The Never Ending Search

Productive Christmas Break!

2011-01-04T06:40:00.000-08:00

Christmas break has been truly wonderful this year. I decided that I wasn't going to drive up and down the east coast (all right, MD and PA) trying to visit everyone I knew like I did last year. I just spent some quality time with my folks and some friends that were actually visiting the area as well including some that just live here.
Here are some of the things that I got accomplished during my Christmas break.
1. - Got my parents wireless router to work so that I may update FB and the blog from anywhere in the house on my computer or i-pod touch.

2. - Convinced my Dad that he needed a new computer and then further convinced him that the computer he should purchase is a new i-mac.

3. - Purchased wooden dowel (1 inch) and molded, widdled, sanded, and treated 4 identical Indian Stick Pull sticks for Eek school that will be used in our home NYO meet in early March.

4. - Went to church ... one time!

5. - Helped my parents select a new 10 month old puppy, Miss Molly McWiggles. (as mentioned in previous blog postings).

6. - Six 3 - 5 mile runs along the C & O canal/Potomac River with Katja.

6.5 - Went on a couple of bike rides (once on rollers)

7. - Received a free professional full body massage from my good friend, Aimee Grahe.

8. - Visited a woman who is possibly looking for a new home for her 7 year old male Husky named Maverick. Alaska...Katja's house??? An update will follow.

9. - Participated in my AK Math Consortium class.

10. - Brought in 2011 with good friends, good beers, and good times.

10.5 - Got to catch up with some high school friends from 20 years ago. Thanks Jimmy, Carrie, Billy, and Gaver.

11. - Visited my Grandparents and some other relatives in PA.

12. - Managed to catch a couple of beautiful trout.

All in all, a very productive Christmas break.
Hope you all had a nice Christmas holiday as well.
Thanks for reading.

Little Miss Molly McWiggles

2010-12-28T07:28:00.000-08:00

This Christmas was extra special for the Martin family this year. As Dad and I were doing some Christmas shopping, Dad suggested that we swing by the Human Society and take a look at what kinds of lab mixes they had. I rarely pass up a chance to check out unwanted or abused pets that need a good home. As we walked around looking at the various mutts that were kenneled up some looking excited and friendly, and some looking wary and very skeptical, we saw about three dogs that may fit the picture at the Martin household. Then I came across this scrawny but friendly African wild dog looking wiggling pup standing in the middle of her kennel trying to determine if she could trust me or not. About ten seconds later, she was pressing up against the chain link so I could pet her more. Then she sat back against the wall and waited to see who would come around and say "Hi" to her next. She had been in the kennel for about 5 - 8 days and had 2 - 3 people interested in her. My Dad agreed with my selection of a possible dog and we filled out the paper work for possible adoption.
Two days later, we brought both Mom and Katja back to visit her and see how everyone would get along. Holly, recently changed to Molly, had just gotten out of surgery, so she was pretty mellow. Katja had greeted her long enough to get annoyed with "in your face" puppy behavior. Mom really took a liking to her as well. By the end of our visit, including extensive paper work, she had officially become ours.
Molly has been at the house for almost a full week now and she is getting along pretty well. Katja maintained her distance during this time and whenever annoyed would retreat to my bedroom upstairs to escape. Recently, they have been playing more inside and out. Poor Molly gets rolled over and over again as they tear around the yard. They have developed a mutual respect for each other. Molly has learned how to interact with Katja without getting snapped at and Katja has been much more receptive to Molly's puppiness during the last couple of days.
Dad loves the dog because of her loyal nature and her level of intelligence. She now responds to "Molly" and will seat, stay, and heal pretty consistently. She also has a mellow nature and spends a lot of time either curled up in front of the fire place or stretched out in the sunniest part of the house napping or just observing the mindless interactions and goings on of us humans. She is learning that her kennel is where she sleeps at night and freely goes in on her own accord now. During the night, she still wakes up and starts whining and asking to get some attention. A quick reprimand, a little tough love, and she usually quiets down again. She still does have the occasional accident in the house, which is also troubling to my Dad. It's been 12 years since he has had to train a puppy. I won't say that "you can't", but it is "hard to teach old dogs new tricks." They do like to take a little nappy nap time each afternoon. Dad's best friend.

I love my Leatherman

2010-12-09T14:33:00.000-08:00

Some of you may know that I am the proud owner of a snow machine (snow mobile) now, a four year old Yamaha Venture Lite. Some of you may also know that I don't always stay on the road, stay within the lines, follow the crowd. So last night, I decide to take my machine out and run Katja. It also goes without saying that my students have been excited to follow me on the new ride out over the frozen tundra. Luckily, one of my students decided to follow me last night. As I cruised out the trail, I decided to check out a little short cut that I noticed last year. As I approached the the little short cut, I noticed that it was drifted over and there was not a trail cut through the area as there was the previous year. I stopped to right on the edge of the drop off, which was only about 2 - 3 feet, and decided to back up and go around. Unfortunately, my "tank" of a snow machine didn't want to back up and started digging into the deep snow. So, the only other way was to plunge ahead and make for the best. Upon arriving to the scene, the first words out of my student's mouth was OMG - what have you done?

To make a long story short, I got stuck among the willows in the drop and had to use my student's assistance to run back to my house for a shovel and my leatherman. Returning to the disaster, I quickly cut the willows away from my machine with the saw of my leatherman and then did a little digging to where I could lift the front of the machine around, which enabled me to drive out of the ditch. I love my leatherman! My machine might still be in the ditch if I didn't the WAVE to help quickly clear and free it from the willow branches.

I imagine that most first time snow machine owners have done something stupid like this and had to learn from their experiences. I'm sure that won't be the last time I have to call on someone's assistance to get me out of a jam with my new toy. I'm just glad that I didn't roll it over. My Yamaha is very heavy and I don't think that I would be able to flip it right side up again.
Lessons for the day:
1. Keep the rubber side down.
2. Stay out of the ditch.
3. Always carry a leatherman.

Stay tuned for more adventure from ... Qasaq with a snow machine.

The alevin are coming! The alevin are coming!

2010-12-05T15:49:00.000-08:00

In mid-November, the Eek junior high and high school students started incubating salmon in the classroom as part of their science classes. For the first couple of weeks, the students just monitored the eggs as the embryos squirmed around inside. Keep in mind, at this stage, we could see the embryos, particularly their eyes, inside the eggs. Around November 28th, we started noticing some of the eggs hatching and alevin (salmon embryos) emerging. We currently have about 60 - 70 alevin squirming around the bottom of the fish tank. Some have swam out of the basket that holds the eggs in the tank. Many are still mixed in with the remaining eggs that haven't hatched yet. The early hatching of the eggs came as a little bit of a surprise. We were anticipating the eggs hatching around the middle of December. Apparently, the hatchery in Anchorage sends out eggs that have been fertilized a slightly different times and have been developing longer than others. Therefore, we witnessed eggs hatching right around 400 ATUs, which is normal for Coho salmon. I am expecting that we will still have some eggs that haven't hatched by the middle of December, but most of them should be hatched. Keeping my fingers crossed.

The students have been very willing to help maintain the water quality of the tank and to help remove eggs that died before hatching as well as some alevin that didn't fully emerge from the eggs and thus died. When the alevin start hatching, the embryonic fluid inside the eggs starts to build up and create a foamy layer on the top of the water. This is a critical period of time for maintenance and doing water changes to minimize the amount of foam in the water. These embryos require very high water quality and will die if toxins build up and don't get cleared out. In the natural environment, this embryonic fluid flows on downstream and allows the alevin to develop in the fresh water.

Thankfully, the alevin do not need much maintenance after they have hatched. The carry a giant yolk sac, like some grotesque, over-extended stomach. This is their food supply for the next 4 weeks. So when I return from Christmas break in early January, I will most likely find that some of the alevin have "buttoned up", meaning they have used up their yolk sac and will be looking to start feeding in the water column. During this time, the salmon fry will shoot to the surface and take in gulps of air to help inflate their swim bladder, which will enable them to maintain their buoyancy level in the water column. The tank will take on a whole new look. Then again, since this is my first experience in raising salmon in the classroom, I'm not really sure what to expect when I get back to my classroom. We'll have to wait and see.
Stayed tuned!

Temperature Fluctuations - Only outside

2010-11-24T13:28:00.000-08:00

I don't know if it's global warming that causes this region to always have a warm spell hit this time of year, or if it's just a natural cycle that I need to get used to. I do know that one weekend, I'm waxing skis and getting ready to hit the trails and the next weekend, I'm wiping mud off my boots and sweating in the classroom. It has warmed up, above freezing, for the past week, ever since the NYO team went to Chefornak one and a half weeks ago. And it's been raining almost non stop since then. Now, today it is finally cooling off below freezing again. There is still some light precipitation, but oh oh oh... only if all that precip we had earlier had been snow. We would wading through snow drifts up to our waists. Oh well, I guess we will have to wait a couple of weeks again.

One place that the temperature has been very stable is in our school's new Salmon Incubation Tank. Yes, we set up the tank on the 13th and 14th in preparation for the arrival of 500 Coho salmon eggs. I had four students, two high schoolers and two middle schoolers help set up the filtration system, cooling system, add the water, and insulate the outside of the tank. Then on Tuesday evening, we received our shipment of salmon eggs. Again, students helped to safely transfer the eggs from their chilled shipping environment to the tank water, which had been chilled to approximately 8 degrees C. (46.4 degrees F.) When I checked the eggs the next morning, there was only one casualty. I safely removed the dead egg with a turkey baster, and since then, all the eggs look viable.

My students then had to calculate the estimated time the "eyed" eggs would hatch. I wanted them to hatch close to our departure for Christmas break, so that we wouldn't have to worry about maintenance of the tank while we were gone. The egg development depends mostly on the temperature that we keep the water. Students have been measuring the water temperature everyday and calculating the ATUs (Accumulated Thermal Units). Coho salmon eggs hatch usually around 450 - 500 ATUs. Today, we calculated that the eggs have 371.5 ATUs at this time. We lowered the temperature of our tank to 7 degrees C. (44.6 degrees F.) so that the eggs would hatch around Dec. 11 - 13 and we would have enough time to do the 3 - 4 water changes necessary to maintain good water quality. During this time, we will lower the temperature of the tank down to 4 - 5 degrees C. in order to lower the biological activity.

While we are on Christmas break, the Alevin will be hiding deep in the rocks of the tank, slowly absorbing their gigantic yolk sacs. When they finally "button up", they will emerge from the rocks again and be free swimming salmon fry.

Overall, the students are pretty excited about the project. I usually don't have to ask for volunteers to help with maintenance and data recording for the tank. It actually presents another factor of classroom management that I have to deal with. Students love to just sit there and watch the "Salmon TV."

So stayed tuned for updates on Eek School's Salmon Incubation Project.
Thanks for reading!

Dirk

Getting Ready for Winter Fun

2010-11-08T08:44:00.000-08:00

Well the temperature has dipped below the freezing mark. We actually got snow back in the end of September. It didn't last long. I believe the current snow will be here until April.

So in preparation, I set up the ski waxing station and prepped my skate skis for my second season of ski fitness. I am very much an intermediate skier and even less experienced at waxing, but I was very happy with the outcome of my wax job this time. Waxing skis is a very detailed and scientific process. There are numerous different waxes for specific temperature ranges. There is wax for new snow and old snow. There is high temperature (iron temp) flourocarbon wax and lower grade wax that you have to apply more often. And its pretty darn expensive. Yeah, leave it to me to find an expensive hobby.

All this will hopefully lead me to be geared up for the Tour of Anchorage again this coming spring. 25 Kilometers of rolling, scenic, perfectly groomed ski trails around Anchorage. Last year, my first year, I was brutally humbled at my lack of fitness and my lack of preparation of enough fluids and energy food. This year, I hope to crush my time from last year.

More importantly, these preparations with the skis is getting Katja very excited for another season of skijoring. We actually went out on Saturday this weekend, although the amount of snow was a little lacking for skis just yet. I know this because I fell a couple of times due to my skis hitting rocks just under the snow. I fell hard. I have a bruise on my hip and a mangled elbow to prove it. But that will heal and leave me stronger and more armored for the rest of the season.

So for now, my fingers are crossed for more snow and suitable temperatures for outdoor fun and adventure. I do have a snow machine (snow mobile) this year as well, so that will be beckoning me to head out for longer adventures. I might even be able to scoot over to Quinhagak (35 miles away) to ski with some friends there.

And with that, I wish you all a wonderful winter with bountiful amounts of snow and sunshine. Happy Trails,
Dirk and Katja

Salmon Workshop

2010-11-08T08:27:00.000-08:00

Hi all,
This event is actually quite old by now, but it is still worth posting. I had the great opportunity of venturing to Fairbanks for 4 days and attending a workshop to bring Salmon into the Classroom. It is a salmon incubation project to help expand the awareness and educate students about this amazing and extremely valuable Alaska resource.

We learned about some incredible information regarding ocean acidification, cultural history, life cycles of the different salmon species, and a host of great resources on line to enhance and supplement curriculum in all areas of education. We were actively engaged in many classroom activities related to salmon migrations, human impacts on salmon populations, and salmon anatomy.

I got lucky and was able to come back home with a complete kit for the Salmon Incubation Project and will be receiving 500 Coho (silver) Salmon eggs on Nov. 16th. My middle and high school students will then be in charge of caring for the eggs until they hatch and raising the young salmon fry until the end of the year.
Unfortunately, we will have to destroy the young smolt at the end of the school year, but next year I hope to take the project to the next level and actually collect eggs from our local Eek River. Then we can release the salmon smolt back into the Eek River again at the end of the year.
It was a very exciting and rewarding workshop and I am very "egg"cited to get started with our project. The students are excited too and keep asking me about when we are getting the eggs.

Stay tuned as I will try to write some posts on our progress with the project.
Until next time...

New Digs

2010-09-29T22:55:00.000-07:00

When I left Eek last year, I had moved myself out of the new teacher 4-plex and into more modest living quarters. It is still very homey and I have a place to myself again, which I happen to prefer right now. I also only have to worry about Katja chewing up my belongings and not anyone else's. Most recently, she chewed up my new stereo remote.
Some other perks about my new living arrangement are ...
1. I get my own laundry appliances. I don't have to share with anyone else. After all, I am an
only child.
2. I can play music as loud and as late into the night as I want and no one complains about it.
Katja may not like it too much, but she doesn't complain.
3. I now have cable T.V. as well. This could be one of my downfalls this year. As my friends can tell you, when I watch T.V., nothing else gets done. Conversation is lost. I truly zone out. Like a zombie. Until I fall asleep. It's not something I am particularly proud of.
4. I can clean as often as I like...which ends up being less often than I should most of the time. I
do clean up eventually.
5. If I burn dinner, no one else knows about it. It happens to everyone once in a while.
6. I have a spare bedroom that I reserve for guests of the school, friends, and a place to store my fly fishing equipment and tie flies.

My classes this year are exciting as well. I'm teaching 7th and 8th grade math, science, and health/P.E. and High School Biology, Algebra, and Alaska Studies. I enjoy teaching High School level classes, although I do feel more pressure for getting grades in for transcripts and such. Things are going pretty smoothly. I have 15 middle school students and 10 high school students. I definitely deserve to have some smaller class sizes after teaching 23 students last year that ranged from 4th to 8th grade...for every class...all day long. Last year was rough. I am taking on more responsibility as well this year. I coach Cross - Country in the fall which starts up on the first day of school. I also coach our NYO (Native Youth Olympics) team in the fall and spring. I am also acting as the Athletic Director this year for all sports. I am feeling good about the roles that I'm taking on this. I just don't want to have to be the acting Site Administrator if need be. I will gladly let someone else take on that responsibility.

The last picture here is a view of my village along the banks of the Eek River. The river is tidal here and in order to catch fish, one has to travel up river about 15 - 20 miles. This fall has been particularly rainy, so the river levels have been extraordinarily high and the fishing has been pretty bad...at least for me. Therefore my world is far from perfect. I hope to get some fishing in before the fall season is over. Stay tuned.

Spring is in the air

2010-04-24T18:53:00.000-07:00

I say this, but we will still have mornings of 23 degrees F. and occasional snow squalls. For the most part, spring has arrived and the winter season is slowly trickling away. Each day gets up to about 40 - 50 degrees now and more and more snow disappears for another 8 or 9 months. With the temperatures warming throughout the region a couple of things happen.

1. Ptarmigan start to appear and you can hear them clucking and laughing across the tundra in all directions. They still have their white winter foliage for now, but they will be quickly molting and starting to adapt to their brownish environment again. I actually got out a couple of weeks ago with a couple of students and bagged 3 - 4 ptarmigan. They will go nicely in a stir fry or stew. With the ptarmigan out, the students are itching for the end of each school day to rip across the tundra on their snow machines or 4 wheelers with their 22 rifles or 20 gauge shotguns to bag as many of tundra chickens as possible. They usually have to travel at least 3 - 4 miles to find descent sized flocks of birds to hunt.

2. All that wonderful white stuff is melting and running into giant puddles and mini lakes across the landscape. The actual lakes are still quite frozen, but the top layer melts more and more each day the sun shines down it. This gives the kids an excellent opportunity to go "skipping" or "sliding" on their snow machines across these water covered pieces of ice. So, all evening long, the intermittent screaming of snow machines can be heard as they race across the water. If you keep your speed up high enough, you won't sink and swamp your snow machine. Even if you did, there isn't any real danger of sinking to the bottom of a lake...yet. That day will be coming soon and each day, the risk increases.

3. The snow is really mostly gone already. There are occasional patches of the white stuff left, but most of the trails that were used in the winter are now turning to torn up strips of tundra moss, blueberry, blackberry, and cranberry plants, and other types of vegetation. We actually had an elder gentleman from the village visit several classrooms in the school and talk about reducing the human impact on the fragile tundra by staying off of it with machines. And just like kids everywhere, there are always some that ignore the wisdom and advise of adults and do whatever the heck they want. The fact is that the tundra does an incredible job of bouncing back. This has been happening for years now and each fall when I return, the tundra has returned to it's springy, supersaturated carpet of vegetation. It's still sad to see the condition of this ecosystem as the season changes from winter to spring and no one wants to put their machine away for the summer and fall. They are just to darn fun!

Walking across the tundra with Katja on our daily explorations is kind of nice this time of year. You definitely need your muck boots to keep your feet dry, but with the permafrost still pretty shallow, you can walk across some more swampy areas rather easily. Katja usually finds about 12 - 15 bones that have been covered up by the snow and will find a spot to settle down and gnaw on the skeletons of the dead every so often. I've taken to walking because... obviously I can't ski (much to my dismay) and I don't feel like trashing my bike in the muck. The running shoes will be broken out soon enough.

