|
As the field experience progresses,
entries within this log will be made on a daily basis. When possible,
these entries will be linked to images and podcasts And Yet Something New!
More Pictures and a Video!
Coming Soon:
|
 |
I'm a little slow getting this writing started,
but that's just me without a secretary. However, it is appropriate
to start this log on the day that has the distinction of being
the darkest day of the year given that this.has been the darkest,
coldest year of my life. But that's just me without someone to
love. After nine years of summer, it has been hard for me to just
accept the fact that she's gone, left, like a season in time and
well, winter has set in. So this first dialog is somewhat esoteric,
somewhat pragmatic, but none the less Arctic induced. And that
is why I really came here; to see if I could find someone as dark
as me in all this darkness. And if I can, perhaps in contrast,
there might still be found enough auroral glow in me to go on
another day, another season.
It takes a day and half to arrive here from La Grande. Starting
the flight from Pendleton, Oregon, on Horizon
Airlines, landing in Portland, I change planes to Alaska
Airlines and fly non-stop to Anchorage, arriving there at
12:45 a.m. Alaskan time. I am met by an Alaskan native woman working
for the airport who tells me in very matter-of-fact practical
terms it will make no sense leaving the airport, having to go
through security again the next morning. She shows me where I
should sleep, and I obey. Dead tired, in an almost vacant airport,
I take up residency on a cushioned bench, on which I am sure that
in the morning the Alaskan Airlines logo burnished in 3-D Naugahyde
will be branded all over my disabled body.
But
before zonking out completely I meet Stevie, Steve and his 91-year-old
mother, Lillian. They were all bound for Barrow, (as every one
calls it, leaving off the "Point") just like me, except
in their case this is their tenth trip. I have plenty of questions
for this software engineer originally from New York City and now
the Silicon Valley of California. Most of these are answered by
six and a half year old Stevie, who knows Barrow like the back
of his Nintendo. We have a wonderful discussion, and Steve ultimately
directs me to where I am presently writing this dialog from, the
King Eider Inn, one of the newest of about three motels in Barrow.
The Steve expedition had just arrived on a plane from San Francisco,
and they were tired also. So after an hour or so of great chat
and an induction into 6-year-old Arctic wisdom, appropriately,
in the shadow of glass encased, huge, one-story-high, Grizzly
and Polar Bears, we all found benches in "our" airport
and called it a day. (Right: Anchorage airport. Safe polar bears.)
I awake, from a really decent airport-bench-induced sleep, to
the din of a full airport of people. It was the Alaskan contingent,
dressed in native parkas, bunny boots, and heavy coats advertising
everything from north slope oil equipment to whaling and ship
outfitters. It was 7:40 a.m. when we started the final leg of
this journey which will land us 330 miles north of the Arctic
Circle; one stop in Fairbanks and then Barrow.
I have never been
to Alaska, and it was time I went. In the 1960's as a child, one
of my aunts had a boyfriend who knew that I was special to her.
And so a part of the wooing process for this Alaskan included
gifting me with Parka's, Mukluks and seal dolls. But one thing
he did that influenced me well beyond these beautiful native gifts
was he left me with an image in my mind of what "The Great
Land" should look like. Al Hutching's was an excellent photographer,
and I will never forget the celebration we all had when one of
his images finally made it into National Geographic magazine.
(NGS November 1965 p. 683) It was an edition featuring Alaska,
and the picture that he contributed was of where he had lived
in Point Barrow. I still remember the flat, Quonset hut-ted landscape
presented in that image. And that is partly why I am here today.
(Left: The Barrow crowd at Anchorage)
20 December 2006
My friend Steve takes me around town when we get here. It still
looks a lot like that image from NGS magazine, and I am sure
that one of the many buildings that I saw back then in that picture,
I see in my inaugural tour. After unpacking and getting in a good
nap, I awake at about 9 p.m. and decide to take a walk. I have
never been in the "arctic", and I cam not sleep when
it is waiting outside. Taxi's abound in this frozen landscape,
and they keep circling the bundled up handicapped guy with the
cane like vultures waiting for the final throws of an animal.
I do not concede. I'm somewhat used to arctic type weather from
Canada, and in some sense, to be sub zero for me is to be in the
right temperature range for my body. It is 7 above with a wind
chill down to 12 below. That's warm, especially in layered, down-filled
clothing. For that matter, I am not the only one out tonight,
and of course, we all follow the same dress code.
