team fared in Nikiski.

So I finally got to see my grandsons and their mom again, yesterday afternoon, when I drove into Anchorage to pick Margie up from this week's babysitting stint.

Here they are, in their driveway.

Little Jobe ALWAYS has a big smile for his grandpa, everytime I see him. 

Martigny was there, too. She never smiles, but she does purr.

As I Margie and I prepared to drive away, Lavina brought Kalib to the window to wave goodbye to us. He did not want us to go. He wanted us to stay. He cried to see us go.

And now, once again, I must go.

That's how my life is. I seldom have time to ever settle down, except for when I was hurt, or Margie was hurt. I am always going.

Go... go... go...

Always.

One day I will be dead and then I will go no more.

I wonder how much I can get done between now and then?

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Cross Island: Young hunters play in the wind; Nanuq family rides in with the ice, takes a stroll down the beach

For days, all the hunters on Cross Island, young and old, male and two females, have been working hard to cut up and prepare the whales. Now it is time for a break. The older hunters retreat to their cabins to get out of the cold wind, to eat, drink coffee, visit and relax.

But the young hunters - their energy is boundless. They eat quickly, then run out to play with the wind. They climb upon a roof, scramble across it and, with the wind at their backs, leap off.

The wind howls in excess of 30 knots. It is the kind of wind that cuts through clothing, skin, fat, blood and meat to chill the bones. 

The young hunters don't care.

To them, the wind is fun. It transforms their coats into sails and pushes them about.

Young hunters, at play with the wind.

For a moment, I worry that the wind will lift him right off the island, hurl him out over the Beaufort Sea and drop him down amongst the icebergs, or perhaps carry him over the top of the North Pole and all the way to Russia.

Won't the Russians be surprised to see a boy from Cross Island drop into their country?

"How did he elude our fighter jets?" Putin will rear his head and grill his military advisers.

It didn't happen that way, though. All the young hunters had fun, but stayed on the ground.

Even as the boys played with the wind, this nanuq family rode in with the ice, then stepped onto the beach and took a stroll.

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Transitions: Wasilla to Cross Island; same state, totally different worlds

I now back up two weeks, to September 1 - a horribly discouraging day for me. It was a day that I contemplated just giving up, to just say the hell with it, to admit that after 35 years of hard, intense, work for which I have accumulated nothing but debt, I'm finished, exhausted, done, wiped out, my career is destroyed - you plunderers at Well's Fargo bank, just take the house and I will take Margie and go live under a bridge somewhere.

But I didn't think Margie would like to live under a bridge, so I decided to rethink the situation.

The thing that had gotten me so down was that I had been planning to cover the Nuiqsut fall bowhead whale hunt based on Cross Island, 79 miles east of the village and about ten miles offshore from the Prudhoe Bay oil fields. At the end of each summer, the Nuiqsut hunters load up their boats, drive them down the Kuukpik River into the chilled waters of the Beaufort Sea and then journey to Cross Island, where they move back into their cabins from where they launch their hunts. 

Under the bowhead quota, Nuiqsut had four strikes to land four whales. Typically, the hunt will last into mid-September and it has been known to extend through the entire month. On Thursday night, August 26, I learned that the crew of Edward Nukapigak, Jr. had invited me to join them and they planned to leave for Cross Island on Sunday, August 29. If I could reach Nuiqsut by Saturday, I could hop on the boat and go with them.

But I couldn't get there by Saturday. I was flat broke, all my credit cards were tapped out and I had no way to pay for my plane ticket - plus, most of my good, Arctic cold weather gear had disappeared and I needed to shop for more. Even in late August/early September, one can easily get chilled into hypothermia out on the Arctic Ocean and so one must be properly dressed.

I had an invoice out that I knew would be paid soon and then I could buy my ticket, pick up a bit of gear and go - I figured by the first or second of September.

If the weather turned good, I reasoned that the Nuiqsut hunters might land one or two bowheads right away, but that would still leave two or three for after I arrived.

As it happened, when the hunters reached Cross Island, they were greeted by a rare, three-day stretch of absolutely perfect weather conditions with whales in the water and they took advantage of it. This year's hunt took place in record speed and all four whales were landed in three days - the last one on September 1, the same day that I photographed this school bus, secured my ticket north, and pulled together cold-weather gear sufficient to the task I had hoped to complete.

I was very happy for the hunters, but discouraged for myself and very disgusted with myself as well, for I should have been there. Although I knew it would take them several days yet to take care of and put up the four whales, I had missed the hunt itself and for awhile it seemed pointless for me to still go.

I decided to go anyway and to see what I could make of it.

I am extremely glad that I did, because once I reached Cross Island, I cast off my depression, immersed myself in the experience and had a truly wonderful time. Plus, as I missed the hunt itself, I now have a good excuse to return for another, so that I can round out and complete my photo essay on Nuiqsut/Cross Island bowhead whaling.

Cross Island is a cold, windy, place where, just to take a walk one must either carry a gun or walk in the presence of others who are armed.

But it is a fantastic place and when the time came to leave I was sad and did not want to go.

Anyway, this is how I got there:

On the morning of September 2, I boarded an Era de Havilland Dash 8 at Anchorage's Ted Stevens International Airport, bound for the Prudhoe Bay airport at Deadhorse, with a brief stop in Fairbanks. The plane was nearly empty, with only six passengers to fill the approximately 40 seats.

We flew past Denali on our way to Fairbanks. So many tourists come here each summer hoping to see this mountain but never get to, as it spends so much of its time shrouded in clouds.

But on this day it was out, and even the murky, plexiglass, window of the Dash 8 could not conceal its magnificence.