Time is ticking away for the school year! In another 28 days, Katja and I will be walking barefoot on the grass around my folks home in Maryland or running the C&O canal along the Potomac River. Looking forward to it.

Skijoring on the Tundra

2010-04-04T13:37:00.000-07:00

Untitled from DirkMartin on Vimeo.

Well winter is dragging on. Not that I'm complaining about it. I'm actually glad that we still have enough snow for skiing. This video is from two weeks ago when I went out early in the morning and just kept on going. I got out to this video site and rested for a while playing with my camera set up. Then I just continued on to a nearby fish camp on the Eek River. I was still feeling fresh, so I went about another 1 1/2 miles up river and then turned around. Looking at my GPS, I figured I skied about 15 miles total that day. It was the longest distance I've skate skiied since the race in Anchorage. When I got home, I laid around the house nursing my sore, tired muscles and my new blisters from my boots. Katja slept for the rest of the day. I love my skate skis!
I'm not looking forward to the snow leaving us here, but it's going to happen sooner than later. It will be interesting to see what happens in Eek. I imagine that things will turn pretty swampy and marshy, but it still won't be as bad as my experience in Toksook Bay last spring. There, I lived in one of the lowest areas in the village and basically had a small river running past my house and emptying into a small pond just below my house that almost flooded my knee high boots when I waded through it. Hopefully that will not be my experience here in Eek.
On a brighter note, the warming temps will bring the Ptarmigan out of their winter hiding. I hope to take the bike or skis, which ever is more efficient, or buy gas for one of our students to take me on a snow machine. Either way, I want to do some hunting. Ptarmigan is really good in stews and stir fry. Since my salmon supply is almost gone, I need to look for other bounty of the Delta. I'll keep you posted. Hope you enjoyed watching the video as much as I did making it.
Thanks for reading,
Dirk and Katja

My First "Last Great Race"

2010-03-15T12:38:00.000-07:00

I've been in Alaska for almost 4 years now and have yet to see a dog mushing race. So, when a couple of friends mentioned that they were going in for the 2010 Iditarod and the Tour of Anchorage nordic ski race, I jumped at the opportunity. I asked for a couple of personal days to allow myself a relaxing stay in Anchorage without having to rush back to work right away. I'm glad I did that, because I had a hard time walking around after my ski race.
I stayed with some friends from Eagle River, which sits right at the base of the Chugach mountains. My friends stayed downtown Anchorage at the Millenium hotel, which happened to be the base of operations for the Iditarod Race. The lobby of the hotel had tons of gifts and memorabilia for purchase and there was always lots of people mingling around the tables and displays.
Saturday morning was the ceremonial start for the Iditarod. The first musher started around 10 am and others continued a staggered start every two minutes until around 1:00 pm. They ran the dogs about 4 - 5 miles around Anchorage. The city of Anchorage had to truck in tons and tons of snow to fill the streets of town so the dogs could actually pull their sleds. The official start of the race was Sunday at 2:00pm in Willow, AK near Wasilla where there was plenty of snow. We were concerned about parking, because "Fur Rondy" had been going on for a couple of weeks and downtown had been crowded the whole time. Fur Rondy is a two week celebration focusing on the Iditarod, Native Arts, and culture. We happened to find relatively close parking spaces near a part of the course that was not too crowded. We were able to stand right on the edge of the course near a corner with plenty of space to take photos and catch the candy filled dog booties.
The race is coming to a close with three top contenders battling it out. Lance Mackey is in front with Jeff King and Hans Gatt closing in from third position. If you want to follow closer, check out the following site, http://www.iditarod.com/ to read all the stories. Now in honor of celebrating the winter season with your dog, I'm going to go skiing with Katja. See ya!

Those Crazy Kussaqs

2010-02-21T14:23:00.000-08:00

Winter in the bush of Alaska can be a blessing and a curse depending on the weather and where you live in the bush. Coastal regions tend to get more wind and sometimes more snow, but definitely more wind. For that reason, I'm thankful that I moved farther inland from the coast. Eek is inland about 12 miles from the coast and settled in nicely amongst flat interior tundra landscape, about 45 miles west of the Kilbuck Mountains. The Eek river is a vital asset to the people here. During the winter time, it provides a necessary highway to hunting and ice fishing grounds. The cold winter season allows people to travel to other villages via snow machine over the bumpy frozen tundra. In the case of Eek, many people travel to Bethel and Quinhagak throughout the season.
Those of you that know me at all, know that I need time to play outside. Especially after teaching 4 grades in all subjects for 8 - 10 hours a day. I've found Eek to be a very nice playground for my recreational pursuits. Aside from fishing throughout the fall, I've been biking, x-c skiing, and sometimes skijoring with Katja. The trail system around Eek is well used and there are a couple of options for directions to go. I've been biking farther away from the village than I travel on my skis. I purchased a pair of "skate skis" this year and they have allowed me to ski much longer than I normally do. So when the snow gets too deep for biking, I break out the skis and Katja and I skijor on the river and trails around the village.
This year, the weather has been rather mild as far as temperatures and the amount of snow that we have experienced here in Eek. The warm temperatures melt the snow, turning the trails into ice roads when it freezes again. With studded ice tires on my bike, I can cover ground pretty quickly. Yesterday, I rode up to a nearby fish camp 6 miles up river away from the village. It was about a 12 mile round trip, which doesn't sound like a lot, but when you are traveling over snow and ice, it is quite a workout for me and Katja both.
When ever I run into natives, especially my students away from the village out on the tundra, I am greeted with the same concerns that sound like this. "What are you doing out here?" or "You rode out here on your bike?" and sometimes, "Don't get lost!"
Fortunately, there are many trail markers out on the tundra. The lakes are sometimes as much as a mile across and have small trees planted in the ice to guide travelers across safely. Out on the tundra, there are many types of markers, such as poles, old oil drums, etc. Obviously I haven't gotten lost yet nor have I gotten frost bite. So get out there, get your fix, and thanks for reading my blog.

Music in Bethel

2009-12-22T09:16:00.000-08:00

Sqeaky Eeks II from Erin Kavanaugh on Vimeo.

This video is very old and should have been posted back in October...but better late than never. This was my birthday weekend and really made it a very memorable birthday for me. Traci Buckle, my roomie, and I decided to play at a benefit concert for the Bethel Council of the Arts. Actually Traci talked me into it and I'm glad she did. If it wasn't for her, I would never have dreamed of doing something so random as play my Ukelele and sing in front of 100 plus people. It usually takes me a couple of drinks (liquid courage) to get the gumption to perform in front of a crowd of strangers and since there are no bars in Bethel (yet...) I needed something else to motivate me. I don't think I'm a horrible singer, but I sure was glad Traci was there to enhance our vocals.

I bought a Ukelele on a whim back in late July for $40 and brought it out to EEK, Alaska, mostly because it would be easier to travel with than my big guitar. I found it very fun to play and it complements the guitar pretty well, at least according to Traci. Occasionally we fill our cozy home with music laughter that sometimes draws our neighbors over to join us. I only wish that I had gotten it when I could have practiced and played with some of my other Ukelele playing friends, Kale Iverson and Josh Cridler. Oh well, hopefully our musical paths will cross again soon.

Thanks to Erin Kavanaugh for shooting this video and teaching me how to upload onto Blogger. She was a big part of energy that we emitted on stage that night.

Enjoy!

Dirk

Thanksgiving Break

2009-12-01T18:31:00.000-08:00

Wow, what a great Thanksgiving Break I had. Traci and I had been planning to have a somewhat larger get together for the holiday and were very excited. A couple of friends flew in from outta town. Tania and her daughter Justine flew in from Toksook Bay and our dear and close friend Erin flew all the way from Bethel with her dog, Capt. Macy (20 min. flight). We spent most of Thursday cooking up a storm. Blueberry Cheesecake, Apple pie, Pumpkin pie, and Chocolate Peacan pie were on the dessert menu. Sweet potatoes, stuffing inside and outside of the turkey, two different kinds of cranberry relish, Garden salad, mashed potatoes, green beans, home made bread, and of course a giant turkey. It was pretty awesome!

Katja got plenty of attention too. She took over as guardian for Justine and was really amazing at entertaining her. Katja would walk over to Justine and just flop over on her side. She would literally let Justine crawl all over her and just lay there and take it, as if it were one of her own puppies. I never would have guessed she would respond that way. Erin and I got the dogs out a couple of times for some late day, virtually night time runs. There was plenty of knitting, by the ladies of course. I don't know how to knit. I did tie some flies though. Just getting ready for summer. We played lots of music as well. Justine loves to listen to music, either live or on TV or ipod. We had a fantastic time watching her dance around the coffee table with a giant smile on her face.

Anyway, I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving as well. I look forward to seeing some of you over the Christmas break.

Visit to Quinhagak

2009-11-03T21:41:00.000-08:00

This post a few weeks old, but I wanted to have some pictures to show you as well. I got a chance to visit Quinhagak, AK to visit some friends and take a trip up the Kanektok river in search of Rainbow trout. I got into the village on Friday evening and met up with my friend Milt who helped me finalize plans with one of the local fisherman.

The next morning, I met up with my fishing guide and another teacher from the school. We loaded the boat and headed up river for about 1 hour. Our first stop landed us in a part of the river that hosted many Cohos, Dolly Varden, and Rainbows. I managed to hook up with all three species which was my goal. That was the first rainbow that I had caught since I had been in Alaska. That actually sounds a little embarassing when I say it outloud. Hmmm??? I fished downstream a little more and hooked a Dolly that had to measure at least 24 inches.

We left that spot and hit a few other hotspots in that region of the river. We fished a section that was just inside Togiak National Wildlife Refuge and I got into a pod of Dollys. I must have hooked 20 Dollys in about an hour. It was laugh outloud fishing even though I landed less than half of the fish I hooked. After a while, I walked farther downstream to fish a tail out section. I rigged up with a double egg and large split shot to entice a nice rainbow. On my first cast, I laid my double egg rig out on the edge of the current and a huge rainbow came up and swallowed my indicator whole and took it right down to the bottom. My heart stopped, because I knew that I couldn't set the hook on the monster. The hook was no where near its mouth. I made several other casts, but I never saw the giant again. I left the hole with heart ache.

Later, we crossed the river and fished the other bank. Just standing and fishing on the bow of the boat, I saw some huge rainbows making their way upriver. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to hook any of them.

I was astounded when I looked at my watch and it was already 5 pm. We had to start heading back down river towards home. We did stop a couple of other places on the river as we made our way back down. During one stop, I waded down stream and crossed the river to a deep blue hole that was the confluence of two sections of the river. I made a couple of drifts at the upper end of the hole, but it wasn't until I let an egg sucking leech dead drift down into the bottom of the hole that I hooked the fish of the day. At first I thought it was my trophy rainbow. The fish made several strong runs and it took a while before I could actually get a glimpse at it. Eventually, I landed a very nice Coho that had just started turning its color from its Ocean fresh chrome silver radiance to its light reddish tones. I gotta tell you, I was a little disappointed that it wasn't a rainbow, but it was the hardest fighting fish that I hooked all day.

I can't wait to get back on the Kanektok river.

Katja and the EEK

2009-09-29T22:51:00.000-07:00

This past weekend, I ventured up the EEK river again with my fishing buddy, Seth. This time I brought my 22 rifle and Katja along for the ride. Seth's dog Ginger is accustomed to the journey, but it was interesting watching the two dogs interact. Ginger is a healthy female Chocolate lab who is very focused on bird hunting with Seth. Katja is a ... playful dog that doesn't like to work much at all unless it is on her terms. The dogs had their little tiffs, but all was fine in the end.
It was a little colder traveling in the boat this time and Katja wasn't used to the lower wind chill and having to sit still. Eventually she came around and joined Ginger up at the front of the boat to spot the hundreds of ducks we saw on the water. Katja must have gotten really keyed in on the birds, because shortly after this picture was shot, she leaped out of the boat, traveling at 30 mph, after some ducks that were flying along beside us. Hitting the water at 30 mph was quite a shock to Katja who skipped twice, spun, and then tumbled to a halt all within about 2 seconds. Seth and I were laughing hysterically. Katja wasn't. With her head about 12 inches out of the water she was making her way towards the shore and out of the frigid river. She shook it off rather quickly and was very willing to get back in the boat. She stayed still while the boat was moving in the future. I wish I had my camera out for that moment. It was priceless. Luckily for Katja, she jumped out of the side of the boat and not off the front. It could have been a little more tramatic for her and us.
Seth and I did manage to catch about 12 - 15 Grayling and a couple of pike. The Grayling were all pretty good size, some reaching almost 18 inches. I took a couple of them home for dinner and released most of them back into their chilly environment. Still looking forward to catching a couple of trout in this part of Alaska. Maybe next weekend. If not, I'll have to wait another year.

A season to remember

2009-09-24T23:09:00.000-07:00

Not only is the season starting to change from fall to winter already, but we have left Cross Country season and NYO has officially started up. I've helped coach NYO a little in Toksook Bay and I also participated in Cross Country practices, but this is the first year that I attempted to take on a team sport souly on my own. I jumped right into to X-C practice right off the bat from the beginning of school and got a surprisingly high number of kids show up. EEK School only has 91 students this year, so to get 14 of those students showing up to the first week of practice was very positive for me. Participants definitely came and went, but by the end of the season I still had 9 original runners, 2 highschool and 7 junior high, that were attending practices regularly.
Our season ended last weekend with our participation in the Bethel Regional X-C invitational. There were 17 different schools attending the meet, the largest attendance coming from Bethel Regional High School, who had approximately 24 runners and Nome, AK who brought 17 runners. Most of the other schools that are in this district brought 10 or fewer runners, some as little as 5 runners. EEK brought 8 runners that were very new to the sport but worked hard and competed well. We didn't place very high in any of the races, but we did finish each of our races and we didn't come in last place, although it was close sometimes. One of our junior high runners got tripped up at the start of the race, coming off the line dead last, but she fought and climbed her way past 22 other girls in the 30 runner field to end in 8th place. It was outstanding effort and I have great expectations of her in the future years of X-Country. The Bethel course was created in a giant sand pit that zigzagged its way around the perimeter up and down steep hills for about one and a half miles. Junior high runners did one lap and high school runners did two laps. The winning time for the high school boys, 19 min. 28 sec., came from a Chevak runner who ran very strategically and intelligently to clinch the victory. All of the races were very exciting to watch.
Part of the highlight of the trip for EEK, besides the actual race, was spending the night at Bethel's Regional High School with the other 150 runners from around the district. Energy was high the night before the race. The trip home was quite the opposite. Just about all the runners were dozing off during the 20 minute flight back to EEK on the "not so smooth" plane ride from Bethel. Turbulence wasn't a factor in keeping them awake. They were exhausted!
And a great compliment to me came from several of the runners expressing their anticipation for next year's season of X-country.
Happy trails!

Revisiting Toksook

2009-09-12T14:18:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, I traveled back to Toksook Bay for a quick visit during our extended holiday. It was a really great visit despite the fact that 220 mile round trip flight cost me the same amount that my Dad paid to fly from Washington D.C. to British Columbia... round trip. Yeah, it's expensive to travel in Alaska.
Last weekend was the Blackberry Festival that I have written about in the past when I actually lived in Toksook Bay. This year seemed a little busier in the village, more of a social gathering and celebration of family and friends... and good times. It took me about 45 minutes to walk to the store from the school, mostly because I ran into almost all of my previous students and wanted to say "hi" to them. They asked me if I was returning to Toksook and where I was teaching and living now. Some even commented that they missed me and wanted me to come back to Toksook to teach again, to which I would respond with thanks and appreciation. But truth be told, as much as I enjoyed living in Toksook, I am also enjoying the village of EEK.
When I arrived, friend and colleague, Marty was waiting for me at the airport with his two oldest boys, ready to hit the river and start fishing. I quickly changed into my waders, jumped on the 4 wheeler and we sped off down the runway. We arrived during the outgoing tide, so the fish were there, but they weren't biting anything. Needless to say, we went home empty handed that night.
But we woke up the next morning ready to try again. This time, just Marty and I headed farther up river in search of some Dolly Varden. We found some and a bunch of Silvers that had been up river for some time now. They were mostly bright red males and they were pretty picky about what they would take. We both tied on a Bead Head Nymph pattern that we swung through the current and Marty was the first to hook up with one of the giants. I jumped into the shallows to help him land it against the sharp drop off of the bank. I hooked up with a couple of nice fish, but didn't get any landed. Marty, however, ended up landing 4 or 5 nice salmon and a half dozen Dollys. I threw most of the small fish that I did land, but kept this brute for my host and lodging provider during my visit.
It was great to see everyone from the school and most of the community members that knew me as well. I did miss seeing TJ and his wife, Kim who have transferred to Napaskiak this year. I am sure I will get a chance to see them during the school year sometime. In a way, I felt like I had never left Toksook Bay. It hasn't been very long since I did live there, but everything felt very familiar to me still.
It was an amazing realization when I returned to EEK of how different the two villages really are. Stepping off the plane in EEK and seeing just a couple of 4-wheelers waiting to pick up passengers and hearing the silence of the open tundra and the distant mountains made me really appreciate the quiet solitude of EEK. It felt good to be back.

Adventures on the... EEK!

2009-08-30T11:04:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I headed up the EEK river with my fishing buddy, Seth. This was our second trip up the river. The first time we went up, there were not any fish to be seen in the section of river we were on. I was with Seth, his wife, Janine, their son and Seth's mother. We did have a nice evening picnic on a gravel bar after some fishing and berry picking. We just didn't catch anything.
This second trip up the river, Seth was determined to get up river to where the fish were. We traveled up river for about 1 1/2 hours before we stopped the first time. Seth's dog, Ginger, really enjoys boat rides and looking for water fowl along the way. Apart from the water fowl, we looked for quiet water in the confluence of side creeks and big bends in the river with deep eddies that were next to the main current. The first fish I landed was a 25 inch northern pike. We were both excited for the first landed fish, but I knew there were salmon in the area as well. I walked up stream a little cast out in the middle across a slow moving eddy, allowing my fly to sink down to the bottom and then retrieved it up through the eddy. Boom...fish on! A nice medium sized silver salmon that we decided would be lunch for the day. About 5 minutes later, some other fishermen joined us and I landed my second silver. Another boat came down and pulled up to the beach across from our fishing hole. They said the fish were everywhere up stream a little ways, so we headed up. There were a couple of boats already there, so we pulled up on the point where the river splits into two branches. Seth then headed up river to check out some native land that was handed down to him through his family. While he was gone, I hooked a big, bright red male. When Seth came back down, we fished a little longer and then headed back down to eat our fresh salmon lunch and start back down river. We fished the big eddy bend where I caught the two earlier salmon. I was on my last cast, reeling my line in and BOOM! Fish on! This time a Shee fish grabbed my fly and set off running around the eddy. After landing that fish, we went to shore. Seth and I pretty much finished off a whole salmon between the two of us, which set us both into a food coma. Hanging out on a beach on the EEK river in sunshine, bellies full of fresh salmon. Life doesn't get much better than this.
After fishing some more, with no more hits, we started drifting back down stream, bouncing off the shore and tree branches and whatever else got in our way. We decided it was better to use the outboard to position ourselves better for casting into the bank. I hooked a couple of Grayling and then we saw some fish working in the mouth of a side creek. We drifted the area about 6 times and hooked up with a pike and another big bright silver. Seth hooked another silver, but it spit the hook.
After that we decided to head back towards home. Stopping a couple of places along to way, Seth told me about families that had lived way up on the river in the early 1900's. We visited a grave site where an entire family was buried, the latest having passed away back in the early 1940's. We didn't get home until 11:30. I was still cleaning up the kitchen from filleting fish at 1:00 in the morning. What a long day! What a great day!

