Northern Bound

Robert Service 

Looking down on Nightmute, Alaska

My grandfather introduced me to my favorite poet. A British Canadian (I know, it fits well with my Canadian Fetish) poet who lived during overlap of the 20th century. Robert Service fell in love with his visits to the Alaskan Yukon and Canadian Arctic. His book of Yukon gold rush style poetry became a staple reprinted in East Coast newspapers. After WWI, when Service retreated to the Yukon to forget his time on the Eastern Front during the First World War. His poetry often speaks to the harsh reality and the misfit characters that inhabited the Yukon on their quest for gold and fortune. In almost all of his poems, the quest lies unfinished at the untimely death of the main character. If you have not had the wonderful experience of exploring his works, doing so will provide understanding of how the Yukon lay tucked away in the back of my mind waiting for an adventure to match.

A often romanticized idea of manliness interacting with nature on the edges of a frozen tundra. 

A matching Adventure

Spending the long days in the saddle riding around Europe this last year,  I became comfortable in my bike adventure. The days were long and easy with my only concerns finding food and place to lay my head. I started to think how the adventure could continue without end, which brought me to thinking about an end. I recalled a year prior I had been in negotiations with an Alaskan school district, but how the biking took priority and I lost contact. I reached out to the HR rep and scheduled a time to check back in. 

Arriving in Poland, I set up a skype meeting and sorted out a few details with the School district before committing to start a new school year and new adventure in Alaska. 

Nightmute, AK

Nightmute is located on the Kuskokwim river

The new home for me lies just below the Arctic Circle at, 62ºN. A town with one dirt road and no cars to match. Population, 208; with me the second white guy in the village. I am told the original white guy, or Gussak ( Gus-Sick in the native tongue) is soon to head out so I will be inheriting that throne. 

The town is a subsistence town located on the foothill of the only mountain for miles. The main activity is hunting for the locals with fish,  moose, and muskox making up the main staples. A few seals will make their way into the diet but with the changing water temperature their migration and movements have become less predictable. 

The town comprises of roughly 60 homes and 25 outdoor saunas. Fish smoking shacks fill in the dotted landscape. A wooden boardwalk makes the winding way down from one end to the other. The boardwalk is most helpful with the muddy road needing some TLC which is not soon coming. 

What is in a Name?

The Yupik culture has a naming tradition. It is typical that newborns are given names of people who have deceased recently from the village. This has resulted in the continuation of the same handful of names as the process is restarted. There are just as many 'juniors' as there are 'fourths' or 'fifths'. 

Many items must be barged in as we have no roads connecting our
town to another

Not only is the name passed on but so is the relationship. For example, if someone's mother dies and a newborn is given the name. The deceased mothers kin are expected to treat the newborn with the same respect as they would mother, and address the newborn as 'mom' as well. This has lead to interesting relationships as I learn that my students may be addressing their father who is grades behind them due to their biological father having passed. There is a first grader who is the 'uncle' of one of my high-schoolers and loves nothing more than ordering his 'nephew' to do things around the school and village. 

I am awaiting my own Yupik name. I am told that I will receive one at some point this year and it will be based on either a personality characteristic that I have, or upon an act that I will do to earn the name. If I receive the name, it will follow me depending on if it is an original name or an inherited name, I will gain that respect as well as relationship. 

Taking my kids on a cross country trip involved boating them across a bay on the Bering Sea