I shuffle from the motel to the road that leads along the ocean
beach, just a dirt road, (that's all there are in Barrow) now
paved in ice and snow. A few lonely looking sodium vapour lights
line this Arctic version of the Riviera. It is empty, dark, cold,
very very cold, it's snowy and windy. There are no amusement parks,
no big condos overlooking the sea, no quaint shops selling tee
shirts. But right across the road is a small motel and I decide
to stop there to buy a few cards and maybe have a cup of coffee.
"Sorry," the girl at the front desk told me. "No
coffee. Alaska Airlines didn't come in with our shipment today,
and we have nothing. There's Dr. Pepper if you want it."
I drink my Dr. Pepper in the lobby, and sit with some native people
watching an infomercial on electric knives. They were filleting
petite little pieces of salmon. I could tell the Eskimo audience
in the lobby of the Top of the World Motel is not too impressed
by this newest of kitchen gadgets. After-all there is something
completely out of place here. It is an anachronistic moment. An
advertisement beamed down from a satellite to a people who have
invented their own knife. They have been using the ulu for centuries
to cut muktuk from the largest mammal on earth. The old native
gentlemen in the lobby turns the conversation to more pertinent
issues, the new two way radio they are examining, and the storm
predicted to soon move in from off the coast. A huge, glass encased
polar bear watches our every move in the warm toasty lobby. I
wonder if they got him from right across the street on the "beach"?
After warming up a little, I continue my trek across the street.
I am looking east and on my left is the Arctic Ocean. I am 1280
miles from the North Pole, even my compass goes a little crazy
here, just like my mind; I'm actually here...I climb over a small
hump of snow and sit down gazing into the blackness. The ice is
packed up in heaves and wedges all the way to the shoreline. Earlier
in the day when I passed by the point in a truck, I thought I
could make out a lead of water some one hundred yards off this
coastline of frozen snow. Now I can only see fog glowing in the
distance. My mind is engrossed in the amazing, cold arctic vastness
of this place. So historic, so primal; steeped in the tales of
whale hunts, searches for passages to the Northwest, lined with
electronic fence during the cold war, and the boundaries of miners'
claims staked stakes during the days of the gold rush, all taking
place under the bombardment of cosmic coloured lights ...my mind
is steeped in this romantic Arctic essence when a car pulls up
and unthaws my train of thought. It's the voice of a young woman
who shouts across the road at me through the wind. I barely turn
my head so as to not get the full force of the stinging snow now
blowing in the sub zero air. "Are you okay she asks."
"Yes, I reply, thank you." "Okay, I'm just checking
up on you, be careful because there were some reports of some
polar bears out here tonight, just be careful, Merry Christmas."
"Sure, thank you! Merry Christmas to you."
The polar bears....even
the worst of Portland Gangs would have to respect this
group's turf. So this is the arctic version of the bad
side of town. Not drive by shootings, just belligerent Polar
Bears staking out their home turf? It is getting cold. My jacket
begins to sound crinkly, I am finally getting tired, and I best
make the trek home, before I fall asleep on the beach. And I can
because I do not want to leave, even if I have to share the beach
with the polar bear gang. I am not afraid of the bears. I do not
see any tonight. But if I do anything on this trip it will be
to see a polar bear. Maybe that's what I should title this
journey? I'll try my hardest to see to it that they stick to their
fare of old whale renderings that the local people, the original
people, have cut up with their ulus and place conveniently
out on the point just for them, a point that's 340 miles above
the Arctic Circle, the furthest most northern point in the United
States. (Left: Welcome to Barrow, on the road to the point.)
I get off the plane in Barrow to six below zero temperatures and
a light in the sky that was bleeding into the southern horizon
like spilled milk slowly creeps by capillary action on a table
cloth. The daylight here is more like a stain of light, a twilight
in the sky. It's no wonder that the "lyric colours of spring"
in the arctic are pastels and not the bold representative colours
of the middle latitudes. Right now there is barely enough light
to see a traffic signal, but there aren't any of these in Barrow
either. This morning when I wake up at about 9 a.m, there is no
sunshine glowing through the curtains of the room to augment the
snooze control on my alarm clock. By two o'clock, today this
part of the world will have enough of sunlight. Maybe that's what
the whole world needs, a big, long nap.