Settling into EEK

2009-08-24T22:39:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been a long time my friends and I apologize for that. It was truly a great summer at home in Maryland. Lot's of traveling during the month of June. Bonaroo, then up to Maine for some fun and recreation with some Alaska friends as well as some reconnecting with old friends up there. A little bit of fishing, great 4th of July celebration, and lots of driving around in my Nissan Versa. There was still lots of time spent with family, although they would probably argue that it wasn't enough. All in all, it was a great vacation.
Now it is back to Alaska, to settle into a new village, explore new terrain, teach new classes, get to know new students and staff, and continue the adventure. So far it has been pretty wonderful. My students are still upper elementary and middle school students, but they do show a huge amount of respect for teachers and staff. I am currently teaching "middle school", which includes some 4th graders, 5th, 6th, and even some 7th graders. It is a widely differentiated class, especially with Math and Reading. My overall schedule is pretty sweet. 8:45 am starts out with High School P.E. class, then U.S. history, Math, Reading, and finally lunch. After lunch is Science, then my prep, and lastly middle school P.E. All my students are having a great time playing soccer right now, although they are eagerly anticipating me starting a basketball unit. That I will try to hold off until March.
I've also started coaching X-country. Actually, they haven't had an active team in over 7 years, so I"m kind of starting the program back up again from scratch. None of the students on the team have ever run x-country before, so it's been a slow start, literally and figuratively. Today the high schoolers ran 4 miles and the middle schoolers 3 miles. They are definitely showing a lot of progress and seem to tolerate my authoritarian coaching style, if you can believe that. I hope to have an inter squad meet in a couple of weeks with just EEK students competing against each other. I also want to travel to Bethel with a couple of students if our minuscule budget will allow it.
I have tried the local waters for fish as well. I rode up river about 45 minutes with a family that works for the school. It was a fun, but chilly boat ride. We didn't catch any fish, but we had a wonderful dinner on the beach and to top it off, we came dangerously close to running out of gas. I think we are going to try heading up river again next weekend, so I will keep you posted.
I think that is it for now. Stay tuned for more exciting news from EEK. New posts will follow more regularly now that I'm back to work.
Thanks for reading,
Dirk and Katja

almost airborne

2009-05-23T15:22:00.000-07:00

The house is packed up. My classroom is cleaned, electronics wrapped in plastic, walls are cleared, desks are pushed to one side of the room. My computer is about to be returned and given a clean sweep (re-imaged). I need to make a trash run to the dump with all the junk I"ve accumulated in my house. All of my packed things are hopefully going out on a plane tonight, before I actually leave. It will be waiting for me in Bethel, where I will send it on to EEK.

tonight will be left over pasta, some old re-runs of "Scrubs" and then falling into a peaceful slumber in my sleeping bag. It is always such a rush to finish up at the end of the year. I feel like I've been chasing my tail.

Our site-administrator, TJ, and his wife, the science/math teacher, Kim are also leaving Toksook. The animosity in the village has reached its pinnacle with a couple of people (20 or so) that are dissatisfied with TJ's performance as site administrator. Thus, he is being asked to leave to eliminate any further animosity or possible action against him from the few dissatisfied people in the community. It is really a mess. Most of the community and all of the school staff are very upset that TJ and Kim are leaving Toksook. They will leave a gigantic hole within the school that will be very, very hard to fill. TJ and Kim both got jobs in Napaskiak, which is only 20 miles north of EEK on the Kuskokwim River. It will be nice to stay near them.

I'm definitely going to miss Toksook Bay and the friends that I made here. It's been kind of difficult talking to people and explaining why I'm leaving, but everyone has wished me the best of luck and hopefully a more satisfying teaching position in EEK.

But, come August 11th, we will all be re-united at the district in-service in Bethel. See you all there. Have a great summer!

Dirk and Katja

Another year??? Eek!

2009-05-18T19:37:00.000-07:00

That's right! I've made the executive decision that I will continue my work in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta educating young minds and becoming more and more Yup'ik. I won't be in Toksook this year. Instead, I've transferred to a smaller village right off the Kuskokwim river, about 35 miles south of Bethel, called EEK.

Things that won't change

I will be teaching in a village where I am a minority and don't speak the primary language
There won't be many trees where I live, if any at all.
There will be a lot of tundra everywhere
There will be good fishing.
I'm still an Alaska resident (cheap AK fishing license)

Things that will change

I'll be teaching a younger age group (5th, 6th, and 7th graders)
Smaller village (approx. 300) and smaller school (110 students K-12)
I will be a tenured teacher
I will be working with a new Mac-book computer
I will be much closer to Bethel (quasai civilization)
Flatter terrain, no hills nearby. But mountains 50 miles east (2000 - 4000 ft. elev.)
Better fishing (Kings, Silvers, Chum, Dollys, Grayling, and Sheefish)

Anyway, I'm happy with my decision so far. I figured that I won't be stressing about finding a job in the lower 48 with the collapsing economy. I've heard many horror stories about school districts cutting the number of teachers they have and cutting budgets left and right. I just signed a contract today for next year, so my job search is over for a while.

Phew!
Stay tuned for summer adventures and news from EEK!

Last days of school and Spring skiing

2009-05-12T19:30:00.000-07:00

It's May 12th and there are 7 more days of school left. Spring is fully upon us and there is a lot of meltage occuring all around us. Many of you who read this are not used to seeing snow around your houses this time of year. Heck, my Dad has been telling me about all the great fishing he has been doing all ready. Well, up here, the ice still locked in the bay and fishing of any kind is weeks if not months away. There is still enough snow (corn snow) to do some skiing if you are willing to work to get to it.
Today, I hiked up over the frozen, but thawing tundra to find a couple of short runs that allowed me to make some turns on my back country skis. I probably looked like a crazy person hiking up the hill with my skis on my shoulder, but it turned out to be a lot of fun. Katja was even able to catch herself a little tundra mouse appetizer before dinner.
I would have to say that I definitely earned the runs I made down the hill. The walk to and from the skiable areas was long and soggy. Sure my hands and feet were wet by the time I got back, but it was worth it. Parts of the valley are full of water that has been running off the top and filling up areas in the bottom creating a dirty ice bath. I avoided those places.

Pretty soon, all the snow is going to be gone except for the highest points of land and the deep valleys where the wind packed snow 20 - 30 feet deep. Maybe there will be some snow still here in August. Personally I won't ever know and I'm okay with that.

2/3 of the way out of Alaska

2009-05-10T21:25:00.000-07:00

Well, so far, I have packed up all my art work (4 paintings), two boxes of books, 3 tubs full of camping gear, clothes, and fly tying materials, my guitar, my bike, tool box, and random bike accessories. I've given away a tent, a sleeping mattress, a fly rod and reel, and some movies. I plan on taking part in a garage sale type event, where I hope to make a little dough.

When I leave here, I plan on traveling with two tote bins, my backpack, dog and dog kennel, and my carry on bag. Anything else gets thrown away or given away. I don't need it.

Travel light, live light, share the light, be the light

Dirk

We're melting away

2009-05-04T21:13:00.000-07:00

Alaska is a difficult place to live in for most of the year and during the winter especially, but the in between seasons are my least favorite times of the year. Fall and Spring. In the fall, the rains turn everything into mud, which gets tracked everywhere. On top of that, when it dries, it turns into dust, especially in carpeted areas. Our whole school has carpet, except for the gym, so that level of dust during the fall in early winter gets pretty high in the school adding to sinus and respiratory problems.

The winter starts out by just getting cold. Tundra freezes solid as well as the rivers and coastal water. Then it starts snowing occasionally. There are a couple of warm spells here and there that melt some of the snow and bring back the mud temporarily. As the winter goes on, the snow levels increase and the storms begin rolling in bring strong wind storms and blowing snow.

In the spring, all that snow starts to melt. This year, the temperatures seemed to shift rapidly and the snow got soft very quickly and started melting away. The days become absolutely beautiful with blue bird skies and warm temperatures. As the snow gets soft, getting around becomes very difficult. Watching the 4-wheelers spin and slide around is quite entertaining. As there is more and more snow turning to water, the snow machines can be seen skimming across the water at full throttle, like jet skis. Walking however, is the most frustrating mode of transportation. At first, you can stay on top of the snow, but as the days go on, particularly later in the day, you start post holing. Post holing is when you break through the upper crust of packed snow and sink down to your knees or upper thigh. With all of the snow turning to water, most of the time you post hole, you sink down to your thigh and your foot ends up in an ice bath.

To combat this, I’ve decided to create some channels to let the melting snow, so the water could easily drain off the land. There is still too much snow for the water to drain completely, so there is a lot of standing water. But, I figure it’s better walk through water know what you are stepping into, as opposed to post holing unexpectedly. It’s a lot of work, but it makes life a little easier. The kids don’t let the multiple ice baths get them down. Eventually the snow will be gone and the mud will return. I hate mud. I really do.

Trying to make the sun shine

2009-04-26T15:47:00.000-07:00

Just as fast as the snow is melting away, so are my days here as a teacher. The kiddies don’t know yet, but non the less, they are getting restless. I’ve been trying to keep the news of my leave under the carpet for now. I definitely don’t need my students acting even more belligerent thinking that they have beaten me. Of course, I don’t feel that way, but I’m not a teenager living in a sheltered village of 600, hundreds of miles from any realistic world. This year has been filled with my students wafting through their own little fantasy world, their wild imaginations running at full tilt.

Not to mention, the days are already almost 15 hours long and only getting longer. So I find myself trying to do more and more to keep their mental status fresh and energized for the classroom. I constantly find myself pouring my heart into each day, yet these teenagers find something, sometimes everything that they dislike. Life must be hard for these “almost” young adults in ways that I have forgotten. Yes, life must be hard. Some of my 13 – 15 year old students have their own $8,000 snow machines, brand new i-pods, cell phones. Non of these items are allowed on school grounds, except snow machines if you are 16 years or older.

I guess my students are the same as other teenage students around the country in many ways. Nothing I, or any other adult, could say or do would please them. They surely wouldn’t show it, even if it did. They are constantly spreading doom and gloom when inside the walls of school. Not that I’m trying to be their best bud, but I would like to see them happy in class or enjoying what they are learning. Research has shown that when teenagers go through this adolescent growth spurt, they slow down or sometimes shut down mentally. It’s definitely given me a little insight into what it’s going to be like raising my own kids in the hopeful future.

It’s just kind of draining my own personal energy being present with 18 pessimistic foul tempered teenagers full of complaints about life when it doesn’t go the way they want. I hope that I can make it 4 more weeks. Don’t worry, I will.

Late Spring

2009-04-20T09:03:00.000-07:00

The snow is still heavy and the Ptarmigan are still hunkered down deep in the snow. Marty, his nephew Trevor, and I went out to explore the tundra last weekend, but ended up just cruising around on the snow machine. Well at least there are a few signs out on the frozen landscape to help orient travelers towards our village as they are zooming around in the white oblivion.

Thankfully there aren’t any signs leading people to my little ski haven. Heading out there today, the area was covered with velvety white as smooth as silk. I made several good runs up and down the slope. I only wish that the slope itself dropped a steady, but gradual 1000 – 1500 feet. Unfortunately, my little private ski resort only drops about 300-400 feet and is not quite steep enough to get any speed. However, now that I think of it, I should grab a snow machine and do some exploring on a grander scale. There are some mountains farther out from the village, but I’ve always settled for the neighborhood hill, mostly because I don’t have a snow machine of my own. I will also have to leave the dog behind most likely, because she probably won’t be able to run 20 – 30 miles over the snow in a couple of hours. Maybe it’s time to take my ski attitude to the next level. Better do it quick. There are already some spots of ground showing on the tops of some of the hills.

I’m actually a little torn about the weather. I long for warmer weather, but it’s kind of sad to see the snow go. Now that the sun is out and the air is above 30 degrees, I am really enjoying being out on the skis. The sun even softens up the icy spots a little, giving way to slightly broader terrain. If I’m lucky, it will stick around for another week or two. Then it will be full on packing time. The light at the end of the tunnel shines brightly towards the near future. Can you feel my excitement???

2009 Yup'ik Dance Festival

2009-04-13T10:08:00.000-07:00

Now that I've acknowledged that I am a blog slacker, I figured that I should make up for all the events that passed by without even a mention on my blog. The weekend of the Yup'ik Dance Festival is always a busy one. People from Bethel and all other neighboring villages travel by plane, four wheeler, and snow machine to come to Toksook for a weekend of native Yup'ik dancing madness. The outside of the school is a sea of snow machines parked any which way and the inside of our gym is packed with hundreds of people from all over. There are concessions, lots of dance groups strutting their stuff, a 50/50 raffle, and a huge supply and gift give away to all the people who traveled far to get here, elders first. Anything from furs and pelts, gas cans, lumber, water jugs, fabric to make Qaspuks (sp?), and food to larger things such as wooden sleds to pull behind a snow machine or even a stove for a steam house. Dancing goes on for hours each day and into the night.
Many neighboring villages come to dance, but Toksook usually puts on a show that is hard to beat. Most dance groups have some students mixed in with adults from the village. The dancers are in front with men kneeling in the very front and women standing behind them. The drummers are seated in the very back singing and chanting to energize the dancers. The Toksook Bay Islanders dance group is all students that work very hard and put in many hours of practice to perfect their song and dance. The students really get into performing and representing their village by creating memorable entertainment for the visiting audience. Sometimes the men also stand and one or two of the stronger dancers gives a special show as in the second video here. Most of the students really do have a wonderful personality when it comes to relaxed day to day interactions. This is one of the things that I will miss most about working here after I leave.

Easter bunnies, pranks, and more snow

2009-04-13T09:36:00.000-07:00

Well, it's April 13th and we are still experience full winter conditions here in the Yukon Kuskokwim Delta. This morning it was apparently -9 degrees F. outside. I couldn't even tell anymore. Beautiful day if you ask me. Sun rising over a perfectly clear sky, reflecting off a landscape of snow and ice. Like a cold slap in the face every morning.
This weekend was extended thanks to TJ, our principal, who gave us Monday off as well. Yesterday, I hit the hill behind the village before we gathered at one of the high school teacher's house for an Easter feast. We got pounded by storms all day Friday and most of Saturday as well. It dumped powder both days, but the wind must have carried a lot of it away. This is a picture of my house being buried. The snow drifts blocked out all sunlight from penetrating my windows.
I still found plenty of pow pow up in my favorite little ski bowl where I go to unwind. Much of the surrounding hills are wind packed with deep tongues and grooves carved into the snow by the wind. It makes for very difficult skiing on such unpredictable snow. At the bottom of the steep drop off though, one can almost always find light fluffy powder to play in. This is my playground. And since I'm always trying to challenge my self, I had to attempt a couple of steeper drop in points only to crater in the deep snow below. Oh well. Skijoring with Katja on the way back home, I ran into Brett, our former Site Administrator Intern from my first year as he was traveling back to Tununak. He stopped and talked a bit. I think that he wished he was out with his dogs playing in the snow too.
Cindy, our Easter host actually lives in the house that I lived in my first year. I'm glad that I don't live there this year. In the fall, there are actually a couple of steps that you have to climb up to get to the door. Now, it's a 18 - 20 foot snow drift to get down to it. We had a good time relaxing and mingling in a non-work atmosphere even though there were still teacher's kids running around all over the house.

When I got home, I was confronted with a monstrosity of snow stacked in front of my door. I couldn't even get to my shovel, so I had to borrow TJ's. I have to admit, the kids here enjoy my presence. If they didn't like me, I'd end up with broken windows and a kitchen full of snow. It was a good laugh and I cleaned up the mess with a smile on my face. I never really figured out who did it, but I think I have an idea. Revenge is sweet. They'll have to wait for it.

Lame Blogging Blues

2009-04-08T11:08:00.000-07:00

I know... I know.
What's the point of having a blog if you don't post new things every so often. I have had a long dry spell lately and I admit it. Blogging just hasn't been a priority for me lately. I work long hours and just want to go home afterwards. If I had internet at home, I would be prone to more blogging. And it's not that I don't have anything new, interesting, or exciting to post. I'm just not feeling motivated. But I want that to change. I am going to set a goal. I will post a new blog entry every weekend. I will set aside at least 15 min. every weekend to write something new in my blog. There are a lot of new things to write about too. Some of you may already be privy to some information. Others will have to wait for the blog.

Lastly and above all, I would like to thank my followers and supporters for your patience and interest.

stay tuned,
Dirk

Nelson Island Haikus

2009-02-06T21:48:00.000-08:00

Got to leave this class
So boring Mr. Martin
Please can I visit?