One of my five fellow passengers observes the mountain.

As we cross the Tanana River on the approach to Fairbanks International, the pilot has lowered the landing gear. I see a shadow plane coming our way.

It looks to me as though we are on a collision course with the shadow plane.

We are! We are going to collide with the shadow plane! There is no way to avoid it now!

And yet, it is a gentle collision.

We spend 20 minutes on the ground in Fairbanks and then leave for Deadhorse with even fewer passengers than when we landed. I worry about this, because I don't know how an airline can long operate with this kind of passenger load and I want Era to keep this flight going.

"Don't worry," the Stewardess tells me. "We will be full coming out of Deadhorse."

All three of us passengers then pay rapt attention as she delivers the preflight briefing.

When I first got a bike as a young boy living in Missoula, Montana, I hooked up with some friends and we spent the day riding our bikes all over Missoula together. It was one of the most fun days I had yet to experience in my life.

Not long after I first purchased my now crashed airplane, the Citabria that I called Running Dog, I stopped to spend some time in the village of Anaktuvuk Pass, located elsewhere down there in these same Brooks Range mountains.

As it happened, there were two other men living in the village who also had Citabrias. One day, we all hooked up together and we went flying in our separate Citabrias all about these mountains, cutting through various valleys.

I felt just like I did on that day when I was a boy and rode my bike with my friends, all about Missoula, Montana. But now it was the Brooks Range Mountains, Alaska.

Do you begin to understand why I miss that airplane so much? Why I dream of it night after night?

Coming in on final to the Deadhorse airport, a pipeline beneath us.

Touch down at Deadhorse - the airport that serves the Prudhoe Bay oil fields.

I catch a ride to the North Slope Borough's Service Area 10, where Dora Leavitt of Nuiqsut operates a radio communications center for the Nuiqsut whalers, as well as for those at Kaktovik, 100 more miles to the east. She radios Edward Jr., who sends a boat to pick me up, along with some needed supplies, at West Dock, a slow, strictly restricted-speed, forty-minute drive by pick-up truck from the Com Center.

West Dock.

It is Eric Leavitt who comes to get me. He has packed some freshly-boiled uunaalik from the Nukapigak whale for Dora into a cooler to keep it hot. He hands me a piece.

Oh, my! I had not eaten fresh uunaalik in a long time. Tender. So good.

We pass under the bridge and then head out into the ocean. The absolutely perfect conditions that allowed the hunters to land their four whales in three days - record time - are gone now. It is windy and the water is rough. The boat bounces hard across the waves. I do not take pictures, because I have to give my full attention to protecting my cameras and laptop computer from being pounded into oblivion. 

I do this by pulling them close to me. I use my body as a schock absorber.

We reach the island just as everyone takes a break. I go into the Nukapigak cabin and make myself at home. That's captain Edward Jr. on the left, his brother, Thomas, and Eric.

Soon, the work of butchering the last of the four whales commences again. I go out and put myself in the middle of it.

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Four scenes from rolling coffee break: Michelle with Cali the calico kitty and the stone lion; Mormon graffiti car; fourwheeler, skateboarder

First, let me assure those interested that I still plan to post a few stories from my trip north - in fact, I spent more time working on doing so today than I could afford. I have a huge amount of material to digest and it will take some time. I might post a series from that trip Tuesday, but I might wait until Wednesday.

In the meantime... now that I am home here in Wasilla and Margie has gone back to Anchorage to babysit Jobe, I broke away from my computer at the usual time of 4:00 PM to venture out for my rolling coffee break, as All Things Considered played on NPR.

I saw many interesting things, but the most interesting was a lady painting a rock down on Sunrise Drive. A calico cat stood by to watch her work.

So I stopped, to see what was up. This is the lady, Michelle and the 13 year-old calico cat, Cali. As Michelle explained it to me, a fellow who lives here found this rock, dragged it home, looked at it from this side and saw the face of a lion. He asked Michelle if she would paint the lion's profile onto the stone and she agreed.

If one looks closely at the other side of the rock, currently bare, one can see an eagle.

So, after she finishes the lion, Michelle plans to paint an eagle portrait on the opposite side of the rock.

Michelle puts detail into the lion's eye.

Michelle steps back to take a look.

At the post office, I saw this car, heavy with inspirational graffiti. I wondered if the car belonged to a Mormon, as Gordon B. Hinckley was the President of the Church, considered a prophet by the faithful, from March of 1995 until his death on January 27, 2008.

Plus, many of the statements written on the car, including the Shakespeare quote, were ones I often heard my own mother speak as I grew up.

Mom would never have allowed anyone to graffiti up the car, though - no matter how inspirational the words.

As to the Shakespeare quote, it always sounded pretty righteous and noble, coming from Mom's lips as I grew up, so I was kind of surprised when one day I actually sat down, read Hamlet, and saw that in the story the words were spoken by one Polonius, a devious, self-serving, self-righteous, man of many bad works. Mom would not have approved of Polonius at all, had he appeared in her life as a real character.

Rearview of the inspirational, perhaps Mormon, car.

As I drove down Church Road, I passed this man traveling by four-wheeler.

As I headed up Shrock Road from the bridge that crosses the Little Susistna River, I saw this guy coming down the hill on his skateboard.

I used to travel by this method myself.

In my dreams, I sometimes still do.

PS: as you can see, the weather is incredible. Sunny and warm. - more like one would expect in California than Alaska. It was this way in Fairbanks and even in Nuiqsut, so far above the Arctic Circle.

I wonder how long it will last?

For however long, I should cast aside all responsibility and do nothing but play.

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