"There
are strange things done in the midnight sun..." as the beginning
of that Robert Service
poem, "The Cremation of Sam Mc Gee" begins, and although
he is talking about the men who "moil for gold" aren't
we all moiling in some way or fashion for something? I know I
am, in the darkest, bleakest year of my life, I have come to sit
and contemplate and well, "moil" perhaps, in one of
the darkest, bleakest, places on earth, on the shores of the Arctic
Ocean. It's a good place to look for dark people, maybe I will
find myself. I do know that even in this land of darkness I have
encountered some wonderfully shining faces, surrounded by halos
of fur, that all have, "I am happy to even be in the dark!"
written all over them. Today is the winter solstice. Today will
be rightfully dark. God made it that way in the Arctic. 21 December
2006. (Left: One seventeen in the afternoon 22 December 2006,
Barrow Alaska)
To Catch A Polar Bear and other Cheechako Dreams
21 December Continued
© 2006 by Dr. M. Mustoe
The official latitude of the Willey, Rogers Airport in Barrow,
conveniently just up the street from the Eider Inn where I am staying, is 71 degrees
17 minutes north. That's only 4 minutes, 27 seconds north of the
Arctic Circle. And in as much as some of this adventure is dedicated
to the didactic processes surrounding EOU geography classes, just
briefly, that circle, that line, not only means something
mathematically, and geophysically, but it also suggests something
interpretively-on a human scale.
Like
a cheechako (chee-chaw-ko) (the Chinook jargon for newcomer)
being set up in a friendly poker game in Fort Yukon,(where
the line runs right through) the Arctic Circle is set up as a
consequence of these numbers: 26.5 degrees. Twenty six point five
degrees is the tilt (hmmmm another poker term) of the Earth
in the plane of its orbit. The Arctic Circle is conventionally
66.5 north of the equator or 25.5 degrees south of the North Pole.
That tilt sets up a circle, a line, of the extent that solar illumination
or darkness reaches on the surface of the Earth as the seasons
pass (and I don't even play poker).
But this a land where poker and other games are played. A whole
panel of a
gondola at the local AC (Alaska Commercial) store in Barrow is
dedicated to cards, chips, dice, and board games. Does it have
something to do with that line? Lines defined in nature are generally
very obscure and nebulous. Humans put lines on the earth and if
you cross them, there can be consequences. (Dan McGrew crossed
one down at the Malamute Bar once, and he got shot). The Russian's
knew the consequences of crossing "the line" during
the cold war. The Dew
Line was a series of radar installations from that era, still
in operation in the Arctic. Nature tends to put up zones, swaths
of area, that suggest that something has changed, but you have
to think about it to figure it out. And although the Arctic Circle
is there; what it suggests when passing over it with a global
positioning system is much more cut and dried than what it does
when humans make their homes on or north of it. That brings up
the other game played up here, also hedged in bets, economic survival.
(Left above: GPS showing coordinates of location near the King
Eider Inn.)
I have always wanted to trade (shop) at a grocery store in Alaska.
Today, on the darkest day of the year, I finally do it. And they're
right, north of the line, things are more expensive. Five dollars
for a quart of
milk, a loaf of house brand bread for four and a half, a 40 pack of Huggies diapers,
nearly twenty dollars, a Gerber plastic snap-on baby bib, nearly
five dollars, and of course, a pack of playing cards, for two
dollars and twenty nine cents. Much to my surprise, meat per pound
is not all that expensive, nor was the fruit. Washington apples were $2.99 a pound, and
they are in excellent shape, better than what I find in some large
retail outlets at home! Wait a minute. Bread, Milk, Diapers, what
about the beer? There is no beer, wine, or spirits. A far cry
from Dan McGrew's days, Barrow is "damp"at best. That
is, you can get a license to bring in beer and spirits and consume
them yourself privately but you can't sell them.
People are friendly
here. Shopping at the AC, I come to find out, is as much as a
social event as a necessity. And I can get anything I need here.
My first "meal out" in Barrow is mocha ice cream. I'm greeted spontaneously
with "Merry Christmas!" from a man reading magazines.