My Christmas Story

2009-01-08T09:21:00.000-08:00

My Christmas break was preempted by a little accident that happened on Dec. 10th, a week before I left to start my voyage home to Maryland. I took a little spill on the ice. Now I would love to be able to tell you that I was launching off of a 20 ft. snow bluff performing a perfect southern cross on my backcountry skis or that I was careening down the hill behind the village on my mountain bike with my dog in hot pursuit and washed out on a patch of ice tumbling for 100 feet, but no. No, I was simply walking my dog to a neighbor’s house. One minute I was walking cautiously, the next minute I was trying to pick myself up fast enough to get inside a building so that I wouldn’t go unconscious and die of exposure. After spending about an hour at my friend’s house looking at my dented face and applying ice as much as I could stand, I got a quick trip to the regional clinic here in Toksook. There I got an x-ray, called home to notify my parents, and then went back down to the house for the night where I was awakened every two hours on the hour by either my neurotic dog or my concerned friends.
The next morning, I flew to Bethel for a CT scan. Afterwards I hung out in Bethel for ohhhh……three more days due to weather. I returned to Toksook, taught for two and a half days and then caught my plane home. By the time I had gotten home, I had talked with a surgeon in Anchorage that convinced me that surgery was the right call. He referred me to a facial plastic surgeon in Baltimore and I had a surgical consult scheduled before I got home.
Christmas was good at the Martin household. I got a rifle for spring Ptarmigan hunting and a pair of ice cleats to wear around the village from now until May when everything turns to mud again. Everyone was pleasantly surprised and appreciative for the gifts and we later went to Grandma’s house for wonderful home cooked meal.
The day after Christmas I drove back down to Baltimore with my Dad for my surgery. We found out through my CT scans in Bethel and Baltimore that I had broken my eye orbital in two places and shattered my zygomaticomaxillary complex (cheek bone). It was my first time being under the knife, so I was a little nervous. I was out for about two hours and woke up with my face looking more normal and a small titanium “L” shaped plate fastened and securing my cheek bone. The only incision that was made was on my upper gums inside my mouth. From there the doctors were able to lift my cheek bone back into place and set the other shattered bones in their proper positions so that my face had some normal looking structure again. After a couple of recovery days at home, watching movies, eating soft foods, and pretty much being a slug, I was out in the field with Dad gathering firewood and playing with the dog.
New Years was fairly uneventful, but enjoyable just the same.
The next day I flew back to the frozen hinter lands of Southwest Alaska. When I arrived Bethel, the air temperature was 33 below zero and 55 below with the wind chill. Brrrrr! This morning I finished the last of my antibiotics and am waiting for the rest of the inflammation to disappear. I am looking pretty normal though, except for the cool scar on my cheek that reminds of the split second that I was in the air and then bouncing my face off the frozen ground. The hardest part for me is the next 4 – 6 weeks when I have to take it easy. I want to get out on the skis with the dog and start testing out the slopes around the village. Luckily the snow conditions are not that great for skiing right now, so maybe I will be able to heal a little more before we get enough snow to really have fun on the skis. I would still be excited to see some more snow fall during the next 4 weeks. My fingers are crossed.

Show me the snow!

2008-11-23T15:10:00.000-08:00

Brrrrrrrr! It is getting pretty cold here in late November. The sun rises about 9 am and sets around 5:30pm around the time of year. When the sun is up, it doesn't get more than about five finger widths above the horizon. Non the less, Katja and I still manage to get out and explore the frozen wilderness. Yesterday, I hitched Katja up to my Mtn. bike and we rode up the hill, around the thumb, and down and around the back side of the hill. There is almost too much snow to ride a bike, especially without a powerhouse dog pulling you, however there still isn't enough snow to break the skis out. So, we have to keep using the bike and power through the deep crusty drifts of snow, looking for patches of exposed ground so that I can actually get traction and ride the bike. In these pictures of course, you can see that actual riding isn't very realistic. From this point in our ride, we head down this hill to the bottom of the valley, then follow the bottom of the hill around to the left and back to the village. We have to cross a couple of frozen streams along the way, which makes me appreciate my studded mtn. bike tires that I've been using for the past month or so now.
Katja has been amazing with the whole bikejoring experience. She loves to pull and when she gets on a trail, just wants to go go go. I was amazed at some of the deep drifts she was able to pull me through. You can see that the bay in the background of this picture is starting to freeze up as well. By the time I get back from Christmas break, it will be time for ice fishing again and there will be plenty of snow for skijoring
Classes have been very energetic lately. The students are very jittery and I think we are all in need of a little break. Thanksgiving is right around the corner and Christmas is soon to follow. My how time flies.
Thanks for reading,
Dirk

Happy Halloween!

2008-11-02T16:07:00.000-08:00

So Halloween in the small native village of Toksook Bay is just like most other towns across America. It’s all about the candy! There are a few adults that do actually dress up, but mostly it’s kids….4th grade and down. I was going to go for something subtle, like wear my glasses that I have never worn in public yet, but I decided go with something a little more creative.

Side note…

We have been trying to attack our behavioral problems in more a positive manner. That is, instead of telling students “don’t do this” and “don’t do that”, we are focusing on the students that are doing what they are expected and giving them kudos or props. Telling them they are doing a great job. We do that through four mantras; be respectful, be responsible, be helpful, and be safe. When students are doing what they are expected to we give them a “Gotcha Card.” It’s amazing how this effects student’s behavior.

Back to original thought…

I decided to dress up as a human “Gotcha Card.” It went pretty well. Even some of the kids got it. Halloween doesn't always have to be "Who are you." It could be "What are you." Some of you might be saying, "what a dork", but who knows, maybe my quick sketch of a generic piece of paper on a white cotton shirt will be mass produced and sold all over the village. My legacy will have manifested itself.

Thanks for reading.
Happy Halloween!

The River of Frozen Dreams

2008-10-28T19:02:00.000-07:00

Winter seems to have taken a firm grip on the land over the past 4 weeks, but we still don’t have much snow. I figure that it will probably warm up around the beginning of November, although I really hope it doesn’t. The snow that we got 3 weeks ago is still hanging around and towards the end of this week, we got another inch of powder. The temps have not gotten above freezing the whole time though, so the ground (aka soggy spongy mattress ground) has been hard as a rock for some time now. This makes it perfect to ride on, so Katja and I have been cruising up along the river for evening rides. The river itself is a little sketchy to ride on yet, although I have seen 4 wheeler donuts out on the middle of ice. I’m not going to risk it though. We can ride about six miles in about an hour, but only 2 miles of that is on the tundra. Tundra riding is still pretty slow going.
Fishing would be so much easier if I could ride all the way up to where the Dollys are hanging out. It takes me about an hour to get to the fish when the ground is soggy and boggy, but only 30 minutes from my house when the ground is frozen. It is hard to believe that I was fishing this same water about 1 month ago. Many things take forever up here, the mail, traveling, etc. The weather happens very suddenly.

Today, Katja and I went on our mountain circuit ride where we ride up to the top and then maneuver our way down the other side without getting killed. With snow on the ground it’s a little softer falling, but you end up falling more often, so I guess it evens out. I went over the bars a couple of times today. We had a great ride though. I must have been really focused on keeping the rubber side down, because all of the sudden, I saw blackness in front of me and hit the breaks as hard as I could. Too late, my front wheel sunk into the murky blackness and I had to catch myself, which meant that my foot sunk down into the bogginess as well. Surprisingly I was able to pull my foot out quick enough so that I didn’t get too wet. I tried to sneak around where the ice seemed a little thicker, but I broke through again. I quickly decided that I made a wrong turn and backtracked to another trail that headed up towards higher ground. Katja did amazingly well the whole time we were out. She is leaps and bounds ahead of where she was last year as far as skijoring (bikejoring) is concerned. I’m really looking forward to this winter when we get the skis out.

Changing of Seasons

2008-10-12T17:21:00.001-07:00

I know that I'm getting too excited too early, but I can't help being energized with the first snow fall. Katja was pretty excited as well. Once again, she can get a mouth full of snow, which quickly becomes ice cold water, at full stride to stay hydrated on our endurance adventures. Early this week, we took a quick spin around the 3 mile x-country course after the ground has frozen hard and there was a light dusting of snow. The trail is alittle easier to pick out with a light snow. It's pretty difficult even in the best conditions. The wind was blowing pretty hard up on top of the ridge, so it meant that I cooled down quickly when I had to stop and round up my adventurous run away dog, who had taken off on another quick side venture. She has gotten much better at staying near me when we run, but there is just so much to explore out there, she just can't help herself sometimes. She healed the rest of the way back to the village, so I treated her to a left over steak bone in my fridge. The next day she in turn treated me with a nice steamy pile of poo outside my bedroom door. I guess on top of the dog food, the steak pushed over the edge. I decided to leave out any photos. That hasn't happened since the first few months she lived with me.

Today we rode to the top of the hill and then when off trail over the side towards "the thumb" to pick up another trail that winds around behind this ridge and follows the wide valley below. Again, Katja took off returning after a period of shouting for her. I was getting concerned that she had come across a fox and gave chase, which could last for a long while. I hope that never happens. Upon returning, I scolded her for running off and then we continued down the hill, following the snow filled tracks of the 4 wheeler trail. We flushed a nice size covy of ptarmigan, which normally would entice Katja to take off again, but she was able to contain herself this time. I guess she connected the dots. It has been cold enough that even the swampy ground is fairly frozen enough so that I don't sink my front wheel through boggy sections of the trail. We got back to the town relatively dry and worn out. Another successful outdoor adventure.

Fishing in the Fall

2008-09-29T17:44:00.000-07:00

So last weekend, I made one last voyage up the Alakugaq to fill my freezer. I actually wasn't planning to keep any fish, but when I caught some good size fish, I changed my mind. I had decided to hike farther up river than I had ever been before. I also had dinner plans for 6 pm, so I knew that I couldn't spend too much time exploring.
I rode my bike as far as I could over the squishy tundra and then hiked the rest of the way. There were still many salmon swimming up the river, so I assumed that there would also be many Dollys following them to suck up their eggs. There were indeed a lot of fish in my usual fishing hole, but I wanted to explore farther up river, so I caught a few and then continued hiking
I knew that I was going to be wiped out at the end of the day, because I was already feeling tired as I hiked across the soggy landscape. Parts of the ground were solid and other parts were totally exhausting to get through. As I got farther up stream, the river got very narrow and the fish would spook and dart around

The "Hinter" of Hinterlands"

2008-09-21T16:23:00.000-07:00

Nunuvak Island is beautiful, with its diverse coastline, its rolling hills and larger mountains in beyond, and its highly fish populated rivers. The village, Mekoryuk, sits on the eastern end of the island and the rest of the island rarely gets visited except by circumnavigating the island by boat or taking a painstakingly slow, bumpy, and sometimes barely navigable 4 wheeler ride across the tundra. One nice thing about the village of Mekoryuk is that it is more sand than muddy, which is much easier to deal with as far as keeping your house and yourself clean.

It’s always exciting for me to see and explore a new place. Friday evening we to a 4 wheeler out to some big sand dunes on the coast and walked out over tidal flats and rocks as the tide slowly crept in. After taking some death defying leaps off the dune tops, we cruised back to town and starting cooking up a vegetable medley, many veggies we couldn’t even identify. A short jam session with Kale on Ukulele and me on guitar followed by some vaguely interesting tele and I headed to bead. Our plan for Saturday was to take a slow, bumpy, and sometimes barely navigable 4 wheeler ride over the tundra past the tidal section of the Mekoryuk river to search for Dolly Varden. Saturday, we slept in till 7:30ish, ate a quick breaky and head to the fishing grounds. Kale fished with a heavy duty spin rod and me with my 6 weight fly rod. The section of water was beautiful. A long slow, deep section of water in between to steep, bouldery rapid sections that held fish by the hundreds. We spent about 4 hours catching many Dollys and Kale even caught 4 nice silver salmon. It was much different than fishing the little river outside of Toksook. First of all, the Dollys didn’t aggressively take salmon egg imitations, which are an easy and rich source of food for them. Instead, they wanted to chase some kind, any kind, of streamer. Unfortunately, I only had a couple of flies that made the cut for appearance and actually caught fish. The weather had gotten cold over the past couple of nights and the wind combined with dipping your hands in water to release fish quickly turned my hands into numb clubs of wood. This lead to me dropping one the four flies, that was working for me, in the water, never to be seen again. Luckily I still had a couple of large nymph patterns that surprisingly worked just fine. I caught many fish, some 10 – 12 inches, but most 15 -18 inches. This was okay with me, because between Kale and I combined, we probably caught 80 – 100 fish in four hours. Sometimes on every cast you would have a fish. It was great.

After arriving back to Toksook the next day, I had felt like I had taken a week long vacation. But alas, back to work. I’m pretty happy that I got to see another part of the Yukon Kuskokwim Delta and I hope to get back out to Mekoryuk for another visit. Maybe Katja will join me next time.

Getting to the "Hinter" of "Hinterlands"

2008-09-21T16:22:00.000-07:00

This past weekend, I made arrangements with my friend Kale, to visit him and some other friends at their current residence in Mekoryuk on Nunuvak Island. Then came the unpredictable adventure of making reservations to fly there. It isn’t far, just a short 20 min. hop across the Etolin strait. There are only approximately 170 people that live on the island, so there isn’t a high priority to fly there during all the scheduled flight times, morning, noonish, and evening. I made reservations to fly there on the Friday evening flight and return on the Saturday evening flight with one of the aviation companies, however on Friday evening when I went to confirm my flight, the plane was full. Aaaarrrrrrrrgh! Now my understanding of the concept of “reservation” was that my name was to be on one of those seats on the plane for that flight. After contacting the headquarters in Bethel, I dropped it and quickly checked another aviation company that was flying out to Mekoryuk as well to see if they had room for me. They did and I made it out to see Kale. Unfortunately I had to go through a similar scenario for my flight back to Toksook. I ended up making all my flights as I had originally planned, but I was never quite sure I would be flying until I was sitting on that plane. I should be used to this by now, because I have been jumping flights to and fro for almost 2 ½ years now, but I’m still surprised and frustrated when I’m really wanting or needing to make a flight and the plane just might be full or not come at all. To make a long story longer, there is always a certain amount of finger crossing that has to be done in order to get some places in the Alaskan Bush.

Euphoric fishing

2008-09-15T17:36:00.000-07:00

This year has been challenging and rewarding in many ways already. I've been trying to get my feet under me in the classroom. Each new batch of 7th graders that get thrown my way try to test their new teacher by driving them crazy. This years group is trying hard, but they aren't getting anywhere. Tough love! There is always so much work to get up to date for the new year as well that it takes me until about October to find my feet. I am almost there and it is still the 3rd week of September, so I think I'm doing pretty well.

As for fishing, I have been rewarded and disappointed. The beginning of the Silver Salmon season was great. My first trip out, I landed 4 beautiful silvers as bright as the sun. Unfortunately, you will have to take my word on it, because I lost the pictures when my work computer crashed. I caught a few more after that and this is a couple of older males that were caught about a week later. I've also engaged my friend and colleague Marty into some flyfishing. He picked it up rather quickly and found success with a few fish. After a couple of weeks of being in the river though, the fish just shut down. Maybe they get too skittish. Maybe they are getting too much fishing pressure from all the kids that try to snag them. Maybe they just can't be distracted from their spawning rituals and don't even bother to chase the colorful flies I throw their way. Either way, I can't get them to bite anymore. I would like to try a different river and see if less fishing pressure has an effect, but the other rivers require a fairly long 4 wheeler drive over the tundra. I don't think that I could even hike there and back in a day and still have time to fish. So I am left to fish the nearby Alukucaq.

Yesterday I hiked way up river and saw a couple of amazing things. First, there are many beavers that inhabit the river and build extensive dams and lodges along the river, sometimes backing the water up for long sections. Second, many many salmon still get up stream through the beaver dams and find spawning grounds way up river. Third, there are a couple of areas that have large groups of Dolly Varden swimming spastically around following Salmon and sipping eggs that drift down stream. On one of my first casts, I hooked with two fish at the same time. Eventually one of them shook the hook, but it was pretty exciting having two fish darting around on my line.

The fishing is starting to come to a close around here though and soon, winter will set in and I'll be forced to fish through the ice. Not a favorite of mine. This fishing season has been a good one. Maybe there will be one more adventure to Nunuvak Island next weekend for some more fishing. I'll keep you posted.

Until next time,
thanks for reading my sporadic blog

Dirk

Summer Adventures

2008-08-08T16:11:00.000-07:00

Well, the summer is coming to a close, so I guess I owe you a summary of my adventures. After the trip to Denali with Erin, I returned to hot and humid east coast, Taylor's Landing, Maryland and spent much of the summer fishing on the Potomac river with my Dad and uncle. The river has only gotten better over the years, so fishing was pretty good and we all ended up catching nice Smallmouth Bass. It is quite a spectacle watching three people fly fishing out of a 17 foot bass boat, but we managed to do all right with it.

In between fishing trips this summer, I went to Asheville, N.C. with my friend Nadia to be a part of our friends, Katymae and Will’s wedding. It was a great time and a beautiful ceremony. While visiting the south, I was able to stop in a spend some time with more friends in Atlanta. Sometimes I think that Charlie Bowles is the reason that I ended up moving to Oregon for two years. He is getting married to his beautiful fiancé, Eloise, in October. I only wish that I could attend that ceremony, but I’ll be over 5000 miles away in the middle of my unit on Ecology with my 7th graders. Mozeltov Charlie and Eloise!

The next big adventure for the entire Martin family was a trip to Idaho and Montana. There were several reasons for this trip, but the main focus was visiting family, looking for potential retirement possibilities for my Mom and Dad, and of course, fishing. We started out in Ennis, MT where we spent the first night and got to spend some time on the Madison river. We also got to check out a couple of interesting properties. Visiting with family was great. My Dad has an aunt and uncle that live in Big Fork, MT who we stayed with for most of the trip. Aunt Sarah and my Mom spent time catching up, window shopping in Big Fork, and doing some baking and cooking for when the men returned from fishing. Uncle Leon and my second cousin Dwight drove us all over the northwestern region of Montana looking for trout. We found a couple on the Spotted Bear river, the Swan river, the Thompson river, and some of the small lakes around the area too. In addition, we all got to do some hiking in Glacier National Park. We also got to visit an old family friend, Ian and his wife, Christine, and their son. We did a great hike in the Jewel Basin. Mom got to spend some time with the mountain goats in the area while we hiked to the summit.

Many of you that know my faithful companion, Katja, might be asking…”Where is the dog?” While we were in Montana, Katja was spending time with my cycling friend, Beth, back at Taylors Landing, running and biking a lot. Beth and Katja became best buds during our 10 day vacation. Katja even got to go fishing with Mom, Dad, and I once. Katja and I also got to visit Kent County, Maryland and stay with my friend's Michael and Beth Brownley. Got to do a nice ride with some of the boys of Bike Work in Chestertown and got to catch up with a lot of other friends in the land of pleasant living. Mmmmm, Maryland Blue Crabs. Thanks Capt. Andy and Betsy.

All in all, we had a very relaxing and refreshing summer. I got to see a lot of family members and catch up on our busy lives. My parents aren’t moving away from Taylor’s Landing anytime soon. Katja managed to run off the day I was leaving Maryland, but I managed to find her and still get packed and make my flight on time. Crazy dog!!!

Hope you all enjoyed my summer update. Starting my 3rd year in Alaska, teaching 7th grade at Nelson Island School. I can tell it’s going to be an exciting year, so get ready for more exciting posts coming from Toksook Bay, Alaska.

Thanks for reading,
Dirk and Katja

Dirk and Erin's Denali Adventure

2008-06-21T15:25:00.000-07:00

Dirk and Erin’s Denali Adventure began on the 25th of May with our arrival in Anchorage. After securing our rental car we were on our way! Erin’s friends, Miranda and Brody opened their house to us and we spent the night of the 25th running some errands and just chilling out in Anchortown for the night. We met Erin’s roommate Christina and her friend Richard for dinner and returned back to Miranda and Brody’s early so we could get an early start for Fairbanks the next morning.
We woke up the next morning and after eating breakfast and getting some beer for Miranda and Brody (it’s the Wisconsin way of reciprocating hospitality) we were packed up and on the road by 10 am. However, we didn’t leave Anchorage until well after noon. Dirk’s dog, Katja, having a sore tummy from dumpster diving and feeling a little ill from the motions of the car decided to throw up…three times. We had to stop three separate times to clean up the mess and finally stopped at Fred Meyer and bought some Dramamine for her. After feeding a pill hidden in peanut butter we were once again on our way.
Apparently, the drive from Anchorage to Fairbanks takes about 6 hours. We made it in 10 due to stops in Talkeetna, Denali and frequent doggie breaks. We arrived in Fairbanks around 10 pm and easily found Pat’s house. Pat was Dirk’s teacher mentor this past year and is awesome! She opened her house up to us and was so cool about letting us come and go. We spent two nights there and prepared for our big adventure into Denali.
Dirk has a thing for trains and insisted on taking the Alaska Railroad from Fairbanks to Denali. We had decided to board the dogs at a place called the Holy Dog Ranch. The name apparently has something to do with the introduction of horses into native cultures in Alaska. Since the majority of people then used dogs for work when the horse was introduced the natives were amazed by it’s size and called it the "holy dog". The people at the kennel also boarded horses and therefore called the ranch the Holy Dog Ranch. Since our train was early on the 28th we had to bring our four legged friends to the Ranch the night before. We woke up early on the 28th and headed to the Fairbanks Depot.
The train ride down to Denali was amazing. The scenery was beautiful. Other passengers on the train provided endless amusement. Our favorite passenger was the one who boarded the train confused as to whether she was the engineer or the passenger. She wore head to toe engineer’s stripes, an engineer’s cap, and top off the ensemble with a little red handkerchief in her back pocket. Her long blonde hair had been curled in little ringlets and hung down her back. She was traveling with a man named Mike (whom we called "The Professor" –because he looked like a professor) and halfway through the train ride approached Mike with a souvenir bubble blower/train whistle in the shape of a train. She then made him blow bubbles and try out the whistle. She was cool.
We arrived in Denali around noon and set about organizing our trip into the backcountry. We hiked down to the Backcountry information Center (BIC) to plan our trip. Denali is over 2 million acres in size and is split up into perhaps 32 or 33 "units" of varying size. When planning a backcountry trip people have to decide not only which unit they want to explore but also when they will be in said unit. After studying a binder full of descriptions and pictures of each unit and staring a ginormous wall map we had our trip planned out. We would spend that night in Unit 26, then take the bus down to Unit 7, hike into Unit 6 then take the bus back down to Unit 25.
Once we had made our itinerary we had to fill out paperwork that informed the BIC of our previous on and off trail hiking experience, the color of our clothes, packs and tent as well as emergency contract information. After the ranger approved our itinerary and our paperwork we were sent into another room to watch a backcountry safety video. The video informed us of all sorts of important things, like how to cross a stream safely, how to set up our camp, how to store our food and how to deal with a bear encounter and a bear interaction. In fact, much of the video focused on bear encounters and interactions that left us feeling a littler nervous but pretty pumped to get out there.
While we had been watching the video our handy backcountry ranger had processed all our paperwork and had printed off our backcountry permit. He handed us our Bear Resistant Food Container (BRFC) and sent us on our merry way.
Now armed with our BRFC we hiked back us to the Wilderness Access Center (WAC) and tore our packs apart in order to accommodate the BRFC. We had about 2 hours before our bus left to bring us to our first unit and spent that time rearranging our food and other supplies. After sawing the ends of our toothbrushes off we were pleased to see that we had crammed our entire food supply as well as all hygiene products into one BRFC. After we were all packed up again we called our mothers to tell them if they didn’t hear from us by June 2nd to call Denali to initiate a search and rescue mission. Erin’s mother seemed really concerned about bears but was relieved when Erin informed her that they would be carrying bear spray.
We met our bus and rode it out to Savage River. Since it was late in the afternoon we had decided that we would hike in a short ways and set up camp, make dinner and get a good night’s sleep so we would be rested our the big hike the next day. Since it had started raining/snowing out the going was a little slow. We were also dismayed to find out that our plan was being foiled by steep terrain. After hiking for a couple of hours we decided to climb up the slope to see if we could find some flat ground to set up camp. On the way up we encountered a local who informed us as best he could that flat ground at that elevation was pretty much nonexistent. We eventually found what looked like a good place as any to set up camp and once the tent was up we made dinner. Since we were both cold and wet dinner was an exciting process. It delayed however when Dirk decided to go the bathroom and knocked over our stove, pan, and all the boiling water. Eventually our first meal, veggie lasagna was cooked and we crawled into the tent tired and excited by the upcoming adventure.
The night was long. Not only was it a little chilly but also we each woke up about a million times to crawl out of the bottom of the tent and to find a place to wedge ourselves in at the top of the tent. Once settled, we would drift off to sleep only to awaken to find ourselves at the bottom of the tent a short time later. This delightful process continued throughout the evening, which resulted in very little sleep for either one of us.
The next morning we had a quick breakfast of oatmeal, packed up camp and hiked back to the road to meet our bus. Our bus driver’s name that day was Sam and Sam was very cool. After showing him the map of where we wanted to go he dropped us off at a little ranger cabin on the East Fork of the Toklat River. We hiked down to the cabin as snowflakes began to fall. We decided to eat a quick lunch and set up on the tiny little porch in back of the ranger cabin. We watched, as the snowflakes quickly became a mini snowstorm, which dumped about an inch of snow in about 15 minutes. After lunch Erin went off to use the little out house that was near the cabin. When she emerged a short time later Dirk was standing there and excitedly pointed up the trail a little way. There, about a hundred yards away was a much larger cabin with a much larger, cleaner, and well-covered porch. A short distance away from that, he explained excitedly, was a "pimp daddy privy". Erin, not believing him went to investigate and sure enough, there was a much nicer out house than the one she had just used.
We had decided to follow the East Fork up to the head of the drainage to see if we could see some glaciers that were back there. The hike up the braided riverbed was amazing. We had a few small streams to cross and there was plenty of ice still remaining that we had to cross carefully. At one point Dirk stopped in the trail and pointed at some bushes and said something was moving in there. After seeing a flash of brown we both froze and whispered. "BEAR!" The flash of brown turned out to be caribou and we stood quietly as we watched about 15 caribou cross the ice pack. Once most of the caribou were out of the way we continued walking. A few stragglers were still hanging around and a few circled back around to check us out.
After the caribou encounter we continued our†hike on the riverbed. The rocks were quite large and eventually our feet began to feel sore from walking on such uneven ground. We started looking around for a place to make camp that night and agreed that the first flat spot we found would be our stopping point. One of the backcountry rules is that you can camp anywhere as long as you are at least a half-mile away from and out of sight of the road. Since Denali is largely tundra and quite open it is much harder to be out of sight of the road than one would think. Although we had hiked about 4 or 5 miles by that point we could still see the road off in the distance. We spotted what looked to be a nice spot of tundra a little ways ahead and found to our delight that not only was it flat but we were tucked out of sight of the road as well. We quickly set up camp. Dirk was putting his sleeping bag in the tent and Erin was eating a Clif bar when Erin looked up and saw a fox right in front of her. Unable to communicate due to the large amount of granola in her mouth she proceeded to get his attention by kicking him directly in the ass with her hiking boot. He quickly whipped around ready to retaliate only to see Erin, mouth full, trying not to laugh, pointing at something in front of her. It was a nice fox.
After dinner we hiked further up the riverbed to investigate Pendleton Glacier. As soon as we set out another snowstorm set in and it lasted the entire hike. It was nice to walk without our packs on. Although the rocks still hurt our feet we covered quite a bit of ground before turning around to head back to camp.
That night was bliss. We were lying flat on a soft bed of tundra. We slept well and when we awoke the next morning we were greeted by a clear sky and bright sunshine. We made breakfast, filtered some more water and planned our venture from Unit 7 into Unit 6.
To move from Unit 7 to Unit 6 we had to walk around the backside of Cathedral Mountain and cross some low ridges. We crossed the riverbed once more and started our ascent. The open landscape of Denali makes judging distances difficult at times. From looking at the map the distance between Unit 7 and Unit 6 didn’t seemed feasible However, once we were on the ridge line and looked across to see snowfield after snowfield we knew we would have our work cut out for us that day.
Most of the day was spent walking across three ridgelines intermittently covered with snow. We had to walk lightly across the snowfields because breaking through the snow meant crawling out of hip deep snow to try to find solid footing again. Although it was irritating to continuously sink into hip deep snow we had a lot of fun playing around. Dirk threw snowball after snowball at Erin and thought he was quite funny. Erin didn’t think so. After negotiating across some partially frozen streams we found ourselves at the top of the final ridge and the Teklanika Riverbed was below us.
Getting down to the riverbed was trickier than we thought. As we walked down we had to navigate around many small lakes and observed some magnificent architectural feats by the local beaver population. We also found a kick ass caribou rack in the tundra.
Once down into the riverbed we started to hike down it. After hiking for a couple of miles we stopped to make camp and once again were excited to be sleeping on flat ground. Dinner that evening was Turkey Tetrazzini and both Dirk and Erin gave it two thumbs up. It was by far the best meal we had the entire week. Since both of us were exhausted we crawled into our sleeping bags early and then tried to remember how to play card games. Our conversation that night went something like this…
"Do you know how to play Kings Around the Corner?"
"No."
"Hmmm…I don’t really remember how to play either."
Silence.
"Do you know how to play Cutback?"
"No."
"Let me think. I can’t remember how to play."
Silence.
It was stimulating. So stimulating that we put the cards away early and went to sleep.
The next morning the sun was shining again and we tenderly touched our sun burnt faces and asked each other how we looked. After assuring each other that we looked stunning (as always) sporting our summer looks we cleaned up camp and headed out for another day.
Our plan for the day was to hike up the Teklanika River and then cut across through the woods. Dirk was pumped because we had some pretty decent sized river crossings to deal with that day. Dirk likes water…just in case there is someone out there who doesn’t know that. The entire time we were out there Dirk would walk by rivers and stare at the water and then look at me and say, "I bet there are some fish in there." It was quite charming actually.
After walking for a little while and getting our feet wet we came to our last big obstacle…the tundra!!
Dirk became excited by the prospect of bushwhacking out way back to the road. He took out his compass and after looking at the map we decided our course and with a few yells of "Hey bear", we began our trek to the road.
After awhile Dirk offered a quick orienteering course to Erin and in a few shakes of a lamb’s tail Erin was leading the way. Dirk had told Erin to pick a point off in the distance, walk to that point and then to use the compass to find another point and walk to that one. It was quite a simple process. However, since Erin has an attention span of a gnat the simple process was complicated by the fact that she kept losing her reference point. She would pick one out and as they began walking towards it she would forget which tree was her reference point. Instead of stopping and taking another point of reference (which would have been the smart thing to do) Erin just pretended she knew where she was going. When she felt she had walked in the general direction for long enough she would stop and then find another reference point. Then, once on the right track again she would begin to walk towards the next reference point. She would then promptly lose the reference point. This lasted about an hour or so and when Erin got tired of compassing she handed it back off to Dirk who did a much better and more accurate job of leading the way.
After walking for a little while more we finally hit a trail and we knew we were close to the road. We followed the trail around until we came to a stream. We could see Igloo Campground on the other side and as we looked at the rushing water Dirk immediately began to develop an intricate plan as to how we would cross this body of water. It was Erin who pointed out that since there was an established trail on the shore opposite of the campground that there must be a footbridge or path across the stream. Sure enough, after walking about another hundred feet upstream Dirk and Erin came to a nice bridge.
As we climbed up towards the bridge it was a bittersweet moment for we knew our Denali adventure was almost over. The sun was shining bright and as we lay down in the grass to rest and soak up some sun it was almost impossible to imagine that we had been in a snowstorm only two nights earlier. We ate some lunch in the presence of some Michiganders and just talked (as if we hadn’t done enough of that in the last few days). We slowly packed up out lunch and walked down to the road to meet our bus back to the WAC.
After getting on the bus we sat where our body odor would cause the least amount of distress to those around us. We finally got to see a moose from the bus window. We had decided earlier to not stay in the backcountry for one more night. Instead we rode the bus to the BIC, turned in our bear canister and caught another shuttle to the Riley Creek Campground. After setting up camp we walked to the mercantile and bought some beer and ice cream and sat outside in the sun eating and drinking and doing some more talking. Erin carried the heavy load of firewood back to the campground. And after she unloaded her burden the two of them enjoyed eating dinner by the fire and drank yet another beer or two. The fire died out quickly and afterwards we walked down to check out Riley Creek.
We finally figured out some card games that night and spent some time in the tent talking some more and playing cards. We got the maps out (something that had become a nightly ritual) and instead of planning our route for the next day we looked at where we had been. We also got the camera out and looked at our pictures from that day (another nightly ritual). After a little while we drifted off to sleep, anxious to see our dogs the next day, amazed at how much fun we just had and already thinking about our next adventure.

Ptarmigan hunting

2008-05-13T13:04:00.000-07:00

I’ve always considered myself to be more of a stream outdoorsman, but living in Alaska you are given so many opportunities to play in the field as well. I recently, last weekend, took up one such opportunity and borrowed the school’s snow machine and joined Mr. Smith (6th grade teacher) on a x-tundra adventure to hunt some ptarmigan. Ptarmigan are kind of like grouse in their size and appearance. They are all white except for their black/brown head and black tail feathers this time of year.

If you read my previous post, I mentioned doing open water crossings on the snow machines. Following Marty (Mr. Smith) out of the village, we had to do a couple of open water crossings. Obviously we try to stay in the snow or sometimes on the bare ground most of the time, but Marty all of the sudden gassed it across a short section. Once on the other side, he gave me the “wagons hoe” signal, so I gunned it and crossed my toes. I made it across. It’s amazing that if you go fast enough, you can float across the water if you are going fast enough.

We made it out to the Alaqucak river valley and found many ptarmigan flying around. I had borrowed a friend’s 20 guage shotgun and Marty had his 22 with a scope. The shot gun I was using had a plug in it that made it only a one shot shooter, meaning I had to be very accurate when I shot. To put it bluntly, I can’t hit the broad side of a barn. Anyway, the gun jammed and we couldn’t use it after the first shot. Therefore, Marty and I took turns with his 22 and still managed to bag 17 birds. I took 5 out of the air, which I was proud of. We had about 30 pounds of birds in my little back pack which was bursting at the seams.

That night, I cleaned the birds and cooked up a couple making a little ptarmigan stir fry, which was very good. Ptarmigan is all dark meat, but it was tasty non the less. Looks like I’m going to be in the market for a 22 rifle for next year. Fishing and berry picking in the fall. Ptarmigan hunting in the spring. I never knew how it felt to leave off the land so much. It is a pretty rewarding feeling. Of course, so is ordering all your groceries on-line and having them delivered to your door step.
Either way....Bon Apetit

The Melt Down

2008-05-13T09:19:00.000-07:00

So it’s starting to really thaw and run big streams of water everywhere through town. My front yard is a total bog even after I created the levy you see here through the snow. It took two attempts to complete it and even a little from some of my former students. The water has been flowing steady for about a week now, and there is still tons of snow throughout the village.

Even the bay is starting to look as though it might break up soon. Of course there are still crazy teenagers that try to go across the spans of open water by hydroplaning on their snow machines (snowmobiles). I actually experienced some mild stream crossing, but that will be another story for another time.

In all reality, the bay won’t break up for another week or so. There is a lot of frozen water out there. The men have been heading out to go seal hunting for over a week now. Students are allowed two traditional leave days in which case they get an excused absence to go hunting for their family. I guess you would see that anywhere you lived that offered wild game to hunt or fish.

As for me, I’m just about to have a melt down of my own as you can plainly see.

Katja and the powder bowl

2008-04-18T20:15:00.000-07:00

The winds are finally blowing consistently out of the south, which means that the temperatures are slowly going to be warming up. This is already evident, because the snow is getting heavy and slushy. Some areas of tundra are completely exposed where the wind kept the snow from sticking.

Here are some pics in rememberance of the winter playground that I deemed "The Powder Bowl." Enjoy.

It's not quite Steamboat Springs, but it will due for western Alaska.

Sometimes I think that Katja enjoys the powder bowl more than I do. Maybe she just likes giving chase.

Thanks for reading
Katja and Dirk

Celebrating Yup'ik Culture

2008-04-07T08:57:00.001-07:00

This time of year is full of celebrations and cultural events here in the Yukon Delta. Last weekend was Cama-i (pronounced Cha – my) in Bethel. Cama-i is a huge event that attracts people from around the world. This year, Cama-I hosted the magnificent Te Wananga Maori warriors. The Maori warriors are very enthusiastic and somewhat intimidating with their big tongues sticking out and the warrior like designs on their faces and bodies. They made the front page of the Delta Discovery our regional newspaper.

This weekend, it was Toksooks turn to host a dance festival, the Yup’ik Dance Festival. Although not quite as big, there were about 8 villages that braved the weather and snow machined or flew to Toksook to take part in the festivities. Held in the Nelson Islanders Gymnasium, you couldn’t buy a seat for $20. All right, maybe for $20, but it wouldn’t be a very good seat. Just joking, there weren’t any admission fees, but the place was packed.

This picture should give you an idea of how many people attended and drove their snow machines from their village. Some villages are 30 – 50 miles away over frozen waters and deep snow packed tundra. This is the closest Toksook Bay comes to filling a mall parking lot. There are another 20 snow machines behind me in this picture.

I attended the celebration a couple of times over the weekend, but I was also interested in the mounds of fresh powdery snow that we got in the area almost all weekend. I hit the backcountry everyday (sometimes twice) and got to make some turns on my x-country skis. Everyday there is fresh snow after April 1st is a gift. It will be interesting to see how much snow is left here when it is time to leave for the summer. Don’t forget we are on the coast at an elevation of about 80 feet. I have thoroughly enjoyed this winter.

The Powder Bowl

2008-04-04T15:38:00.000-07:00

This blog post has been on my mind for a couple of weeks now and I just haven't taken the time to get it posted. Well, here it is. Thanks for your patience.