The high cost of things here; everyone knows what the reason for
this is. But until you live here, you can't accept it, and even
if you do, sometimes its hard. In the dog food section of the
store, a man is complaining to his wife about the cost of dog
food. "This is way too expensive." he proclaims, looking
at a 25-pound bag of food for nearly thirty three dollars. I think
to myself, "way too expensive compared to what?" Where
else are you going to get a sack of dog food in Barrow? There
are two other small stores here; the rest of the issue of competition
is all tied up in economies of scale, both on paper and in the
mind. I am in the beverage isle intently looking at the 16-ounce
bottle of water selling for two dollars and forty five cents when
a native customer walks by and says, "Don't look at the price,
just buy it. You won't eat or drink anything if you look at the
price."
(Right: Japanese Water and Clearly Canadian sharing space at the
AC.)
Sean Murphy
is the grocery manager at the Barrow AC. I didn't meet him in
the vegetable section, rather, at the local hockey rink. That's
the way things are done here by default, I sense you can be everywhere
in Barrow all at the same time. The ice rink is located in a tent just across
the lagoon that separates Barrow from Browerville, (where the
AC is) the two designated communities here. Sean plays for the
local hockey club, the Blizzards. He tells me he saw me in the
store, everyone sees everyone here and knows everyone, it's part
of being here, it's part of being this far north of the line.
"Obviously we are really stuck with the transportation costs
in getting things up here," he tells me, "but we also
have to look really carefully at quality." There are some products
grown in Alaska but Sean points out with anything coming into
Barrow, "We get everything either flown in during the winter
or brought in on barges during the spring and summer. There are
no commercial roads into Barrow, and it is really easy to get
a whole shipment of stuff frozen or ruined by shipping."
The conversation turns to hockey, and rightfully so as life is
not all about work in Barrow. It can't be if you want to survive.
"Who do you guys play? "Well we mainly play ourselves.
It's a pick-up game kind of league, and we just get together and
have some fun." He tells me that there is also a curling
group that meets on Saturday and that I need to go seem them.
Already I am beginning to sense that my linear concept of time
does not work here. My log which should run in a chronological
order, a "time line," is emerging as a mix of events
that, just happen...whenever... above "the line". Then
it dawns on me, there is no "dawn" here... there is
no "sun down". The winter Arctic day for the human is
based upon a convention, you get up when you get up and you go
to bed when you go to bed, and in both instances there is no sun.
Even the animals in the Arctic are representative of a species
that can handle a world with either 24 hours of daylight or 24
hours of darkness; and in that aspect they have evoloved as truly
Arctic animals.
Earlier this evening, I mean, earlier in the
day, I meet with Jason
Gilbert, the development manager for KBRW,
the local AM and FM radio station. He gives me a ride around town
dropping me off near the AC. Jason also plays for the local hockey
club, the Blizzards. That's actually how I got to the ice rink
in the first place, he invited me. He also coaches in the youth
hockey program, as well as volunteers as a firefighter. I tell
Jason that I am interested in finding out what it is that attracts
people here and why they stay. People stay busy here and as Jason
suggests, "They either make it happen or they don't, they
either let 
the remoteness, the
cold, and darkness get to them, and they leave or they find something
to do, and there really is plenty if you look." Jason has
been here two years. He came from the Tacoma area. He and his
wife got sick of the dark, rainy, big-city, "fast track to
no where". Now with his Washington State University humanities
degree, one child and one on the way, he and his wife are making
three times the amount of money he made in the lower 48, and they
are staying sane on top of it all, "on top of the world."
But, of course he's paying thirty something for dog food. But
it doesn't matter to him, it's worth it, it's the price you pay
for living above the line. He tells me of a conversation he had
with someone recently in a store outside (in the lower
48) who couldn't believe that he really lived where polar bears
lived. "Sure!" the lady behind the counter said to him.
His dad, who was with him at the time, came to his aid and said,
"yeah he really does!" Tomorrow Jason will give me a
tour out to the point in his truck. I am looking for polar bears,
something you can do in Barrow. But I later find out that ninety
percent of the people in Barrow have probably never seen a bear,
nor gone and looked for one. They must have something better to
do? Find a bear? Is this just a cheechako dream? (Right: Polar
bear wall painting, Brower's Restaurant.)