Let me explain the powder bowl and why it is such a great place to ski here in Toksook. The winds either blow from the North or the South around here. The Powder Bowl sits facing Southwest and Northeast, so as the wind blows snow either North or South, it gets dropped right in the valley that makes up the bowl. In other words, it collects a lot of powder and makes for very fun downhill ski conditions. More importantly, it makes the skiing managable. Most other places consist of icy, lumpy, irregular conditions. This is a picture of the top of the bowl. I know it doesn't look like much of a bowl, but it is a slope that is pretty fun on x-country skis.

Here are a couple of pics showing you the powder bowl at its finest, which was a couple of weeks ago by now. Since then, the weather has warmed up, making the snow very heavy and slushy. It is the first week of April and we just got a new snow storm that is still kicking in fresh snow. Old Man Winter just doesn't want to let go of Toksook Bay this winter.

Notice the beautiful "S" carves coming down the bowl. I'm proud to say that I made those on w-country skis. Katja found a bone and just laid at the bottom of the bowl chewing on her bone and watching me ski down and climb back up and ski down and climb back up, etc, etc. Then I hook her up to the towline and skijor back. It's quite a workout by the time we're finished.

But I have the feeling that spring is on the way and soon the powder will turn to heavy slushy snow that it no fun. Yet another reason to look forward to next year.

I hope that some of you are able to get out and make some turns of your own. Spring skiing is the best. Thanks for reading.

Dirk and Katja

Coastal Weather

2008-03-22T14:26:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure if it is Murphy's Law or just my bad Mojo, but every time I want to travel out of the village to do something fun, it turns nasty outside and I can't fly out. When I have to fly out for work purposes, conferences, workshops, etc. , it usually works out. Figures! I just wanted to go into Bethel over my long weekend break for a little skijoring with some friends and perhaps a cold brewsky or two. Here is what the weather turned to 5 hours before I was ready to fly. Now you might ask, "what was the weather like before today?" You will notice blue skies in this short video. Now take away the wind and blowing snow and that is what it was like the morning I was supposed to fly out. Then this kicked in.

We have had quite a winter here this year. We have had more snow that many people can remember, which is fine with me. I love snow and I haven't had a really solid winter since I was out in Utah, over 10 years ago. But the winds have got to go. All of the snow that we do get, just blows away or gets turned into frozen concrete through wind pack. Either way, it doesn't make for good skiing.

Anyway, I hope everyone else is enjoying a pleasant winter where ever you are. Hope you enjoyed the video.
Happy trails,
Dirk and Katja

More fun on skis

2008-02-22T18:03:00.000-08:00

Katja and I have been busy exploring the winter wonderland of Bush Alaska as much as the blizzard filled month of February will allow. We have had 3 serious storms in Feb. already. One of the storms we delayed school for two hours, because you couldn’t see past your hand and the temps were 45 – 50 below zero. The wind has been unrelenting, which in turn transforms all the snow we have into a giant hard packed ruffles potato chip. It makes the skiing extremely difficult.

Today was the first powdery day that we have had in the month of Feb. so far. Katja and I left the house around 8: 15 am and made it to the top of the mountain by 9 am, just as the sun was rising. The weather has warmed up this weekend, so I was able to stand up on the hill and take a couple of photos without getting cold.

The contrast between the sky and the snow is virtually indistinguishable, so when it comes to getting back down the hill, it is almost impossible to see dips, bumps, drop offs, etc. In other words, I spend a lot of time brushing snow off myself after wiping out. If the powder is good, it is totally worth it and I usually end up going back up to the top for another run.

If you look carefully at the second picture, you may be able to see the power lines far off in the distance (towards the middle of the picture). That is my guide for getting down. I follow the power lines toward the right, back to the village. The other power lines going off toward the far hill go to Nightmute (another village about 16 miles away).

Katja, as always, is barking, growling, and encouraging me to go faster and faster. I appreciate her enthusiasm. She appreciates my efforts.

Thanks for following our adventures.
Until next time,
Keep exploring!

Dirk and Katja

Trip to Tununak

2008-01-27T18:51:00.000-08:00

This weekend offered another unique opportunity, which I grabbed for a number of reasons. The varsity basketball team was traveling over or around the hill, depending on the route you wish to take, to Tununak for a basketball tournament. The team was just going to take snow machines (snow mobiles for those readers in the lower 48). I agreed to go along for technical support. I also got out of the Friday staff meeting, which is okay to miss every now and again. Because I don’t have a snow machine of my own, I was stuck using our old school snow machine, a true dinosaur of the snow machine world. A Ski-Doo Tundra II. I felt like I was riding one of those “old school” bikes with a banana seat, coaster brakes and tassels on the handlebars. Everyone else was sporting their newest Yamaha speed machines. To put it in perspective, their snow machines could easily top out at 80 – 90 mph, while I would be lucky if I could hit 40 mph. No one got above 40 mph thankfully, because I would have been left in the snow dust. Needless to say, Katja had to stay home for this adventure. She was sad.

I ended up traveling over and back three times with Marty our Athletic director and NYO coach. Marty has a pretty fast machine, although it is a few years old, and was hitting all the jumps along the way, flying several feet into the air on occasion. I was just putting along, trying to keep from tipping over. We covered the 7 miles in about 15 minutes, which was moving plenty fast for me.

The basketball team stayed over night in Tununak because they were playing both Friday and Saturday morning. Marty and I went home on Friday night around 10:00 pm with a couple of other friends from Toksook. It was very dark out and neither Marty or I had head lights on our machines, but we had head lamps. Anyway, it was quite an experience riding in between the two machines with lights. Occasionally I couldn’t see the trail ahead of me at all for a few seconds, then it would appear dimly again as I used the lights of the machine behind me. When we returned on Saturday, it was starting to storm, so we decided to follow the power lines to keep from getting lost. Here is a picture of what I was wearing when I was outside. Notice the new malaggai (seal skin hat). I didn’t feel any wind or cold at all. I highly recommend getting one if you are going to be out in sub zero temperatures for extended periods of time.

Until next time, don’t let old man winter bite.

Dirk

Finicky weather

2008-01-24T09:41:00.000-08:00

Last year, I seem to remember a steady harsh winter, except for a few days that were a little warmer (30 - 35 degrees), sunny, with a blue bird sky and I was okay with that. This year has been a little different. Last week, our temperatures stayed above freezing for 3 - 4 days and it rained and sleeted, which melted more than half of our snow base. Bummer! Katja and I got in some wet hikes, but it wasn't much fun being outside. I guess we can attribute this to global warming. I'm sure there are some polar bears and bearded seals farther north that have it rougher than we do.
Now, the weather has turned again. The winds are blowing out of the North and Northwest, the temps have plummetted again and the snow is drifting something fierce. Yesterday, Katja and I went out for a long ski. I left Katja run free from the towline for a while and I climbed up to the top of the hill. It was a long strenuous workout, but it was worth the ride back down. My skis were a little sluggish in the snow for some reason. I finally realize why there are so many different types of wax for skiing in different temperatures, although I don't use any wax on my skis, I just slug along. I hooked Katja back up for our trip down the hill again and she was able to keep me moving pretty good. Sorry, no video this time. I was able to help keep us moving on the flats and slight uphills because I wasn't holding a silly camera.
By the time we got back down, Katja and I both had pretty wicked ice beards as you can plainly see. You can probably also see that Katja is recovering well and healing from her encounter with a gun earlier this year. I think she might have some permenant bald spots under her neck from the scars. Hopefully her fur will grow back and cover that so that it doesn't get frost bitten.
Speaking of frost bite, I'm not sure if we will get out today or tomorrow for that matter. The storms are really cranking right now and the drift is growing up to my window sill in my kitchen. It's goggle weather outside right now and since Katja doesn't have goggles, she prefers short trips outside to go to the bathroom and that's about it. Yeah, I know. She is a fair weather dog. I'm trying to toughen her up though.
Anyway, thanks for staying tuned. Until next time,
Happy trails!

Dirk and Katja

Skijoring with Katja

2008-01-13T17:34:00.000-08:00

Hi all,
Welcome back! Since my return on Jan. 4th, Katja and I have been tearing up the frozen tundra with the skis. It has been a little shocking to readjust to the harsh climate of the region, but we are managing pretty well. Here is a little video to prove it. Enjoy!

Frozen Tundra Rides

2007-12-15T22:26:00.000-08:00

So the temps have been in the teens and single digits bringing everything to a very solid state. We haven't seen much precipitation however, which means that is perfect riding weather. I have tried to take advantage of this situation as much as possible by charging up my head light and getting out everyday for the past 5 days in a row. Katja hasn't had any objections.

Here are some pics of our latest ride. Might I add that even though the studded ice tires are an improvement for riding in these conditions, it is still pretty terrifying to go screaming across sheets of ice at 15 - 20 mph. This picture is the piled up ice chunks at the mouth of the Alaqucak River. It was the first time I had been out to the mouth all fall. It's amazing how much easier it is to travel over frozen tundra than soggy, marshy, boggy tundra.

The terrain out here is pretty ...... uneven to say the least. Occasionally I have to break trail over fresh tundra to get where I need to go. This is what typical frozen tundra looks like.

The bay is almost frozen, but it is at it's most dangerous time. One of my main concerns is keeping Katja off the ice, so that she doesn't fall through. This trail followed the coast gave us a nice view of the frozen coastline.

Here are some pics of the trail going up the hill. I usually always pass some snow machines going up or down the hill, which are usually accompanied by strange looks. This is Katja's favorite ride, because she gets to race me back down the hill after we climb it. She really becomes quite a handfull when she decides I'm going too slow. She begins barking, growling, running in circles, and occasionally nipping or clawing my legs to get me moving faster. Even on the downhills, I can't go fast enough. On conditions like these, I don't want to go fast enough.

I'm sure that when I return from Christmas, there will be too much snow for riding outside on the hill. Katja will hopefully be ready to don her skijoring harness again.

Until next time, I thank you for reading and wish you a very happy holiday season.

Dirk

Staying true to the blog

2007-12-09T23:52:00.000-08:00

I realize that the title of my blog is “Teaching in Toksook”, however I don’t really talk about my teaching that much. It’s not that I am embarrassed about my pursuit of becoming an effective teacher, it’s just that I find more creative energy after a hard days work, thinking about recreational pursuits instead.

Anyway, I thought I would tell a quick story about an experience that my class shared. We were playing a game, similar to Taboo, to reinforce vocabulary. One student stands at the front of class with a small stack of index cards, each one with a vocab word on it that only the student can see. The student can say anything they want, except the word on the card, in order to get another student in the class to guess the word on the index card. I kind of stand off to the side in case students need a little hint of a clue to give the class. Some of the words can be difficult for students to understand well enough to give decent clues. On this day, the student turned to the first index card. The word was “plural.” A giant smile grew on her face and I could tell that she knew what the word meant and was about to give an excellent clue. She opened her mouth and very confidently, yelled “Kittens!” There was a brief silence and then I immediately started to convulse with laughter. This was soon followed by the rest of class, as well as the student herself. I think that everyone realized that there were many words she could have chosen, but she picked something very cute, girly, and completely random. I still smile when I think of that moment and occasionally I remind her of that humble moment. She still laughs about it as well. I guess you had to be there.

More pictures of winter fun

2007-12-09T23:37:00.000-08:00

Here are some more pictures of Katja and I skijoring. Our friends Kevin and Foster were out with us and snapped a couple of photos while taking a short break.

Here are some more random photos of Katja playing with her toys. Personally I do not like staging photos and prefer more of a candid style of photography, so I’m thankful that my camera was close by and that Katja didn’t jump up to see what I was looking at.

Dec. 1st in Alaska and no snow???

2007-12-09T23:17:00.000-08:00

Yes, it’s true. The ground wasn’t even frozen on Dec. 1st due to a strange warm spell that hit the SouthWest region of Alaska. Strong winds from the south, gusting sometimes up to 70 knots hit Toksook Bay and other parts of the region for a period of 3 – 4 days and melted almost everything, minus a few patches of really deep snow in the valleys. This also meant that the mud returned for a short time as well. Everything was pretty soggy and muddy for a couple of days. I was tired of mud back in September, so this was particularly hard for me to take. Katja needed her paws wiped before entering the house again. That is a drag for both of us.

But it is Alaska and Old Man Winter couldn’t bear to see one of his favorite parts of the winter world bare of snow. On Dec. 1st, Old Man Winter took a deep breath, the winds switched to the North, and the temperature dropped form 37 degrees to 15 degrees in about 5 hours. You could almost see the thermometer moving.

On Sunday, the 2nd, I did manage to get out on the Mtn. Bike again and ride a circuit trail that I had been meaning to all fall. The ground was frozen pretty good, but large puddles were still unpredictable and often I broke through. A couple of times, I got into really soft and watery tundra and had to dismount in 12 inches or more of water. Once I even buried my front wheel up to the axle. Should have gotten a picture of that, but I forgot in the amazement that I didn’t go for a mud swim. Katja and I had a blast though. We didn’t see any fox, which was probably disappointing for her, but good for me, because I didn’t want Katja going after wild animals that could bite back. I didn’t break my bike. I didn’t break my person, although I came close a couple of times. We didn’t freeze or get lost. All in all, it was a good trip.

The temps haven’t been above 30 degrees since then and hopefully it will stay that way until late March. Okay, I’ll take a couple of days at 35 degrees. I was hoping that the bay would freeze and I would be able to start ice fishing before Christmas, but alas, I will have to wait until I return.

Two and a half weeks until I return to Maryland. I hear that it’s been snowing in that part of the world as well. It’s funny, I really like living in the snowy parts of the world. I hope to see you in the snow.

Dirk

Fun with skis and dogs

2007-11-19T19:18:00.000-08:00

So I’ve decided to hold off on buying the fat tired bike for the time being. Maybe next year, if there is a next year. Who knows. Since I have a dog that loves to pull me around whenever we go on walks, I figured I would invest in a toy that both of us could enjoy.

So, I recently purchased equipment for skijoring. The set up is pretty simple. Dog harness with crisscrossed weave across the back and loops at the back for hooking in the tow line. The tow line has elastic in parts in it to help absorb some of the shock of your dog taking off suddenly. It stretches out about 15 feet ahead of the skier. The belt the skier wears is padded in the back, has two loops for your legs (almost like a climbing harness), and has an elastic “V” set up in the front much like water skiing. The belt also has a quick release halyard in case the skier falls and has to release the dog quickly. The halyard attaches to one end of the tow line and the other end of the tow line attaches to the back of the dog harness. The only thing left is get some chump with x-country skis, minimal coordination, and the willingness to try anything once, hook him up to the dog, sit back and enjoy some comic relief. It works with biking, roller blading, and running as well, but I haven’t tried any of that yet.

The comic relief only happened the first couple of times, although, I’m sure there will be more comedy acts farther down the road. As any dog owner knows, you never know what your dog might do or when he/she will do it. Like the time Katja pushed the door shut behind me when I stepped outside for a second. The door was locked and where would you guess the keys were? Inside, of course. That was a minor inconvenience.

Anyway, back to skijoring. Today, Katja and I went out for about an hour and a half. There is barely enough snow to really ski the roads without running into bare patches wind swept of snow. Eventually we got a snow machine track and Katja needed minimal directions from there. She is an incredible puller and can follow a trail very naturally with little distractions. We followed the snow machine trail east towards Tununak (about 7 miles away). You can probably look it up on Google Earth. The trail wasn’t very established, yet but it was sufficient for us. Later in the year, it should be very established and allow a skier or possibly biker to travel all the way fairly easily. We got about 3 miles away from Tununak before we turned around and followed our tracks back to Toksook.

When we got back, Katja was ready to go again. I was ready for a serious nap and many carbs to replenish my energy supply. It was the most successful outing we have had so far with the skis. Katja is really getting a grip on the commands. “Wait,” means just stand or sit there. “Line out” means put some tension on the tow line. “Let’s Go!!!” means take off. “Gee” means turn right, “Haw” means turn left. “Easy” means slow it down and “Whoa” means stop. That’s pretty much it. The problem is half the time, I forget the stupid commands and Katja is left standing there looking at me, probably thinking to herself, “What is his problem?” Oh well, I’ll get better with practice. Katja is very patient with me.

I hope that many of you are enjoying the wintertime as much as Katja and I are here in Toksook Bay, Alaska.

Thanks for reading,

Dirk

Winter is here

2007-10-22T12:51:00.000-07:00

Well, we have had snow for over a week now and it doesn’t feel like it is going to melt anytime soon. I just came in from walking the dog and it’s a crisp 20 degrees F. at the most. Last weekend I took my bike out for my first winter ride of the season. This is probably my favorite time of the year, not just because of October and Halloween, but the ground is now frozen most of the time and the snow is starting to appear. It’s a perfect time to ride the bike.
The one downer here is the wind in the winter time. It is unrelenting and brings the temps down another 10 – 20 degrees F. It also drifts snow so that once in a while, the bike gets a little bogged down.
This weekend in Bethel though, I got a chance to ride one of the infamous Surley Pugsly bikes. What a winter biking dream machine. Four inch wide tires, no derailleurs, cables, shifters, or other moving parts. Just one gear, two wheels, a light, stiff steel frame and a monster truck mentality. It didn’t take me long to start trying to justify me owning one right away. The man that owned the bikes is one, Martin Leonard. He teaches at the university and is an outdoor enthusiast, like myself. Martin takes it to the extreme by doing Mtn. Bike and sea kayak expeditions here in Southwest Alaska…..in the winter. Anyway, his bikes were a real hoot to ride and it made me want really bad.
I don’t think that I’ll be purchasing a new Pugsly this year, but it may have to happen if I’m here another year or more. We shall see. In the mean time, I will have to equip my 1991 Specialized Stumpjumper Epic with studded snow tires and some special grease that won’t freeze up in the extreme temps here in Toksook Bay. Somehow I will manage to get by.

The important thing is that Katja and I are having a blast in the snow. I feel for all those that are still feeling the hot humidity on the east coast. Come visit for a little taste of winter. I'll let you walk my dog at 6:30 in the morning when it's 15 degrees out.

See ya soon,
Dirk

Umkumiut - part duex

2007-10-11T18:01:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, I ran back to the smalling village of Umkumiut with Katja. This time, I brought a camera and took some photos along the way and of the village itself. The weather was beautiful on this day and the wind was a little calmer. The tide, however, was not as low, so I had to keep the pace up so that I didn't get stuck on one of the points.

As you can see the coast in parts isn't so nice and sandy. Some parts are actually rougher than this, so it's good to slow down a little in order to not sprain an ankle or just break your leg in two. Katja is good about taking her time and sometimes she is actually being more cautious than I. This particular point is one that is impassable at higher tides.

Along the way there are also little streams that trickle out of the hills. Some of them braid out into minuature deltas as they enter the sea and this one had a small school of sea stars scattered around on the beach. Watch your step.

Along the way, there were many skeletons that Katja loved to sniff and puruse.

Skeletons of all kinds. I think this was a Ski - Doo 550x.

The actual village of Umkumiut is not inhabited all year round and recently is barely used at all. The highschool does a 3 - day overnight there at the beginning of the year for all high school students. There are some families that have homes there and stay there for part of the summer. I took a peek in some of the windows and saw food scraps spread out on tables and some food wrappers still on the floor. The homes are very basic: kitchen, table, a few chairs, wood stove, and beds. I don't think there is running water, but some homes have electricity and heat.

This path acts as main street through Umkumiut. There are also many paths that connect to the beach where fishing boats are stored.

It is so mind boggling to think that people actually stayed out here for months at a time long ago. As I walked around, I took way more photos than I could ever put into a blog posting. And as luck would have it, when I made the return run back to Toksook, I had to wade through the water around those points because the tide had already covered the rocks that I ran across on the way out. It was worth getting a little wet and the wade only added to the whole experience.

This is the view you get as you approach the village from Toksook. The cliffs behind are very rugged and the coastline on past Umkumiut is very steep and unforgiving.

Well, it's not exactly a place that you would make reservations to see, but if you ever get to the west coast of Nelson Island, I strongly suggest that you check it out.

Thanks for reading.

Dirk

2007-09-27T13:15:00.000-07:00

Trip to Umqumiut

I got home from work absolutely exhausted today. I let Katja out and them we laid on the couch where I tried to get a quick power nap. Katja had other plans however. It only took about 90 seconds before she was at my face licking and nudging me awake. I rose and put on my light rain gear and running shoes and we headed to the beach. I didn't think of bringing my camera, because I wasn't aware of the adventure that I was about to embark on. I'll try to get some pictures some other time. Upon arriving at the beach, I noticed that the tide was really out. Normally, I can only run up the coast around a couple of points (about 1 1/2 miles) because the high water, but today I decided to see how far I could go. I was filled with excitement as I rounded the farthest point I had been to since. I skipped over the rock strewn sections of beach and around the rockweed until I found smoother beach and headed to the next point. Eventually, I rounded a point and saw small buildings in the distance. Again, I was filled with new energy despite the almost constant head wind that I was bucking the whole way.
The beach leading to Umkumiut, the small fish camp just south of Toksook, was almost stone free. We continued to pushed the wind, but it didn’t bother me. I almost decided to turn around once I was in sight of the village, but my sense of adventure urged for onward. As I ran along the village, I passed fish drying racks, small smoke houses, and slightly larger houses. Only a couple houses, out of the 15 total, had heaters or electricity. We made it to the other end of the village and stood up on some boulders to celebrate our arrival.
Before we turned back, I decided to find a nice skipping rock to bounce of the breaking waves that hit the coast. Katja had wandered out in the smaller waves and got a little taste of salt water. As I skipped my rock, Katja followed it out into deeper water. Pretty soon after that, she took a five foot breaker right on top of the head, which I’m sure surprised the shit out of her. I just about fell over laughing as she bounded out of the water seemingly on her hind legs trying to get her head as high as possible. After we recovered, we let the strong wind push us back to Toksook. With the tide coming in, I had to pick it up and the tail wind helped a lot. I still had to play spider man a couple of times and race some small breakers into the high spots on the cliffs. Katja just splashed through the shin deep water with out regard.
We eventually made it back to the house, worn out but wearing smiles. Once again, I am thankful to have a companion to get me off my ass and outside exercising. As we ran the smooth section of beach from Umqumiut, Katja found a burst of energy and started running circles, literally circles around me. It was fun watching her race in circles and then turn and scream down the beach at full tilt. By the end of the run, we were side by side and sometimes Katja was trailing me, which means she had a good workout. It was the perfect way to end the day.

Visions of Berry Fest

2007-09-20T17:37:00.000-07:00

Although it's been over a week ago, I thought I would give you a few highlights of the Blackberry festival that occured here in Toksook this year. I actually can't give you highlights that occured in the village, just highlights of my weekend in particular.

Thanks to having a dog now, I have been forcing myself outside more often to explore and exercise my furry ball of energy. I've been hiking up the hill more times than I can count and recently been exploring more areas off the beaten path. I've been amazed at the number of berry patches that I have discovered by walking off the trail system. I have over a gallon of blueberries frozen in my freezer this year and last year I had less than a quart.

It's also been a great year for cranberries and red berries. The cranberries are darker red and the red berries are, of course, bright red. I haven't tried the red berries yet, but supposedly you can eat them.

And of course, you can't mistake these for berries. I haven't seen a live Musk Ox in the wild yet, but they leave signs all around the island. My 4th grade friend Coby said that he saw some just over the hill a couple of weeks ago. He's such a lier. Can you tell I'm jealous?

This picture is actually taken just a couple of days ago and long after blackberry fest. This is my friend Erin from Oscarville with her little dog, Macey and Coby, the 4th grader, giving Katja a little hug. Judging from the picture, I think that Coby will make an excellent dog sitter some day.

Well, that is all for now. I hope this doesn't seem like a desperate and random post. Stay healthy and live it up!

Dirk

My humble abode

2007-09-07T18:46:00.001-07:00

Well, many of you are probably wondering what my home life is like up here in the most rural setting I've ever lived in. So I've finally gotten around to taking some pictures of my most humble abode. This building actually houses my boss/principal and family on the left side and me and Katja live on the right side. Yes, the walls are thin. As you can see, I also have a lawn, if you want to call it that. The landlord doesn't make me mow, which is fine by me. The big black drum outside is my oil tank for my heater. I have a board walk that goes right up to my front door which is kind of nice. Step off the board walk and you will most likely be in mud. Supposedly there is a small river that flows under my house when it rains alot, which it does because I live on the west coast of Alaska.

The house is quite a bit smaller than my old home. It is also quite a bit more rustic and closer to the center of the village. I did have a little fly problem, but that is slowly being taken care of with the coming of colder weather and my dog is a master fly catcher, although she leaves dead fly carcasses scattered around the floor. Good dog! Living closer to the center of "town" poses another problem that I didn't have last year. I get a lot of visitors. I think this is mostly due to my proximity to other families and their kids and also that Katja is such a friendly and sociable dog, kids just love her. I guess that isn't a bad thing. Almost everyone knows her name by now, so I just have to ask kids to hold her leash while I duck into the school quickly for something or they can tell me which way she ran off towards if she sneaks out of my sight. I like kids and I like my job, but usually, whatever you do for work is the last thing you feel like doing when you're not at work. (a.k.a. entertain kids) I rarely invite kids in for visits, but they are always asking to come in. Sometimes you just gotta be stern.

Anyway, back to the house. It's cozy for Katja and me. It does have lots of storage space, which is nice because I'm such a gear head. I don't have a real good place for a TV/VCR and such besides my bedroom, but I can drag the computer out to the living room to watch movies with Katja.

I have three windows in the house, but the screens are all torn out. Luckily there aren't bad mosquitos in town. Actually, I haven't seen any in or around my house despite the grass/swamp outside.

I am using every square inch of my house. One nice thing about the size is that it will heat up quickly, which I will be doing in another few weeks. I haven't turned on my heat at all yet, but it is noticably colder in the morning when I wake up and Katja is almost always cuddled in her crate instead of sprawled out on the floor next to my bed.

I have recently purchased some hardware to make Katja a little tether outside so that she can spend time outside when I am at work. Hopefully she will grow used to it quickly. Here you can see her little dog house, which my friend Brett left for me. She is a little co-dependent yet, so we will see if she tries to break her neck to get off the tether or not. She already climbs right into the dog house without hesitation. We will have to work up to spending long periods of time left alone outside.

That is pretty much it though. So when you are kicked back on your couch with an ice cold beverage of your choice, watching the football game on your wide screen, listening to the fire in the wood stove crackle in the background, just think of me in my humble abode and remember, I live in Alaska.

Thanks for reading.
Dirk

Back in the village

2007-08-16T21:55:00.000-07:00

Well once again, I had written out an elaborate summary of my summer travels, my return to Alaska, and finally my return to Toksook Bay, but the internet went down just as I was posting it and it never made it. So now, I will try to pick my brain from two days ago, when I wrote it, and come up with something similar and likewise, worth reading.

Indeed, I am back in Toksook Bay, work has started, and my neck already hurts. I arrived in Bethel on Aug. 1st after a lovely stay with some friends in Anchorage. Bethel involved 10 days of training and a couple of down days that I got to sit around and watch movies in the Bed and Breakfast/hostel that I was staying in.

Some rather big news involves a new female companion that met while staying in Bethel. She is pretty young, very energetic and outdoorsy, a great cuddle bug, and absolutely beautiful. She listens to almost everything I say, she is gets along great with everyone in the village. Yes, Katja, my new friend, moved to Toksook with me. The best part is that she is also house broken, has had all her shots, and responds well to a shock collar. Some of you might be thinking that I went ahead with the mail order bride from Russia. Sorry to disappoint you. Indeed, she is a very athletic Husky/Yellow Lab mix. She weighs about 35 - 40 pounds and is roughly between one and a half to two years old. She is the perfect dog for me right now.

I also had to move to another house. We received two new teachers from Michigan, Jimmy and Kerri Dunn. They are enjoying the comforts of my old house and I get to move in next to the Principal and his family. His wife is the high school science teacher. Katja seems to enjoy the house. Even more, Katja enjoys long jaunts out on the tundra, eating berries, tripping over tussocks, and stretching her legs. She is incredibly fast and loves to chase birds. Sometimes I will look down for 5 seconds and look up to find that she is completely over the next hill hauling tail after some bird. She comes back eventually, but the shock collar helps bring her back a little faster. Just so you know, the collar has a tone that reminds her. If she doesn't respond to the tone after I call her, then I give her a gentle buzz.

Well, speaking of Katja. I better see how she is doing in the house alone. Thanks for not giving up on me and my blog. More to come soon. Stay tuned.

Dirk

Breaking the Ice

2007-05-11T18:00:00.000-07:00

The weather has been warming up some recently and it's actually been in the high 40's and low 50's lately. Still it takes a long time for 5 - 6 feet of ice to melt and clear out of the bay. Well this week, the firm ice pack that I so comfortably rode my bike on to go ice fishing, finally broke up and started clearing out of the bay. I didn't realize how much I missed open water until I saw the frigid blue water and the ripping outgoing tide pushing all the mini icebergs out to sea.

Jamie and I hiked up to an overlook where we could see out to the mouth of the bay as well as the ice still packed pretty tightly around the head of the bay. It was about 45 degrees and around 10 pm when these pictures were taken.

Many of the men and boys have been going out seal hunting for the past couple of weeks. Students actually get excused absences, called traditional leave, to go out and seal hunt to contribute towards part of their subsistence lifestyle. Apparently there is the possibility of seeing a seal or beluga whale in the small bay during this time of year as well. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

It is so nice to see water again!

This picture has an old cemetary from the village in the fore ground with one of the wind powered generators in the back ground. Kind of mixing a little old with the new. Apparently there are human skulls that can be seen in this graveyard, but I didn't want to go digging to find them. I was worried about being haunted just for taking this picture.

This is a picture of fish drying racks that they make to hang their herring, Salmon, and other fish from to dry them for later use. I recently had a chance to try some cooked dried herring and it was the strongest fishy tasting fish I have ever eaten. I couldn't even finish it, but I ate enough to let people know that I really tried to like it.

Here is Jamie, enjoying a cool north wind on top of the bluff just outside of town.

Well, that is all for now. I have almost survived my first year of teaching out here. I have only 5 more days of teaching to go. It's definitely been a challenging year for me, but I have also had many rewards that have helped me to decide to teach here next year as well.

I'm excited to see many friends down in the lower 48 over the summer.
Thanks for reading.
Dirk

The Prom

2007-05-11T17:45:00.000-07:00

You would not have know that you were in a remote fishing village in Western Alaska if you were at the Nelson Island High School prom last week. Of course once you stepped outside the gym, you would slapped back to reality pretty quickly.

Our prom was held for all students in grades 7 - 12. About 65 people attended, which included a lot of people from other villages. For many people, it became a reunion of familiar faces that used to attend Nelson Island School and other people that were from the community.

The students were totally decked out from head to toe. Gents had all their bling bling out on display with a nice button down shirt or vest. A couple of guys even sported a penguin suit. The girls were all dressed up as well, wearing their fancy and elegant dresses.

Jamie and I attended even though I was feeling very sick that day and was tempted to stay home, but I caught a quick 3 hour nap and popped a couple of Alkaseltzer Cold Plus tablets and was good to go until about 2 am. After everyone left, I hung out with the DJ and the two site administrators for some good laughs about how everyone in the village drinks and that if anyone should be allowed to drink, it should be the teachers. That day is a tiny speck far, far down the road of possibilities. Anyway, a good time was had by all.

Thanks for reading,
Dirk

Stepping Out

2007-04-15T13:52:00.000-07:00

I decided that this weekend I was going to get my work finished early so that I may enjoy some other more time consuming endeavors. Therefore, I packed up my backpack and headed out for just an overnight. The first trick I had to figure out was how to sneak out of the village without being seen. That proved easier than anticipated. Even the group of kids playing basketball as I passed the outside court, didn't even acknowledge my presence. I just didn't want any kids trying to track me down with snow machines or 4 wheelers to play late night pranks.

I hiked around our back yard mountain ridge to be shielded from the bitter North wind already starting to pick up. My goal was to get away from the village view point, so that I truly felt alone and away from things. Finally I found a camping spot, that wasn't too windy, in the bottom of a huge bowl of mountains that surround me from the north. My second, more challenging obstacle, was trying to get my tent stakes into the frozen tundra. After about 2 - 3 attempts, I quickly revised my plan and moved to a patch of packed snow.

After my tent stabilized as much as possible, using multiple stakes in some corners, I hiked up towards the north ridge to get a better view of the landscape before the slowly approaching darkness overtook the day. The 20 - 30 mile per hour winds brought the overall temperature to about 12 - 15 degrees F. During the night, as the wind picked up, I thought that my tent might blow away with me inside it. With this a forboding possibility, another thought struck my mind. Surviving a storm! Storms out here are no joke. Winds of 50 - 70 miles an hour that could be driving snow, bring the temps down incredibly fast. You can find yourself in -20 degree temps or colder in no time at all. With this thought in mind, I considered peeing into a bottle so that I could drink my urine to stay warm if necessary. In the end, I opted not to.

Morning came and I only lost about 1 hour of sleep to my troubled thoughts of having to chase all my gear across the tundra in the strong winds. Packing up and not losing any gear in the morning wind required much focus and planning. Gear caught by the wind would likely never be seen again. Eventually I got packed up and started my journey back to the village, this time, up and over some of the hills to visit one of my favorite places...the thumb. Climbing the steep back sides of the hills, still covered with much snow, made me wish I had a snow board...and a chair lift of course.

I eventually made it back to my humble abode, unpacked my gear to dry, and fixed myself a hot breakfast. I hope you enjoyed my little outing as much as I did. It felt good to get out of town and away from phones and the rest of village life. Like disappearing for a short time.

Thanks for reading,
Dirk

Winter basketball

2007-04-07T18:23:00.000-07:00

Well, the temperatures have finally cleared 0 degrees farenheit for more than a week and the kids are really getting shifty in their seats. To add to the high ampage of energy building in the early teenage bodies, they had to sit still and quiet for most of this week and take their SBA's (student based assessment tests). Therefore, when the idea of going outside to play basketball entered my mind, there was really no question. "All right kids, grab your coats!"

The outside basketball court isn't your traditional court to begin with. It is basically a giant deck with a basketball hoop at either end and a low wooden bench on one side. Now add about 2 feet of snow and you have yourself a real interesting basketball game.

Basically, it is just shoot around for about 20 minutes, but the kids come up with interesting games and rules that give the game an additional twist and make it more fun.

I like these activities, because it allows the kids to get rid of a little energy before I have to make them sit and listen for another two hours through Geography and Science.

The snow is starting to melt quickly, but I'm told that there will still be snow around in late May when I leave to fly home. I'm also told that the snow machines stay out until then as well. I've already seen people driving snow machines around on the dirt and mud. "We don't need no stinkin' snow"

On a different note, I'm looking forward to getting a short, nearby camping experience in before I fly home. Getting away from this developing country we call Toksook Bay and getting back to the wild Alaska that people say still exists. That may be my next blog entry. Stay tuned!

Dirk

NYO Toksook Invitational

2007-03-26T19:34:00.000-07:00

I know that I made a weak attempt to explain the Native Youth Olympics (NYO) earlier on in my blogging history, but I have more pictures which will hopefully shed some light on these unique cultural games. Last weekend we had 12 schools from the Lower Kuskokwim School District visit Toksook for this invitational meet. That's about an extra 120 students in the school than we are used to. Yikes!!!
The meet started off on Friday afternoon with the Kneel Jump. Basically athletes kneel at the line, similar to standing broad jump, and then try to jump forward off their knees as far as they can, without falling backwards. Sorry no pictures of this. The next event was the wrist carry. This event looks even more painful than the kneel jump, if you can imagine that. Athletes wrap their wrist over a thick dowel rod. Then they grab their forarm below the wrist and lift their entire body off the ground while two other students, any would be volunteer, carry them down to the other side of the gym and back again, or as long as the athletes can hang on. It just doesn't look enjoyable.
The next few events are difficult to get good pictures for, especially with my picture quality challenged camera. The two foot high kick (kick a ball or small stuffed animal skin about the size of a grapefruit suspended in the air with two feet and land on two feet again), the one foot high kick (kick a suspended ball with one foot and land on that same foot again), the toe kick, and the Alaskan High Kick. These last two events are other ones that just look difficult and dangerous. Let's start with toe kick. Athletes stand behind a line (standing broad jump). There is a dowel rod lying on the floor in front of them, maybe 24 inches to 80 inches. They have to jump out and kick the dowel rod, just with their toes, so that the stick rolls straight back and the athlete still lands with both of their feet together. Look at the picture on the right and you can see a blur of a jumper with toes just touching the stick. If an athlete jumps successfully, the stick gets moved farther out. Our state champion can toe kick over 80 inches.

The next event is the Alaskan High Kick. This is an event that you might have some trouble with the first time. Athletes have to kick a stuffed animal skin (ball) suspended at a certain height while holding a foot with one hand and using the other hand to elevate the body. I guess a picture may help with this image. This picture of Simeon here is showing winning technique. Simeon is an 8th grader that took first in the high school competition. His technique and ability is pretty amazing. If athletes are successful at kick the ball, they still have to land on the foot they kicked with and not fall over.

Now that brings us to one hand reach. One hand reach is similar to Alaskan High Kick in a couple of ways. One reason is that you have to support yourself on one hand and you can't fall over. The main difference is that you have to reach for the suspended stuffed animal skin (ball) with the other hand instead of a foot. It requires the most balance and concentration, I think. This student from the village of Oscarville was the winner by a long shot. She had great technique and was fun to watch.

Other events at the games were the Seal hop, Eskimo stick pull, and the Indian stick pull. The seal hop is another entertaining and torturous event that most people would not even want to try. This event is unique because athletes actually compete at the same time. Its a race of endurance. Athletes have to start behind a line in the down position of the push up position with their chest just above the ground. While staying the down position, they have to use their arms and toes to hop forward repeatedly until they collapse form exhaustion. The whole time athletes are hopping, their backs have to be straight and their hips and but have to stay even with their shoulders. They guys have to hop with their first knuckles curled under their hands where the ladies get to hop on their full palms. I've tried it and it is tiring. It also causes blisters and raw skin on your knuckles, but it is a great workout. The two stick pull events are not quite so interesting to watch, but the idea is still very unique. Here is my friend Deanna with an already greased up stick that is used for the Indian Stick Pull. She got to make sure the stick had enough grease on it and I got to judge who won each match. It's a dirty job, but somebody has got to do it. Thanks Deanna!

Well, This is probably one of the longest blogs I've posted. I hope you have enjoyed following me through an NYO meet. It' s a spectacle to watch, but it is taken very seriously up here. Each event is based on a specific tradition from their cultural history, many of which I don't understand or haven't learned about yet. I don't think that any of these events will ever make it to the World Olympics, but then again, have you ever watched curling?

Thanks for reading,
Dirk

Eternal Johnny Cash

2007-03-22T09:12:00.000-07:00

So the most recent exciting event that I took part in was the Nelson Island High School talent show. This is the kind of event where all the students are embarassed to perform so they don't sign up, but they all love to watch people. Here in lies the problem. With no one signed up, there is nothing to watch. A couple of students get the picture, so they eventually sign up for something. There were quite a few adults that signed. I just signed up in case there weren't enough acts to get the talent show going in the first place.

There were a couple of small dance groups (Yup'ik dance that is). A couple of parents and other staff members did a little skit. One teacher played some Beethoven on his cheeks (not butt cheeks) and then played his harmonica while his Australian Shepherd dog howled with distaste.

And yes, I played some guitar. And what other inspiration should I have other than Johnny Cash, so I came out strong with a little Folsom Prison Blues. I've sang it enough in Kareoke competitions and I've been practicing it on guitar, so I figured I could hold my own.

Well, I finished the intro and started stumming and all of the sudden all the young students and some adults in the bleachers started clapping, which kind of threw me off at first, but I went with it. I gotta admit, that the guitar solo didn't go quite so smoothly and some students were able to recognize that I kind of screwed it up a little. Most people thought it was great though. Well, after the show was over, TJ (our principal) talked with the judges and got up to hand out the prize money. Third place got $25, second place got $50, and first place walked away with $100 cash. I knew that people really enjoy Johnny Cash in this region of Alaska, but I didn't expect to walk away with Benjamin Franklin in my pocket.

Some of the student acts were really funny and good, but apparently Johnny took the show. TJ admited that I kind of stole the show as well, which was a good thing. Anyway, the man in black isn't dead in Toksook Bay by any means. I don't remember Johnny having to look directly at his strings when he was playing though. Students are still coming up to me and calling me Johnny Cash, which I humbly admit that I'm just an imposter. They still enjoy it.

Until the next big adventure....
Thanks for reading,
Dirk

Yup'ik Dance Festival

2007-03-18T19:45:00.000-07:00

There are many advantages to living and teaching in Toksook Bay. It is a beautiful area, but it is also one of the largest villages in the Yukon - Kuskokwim Delta, so if there are any large cultural events, they are likely to happen in Toksook. In the fall there is the Blackberry Festival and in the spring there is the Yup'ik Dance Festival. Now it doesn't compare to the Portland Beer Festival or other large events down in the lower 48, but remember where I am. I live in the most rural part of the United States, so when 300 - 350 people from other villages come to celebrate Yup'ik Dancing, it is a huge ordeal. The total population of Toksook is only 600 people, so imagine Portland increasing its population by 50 % for a big event.
There were about 6 - 8 villages that came to celebrate, visit friends, and dance for three days. Walking up to the highschool the first sign that tells you something is going on is about 30 - 40 snow machines (mobiles) parked outside the school in a pretty free frawl manner. All the people that come to Toksook usually have friends or family they stay with. The village also pulls together an incredible amount of merchandise and supplies that are given to the visiting dancers on the last day of the festival.

There is everything from gas cans, coolers, material for Qaspaqs (traditional woman's dress), animal pelts, food, and general supplies. Someone made a nice wooden sled to give away. Sleds are used kind of like a trailer that you pull behind your snow machine. There was even a nice wood stove that could be used inside a house or steam house.

The dancing is the main event though. People are dancing from about 1 - 2 pm until about 12 midnight every night. Yup'ik dancing is set up in a very specific and cultural format. Typically, the men are in the front, kneeling and the women stand in the back. The drummers are in the very back of the dance group. They are also singing the words to the song as well as keeping the beat with their drums. Generally a song will start out soft and quiet. Dancers will go through the motions rather lethargically. The drummers will either call out "Pumya", which means again, or they will just keep drumming and start the song over. Songs will usually be repeated about 3 - 6 times and each time, the drumming and singing gets louder. The dancers respond by becoming more active. Men bob up and down on their knees and women start really bending their knees with the rhythm. I saw one man getting into the beat so much that he was actually jumping into the air from his knees to the beat.

This man was the most animated dancer I have ever seen. He had the whole crowd laughing hysterically with his exagerated motions. He was incredibly athletic and amazing to watch.

Well, keep saving your money and maybe you can witness this incredible event yourself next year. Until then, stay tuned to dirksan for more updates from the frozen winter lands of Alaska.
Enjoy!

The coldest I've ever been

2007-03-11T14:12:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, Brett knocked on my door to show me his new dog sled. He has been working on building it for a few months now and finally got it finished. This sled has a lower center of gravity, so he is more willing to take passengers and not have to worry about tipping the sled. We also have three interns with us at the high school, so he had promised to take them out and the weather seemed to be clearing up this day, so he gave the green light. He asked me if I would come out and help him get the team set up and then I could go for a ride as well with one of the interns. He was only using six dogs, so he could take only two at a time in the sled.
It was pretty awesome learning how to hook the dogs up to the harnesses and keep them from fighting. Blue started in on Lupa almost right away and received a quick smack on the nose to get her straightened out. There is a big ice hook that is used to keep the front dogs from backing up or turning around and two ice hooks used behind the sled to keep the team from moving forward. Then a dog is hooked up in the first, second and third positions. Eventually the second dogs are hooked up next to their partners in the first, second, and third positions. Then two people climbed into the sled and hunkered down. When the first two left with Brett, the third intern and I went back into my house to get out of the wind and stay warm. After about 20 minutes, Brett came back and it was our turn.
The dogs just didn't want to go into the wind and it was starting to gust out of the north off and on. We let them take their own path for the most part, but eventually had to make them suck it up and go back straight into the wind to get home. That took forever. The dogs were not choosing the trail well at all and we almost flipped the sled on a little mound of ice. Well, eventually the north wind kicked up to about 40 miles an hour and kept at it for about an hour or two. We had a teacher intern with us also and once we got to within sight of another teacher's house, we just told her to get into that house quick. She had snow and ice all over her face. I continued with Brett to get the dog team back up to the kennel, but I didn't have goggles and my hands were freezing. Eventually, we made it back with Brett leading the dogs with the tether of the front two while I stood on the sled and held the brake so that the other dogs wouldn't get ahead of the two leaders and get all tangled up. After we stopped and got the dogs tied up, I headed back to check on our intern friend. When I got into the house, my hands began to swell and get sooooo painful that I became nauseated. I finally calmed down and was able to go back out. I think I got my first signs of frost nip (not bite) though. good experience, but I don't think I want to repeat it any time soon. Never leave home without your goggles, no matter how nice it seems outside.
Hope you are enjoying my adventures.
Dirk

Manaqing

2007-03-11T13:58:00.000-07:00

I finally got some pictures of manaqing (ice fishing) for all of you die hards out there that have the winter fishing blues. This is a student of mine (Timothy) who is using my manaq (ice fishing stick). Notice that Timothy is not wearing a hat. It was probably one of the nicest days out this winter. I actually rode my bike out on the frozen bay with all my fishing gear this day. Of course then all the kids that are out fishing want to take my bike for a ride. I got to barter a spin on my bike for a spin on a snow machine. Actually it also involved pulling a sled full of kids behind the snow machine. I had a pretty good day fishing this day. When I moved to this area of the bay where other people were fishing, I started out slow, but by the end of the day, I was catching two to three times more fish than anyone else. I attribute my success to one of my personally tied manaqing flies that I was using. I wonder how many fly tiers tie ice fishing flies. Maybe I've found my niche.
Here is a look at the number of fish that I ended up with just at this site. I gave all of this catch to my friend (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) Jamie who probably gave them to one of her relatives. All in all, I probably ended up with about 45 - 50 fish in a couple of hours.

It definitely gets cold standing out there, so you have to really really dress warm. Even though I was dressed warm, I found that I had to take a quick spin on my bike every once in a while to get my blood flowing again. The bike rides pretty well on the snow, but occasionally you get bogged down when your tires sink into a heavy drift that looks hard packed. I've come close to busting my keister on the ice too. Yikes!
Happy ice fishing everyone.

Dirk

Musk Ox Hunting

2007-03-11T13:18:00.000-07:00

Here in the village, people go fishing and hunting all the time, but certain events cause talk to sweep the town more quickly. One such event is when people come in with large game, such as a seal, walrus, moose, or musk ox. On this particularly day, Marty and Simeon, teachers at the school, returned from a musk ox hunting trip and both had made a kill. Simeon had already cleaned his and was returning home, but I got to check out Marty's kill and help with the process a little as well.
For those of you who have never physically seen a musk ox, myself included, they are a very unique animal. Moses Charles is a high school student that went out with Marty and Sim to get their musk ox. Here is he holding the head from Marty's Bull. This male probably stood about shoulder to shoulder with a adult person of average height. One amazing feature that I noticed right away was the amount of wool on the forehead of these animals. Marty said that he took two shots with his hand gun point blank into the animal's forehead and didn't phase the beast in the slightest. Their foreheads are almost solid bone, hence the saying, "dumb as an ox", plus the wool is about 3 - 4 inches thick. The animals skull is vertially bullet proof.
Marty finished skinning his musk ox and then cut off the back strap, the piece of meat that runs over top of the spine, and quarters from the shoulders and hips. It's probably enough meat to last through out the rest of the winter and maybe into next winter. Most people use the meat for either soup, stew, or perhaps steaks. I haven't eaten Musk Ox yet so you will have to wait for another blog entry.
Thanks,
Dirk

Still alive!!!

2007-03-06T18:49:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm still here and kicking! I won't tell it's been easy. I survived the harshest part of the winter. The short days where it was dark much more than it was light. The coldest days when it didn't get above 0 degrees F. And the windy and snowy days when my house sucked snow out of the sky like a giant brand new Hoover. This doesn't even show the worst of the snow that built up against my house. For a long time, my porch was permenantly dark because my windows were completely covered up by snow. That did make the skiing better.

This is a picture of my entrance way one morning before I went to school. It took me a good 20 minutes to get out of my house that morning.

This isn't even the hardest part of my life up here. Oh, those 7th graders are the true challenge up here at the end of the earth. I'm really learning a lot about myself working with this age group. I'm learning that consistency pays off and that you can never be too organized. I'm learning that a laugh can do a lot for me at the end of the day. I'm also learning that no matter how much it seems that some students do not want me up here and how beat down and drug out I feel at the end of some days, that there are still some students that make it all worth while. I try to hold on to those moments with all my will and strength. Still I want to reintroduce corporal punishment back into the school sometimes. Just kidding.

Anyway, it's been one of those days.
I'll be blogging more regularly again. Don't give up on my blog slackness.

Dirk

The Fish Bowl

2007-01-21T17:18:00.000-08:00

So it has been a long time since I have actually stood on a river with a fly rod and it seemed that I would not be able to fish again until June. I actually got a chance to do something that I previously had absolutely no interest in doing. It involves a shovel or auger, a wooden one inch dowel rod (about 2 feet long), 30 pound test line, a huge lead weight the size of a chihauhau, and a treble hook with some fish flesh as bait. Oh and lots of really warm clothing. Ice fishing is nothing like fly fishing at all, but it surprisingly has its own style and technique here in Bush Alaska.

I was skiing along the coast yesterday and saw some people out on the bay not too far away, ice fishing. I, being the curious and social person that I am, skied out to see what this Eskimo tradition and lifestyle is all about. One of the fisherman turned out to be an eighth grader that I know fairly well. He caught a couple of fish and then asked if I would like to try. I unclipped out of my skis, which probably removed that chance that I could have done something totally unique in the sport of fishing, fish with skis on, and took the stick he handed me. Basically, it is a dowel rod with line tied on the end and then wrapped around the end of the stick. Winding or unwinding line off the stick allows you to adjust the depth your bait sits in the water. You generally want your bait not more than 12 inches off the bottom, because the closer you get to the top, the colder the water is and the less fish you will find. On the other end of your line is a pretty big lead weight and a treble hook tied about 8 inches from the weight. The bait was a small piece of smelt (type of fish). You lower your line in the water until you find the bottom and then lift your stick about 6 to 12 inches. Occasionally you can gently raise your bait a little higher and then lower it back down. Eventually you should feel a little nibble and you just lift the stick to set the hook. Then you lift the stick above your head, grab low on the line, bring the stick back down below where you grabbed the line and lift under the line again. By pulling the line to the side with your hand and then lifting the line with the stick again, you should be able to bring your fish out of the hole in the ice and let it lie on the ice. Generally it is one quick motion and your fish is lying on the ice. Then with a quick tap on the head, you should be able to put the fish out of misery. Pull the hook out and drop it back in the water. This whole process can take about 10 seconds for some of the natives I have watched. Yeah, most of the time spent ice fishing is just ........ standing there, holding a 24 inch stick, and jerking it in the water everyonce in a while. I haven't seen too many women doing it. I guess it's a guy thing.

People can catch up to about 50 fish in a few hours this way. Most of the fish you catch are Tom Cod, which are only about 12 inches long. You can also catch smelt, which are generally used for more bait, but can be fried and are very tasty as well, according to some native friends I talked to. The fishing hole is only about a mile from my house, so it would be easy to ski to on my own. A lot of people travel about 20 minutes by snow machine to the Toksook River, which is near Night Mute (a neighboring village on Nelson Island about 20 miles southeast). Anyway, the Toksook River has lush fish, which are considerably larger (about 15 - 25 inches). I hope to travel there sometime and give that a try.

Make sure you bring some food, lots of hot coffee, and plenty of really warm clothes. Fishing license???? forget about it. I'm sure that ice fishing in Alaska is a very different experience from ice fishing on the great lakes somewhere. For one thing, fishing here is done on the bay, which due to the tides, develops cracks from the water swelling. Plus it is salt water, which does take a lot lower temperatures to freeze. Don't worry, it's cold enough up here.

Well, see you out on the ice.
Dirk

Frozen stone people

2007-01-17T19:00:00.000-08:00

So here is a picture of the top of the hill from my last skiing adventure. Again, there is absolutely no wind in this picture, which is very very rare. Still, if anyone is getting a little warm in the midst of the unseasonable weather we are having in the lower 48, just pull this picture up and you will hopefully start cooling down immediately.

The stone people, occupy the top of the mountain, supposedly where the little people live as well. If you recall from one of my earlier posts, the little people are tricky, thieving, little people that live in the cracks of the rocks and come out when it is dusk or dark. This time of the year, we didn't really have to worry about them. Hopefully they are deep in their little caves eating frozen seagulls or musk ox patties. This is just a close up of the stone people. The stone people were built by the earliest inhabitants of the area in order to help them herd Musk Ox. Apparently Musk Ox are not so smart and thought the stone structures were actually people and they ran away from them back towards the real people with guns. Silly Musk Ox. There were several students and teachers that left Toksook today in order to go to Chefornak to get their Musk Ox tags so they can hunt them this winter. Apparently there are only 35 tags available, so they have a drawing and you have to be there to get your tag. Otherwise you go Musk Oxless for the winter. My goal is to see one.......from pretty far away. They do charge and I'm not that fast on my skis.

Anyway, make sure you lock your doors at night and hide all your valuable possessions. There may be little people watching.

Talk to you soon,
Dirk

Ultimate Alaskan Rig

2007-01-17T18:51:00.000-08:00

For those of you who really like trucks.......check out this bad maama jaama. I don't think it would be road legal down in the lower 48. Thank goodness we have no roads up here. In most of alaska, you have to make your own.

This rig belongs to one of the construction crews here in the village. I could probably rent it for $100 an hour. They have driven this 20 miles over the frozen landscape to Night Mute.
Pretty wicked! See ya out on the Tundra, Dirk

Back Country Skiing

2007-01-17T18:26:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone. So I know it's been a while, but it's not because there is nothing going on up here, believe me. I just struggle with time and when the time is there, I struggle with finding the energy, but I know that I have a band of people eagerly waiting to hear my next adventure, struggle, experience, or conundrum up here in Alaska.

Well I went out skiing with Kevin, a friend of mine here in the village and his dog, Foster. It was a beautiful day and we skied up the snow machine trails to the top of the hill where the stone people or little people live. We got a nice view of Tununak on the other side of the hill and then headed back down on the back side of the mountain where there are not any snow machine trails, which means the snow is very inconsistent and difficult to ski. Picture a wind blown field with areas of ice, areas of 2 - 3 foot drifts of snow, the whole thing randomly dotted with chunks of ice to manuever around. It was a little sketchy to say the least. We made it down eventually and I only suffered a couple of bruises, including my ego, and some sore muscles. I almost bent one of my poles from falling on it so hard.

It was a great day on the mountain, very rare in deed. There was no wind blowing on the top, which is unheard of here in the village. Skiing along the coast is nice also. There is more protection from the wind and there is nice snow that sweeps over the bluff to climb and make a couple of turns on the way down. I did not have my camera with me for that trip, so you will just have to believe me that we came within about 70 feet of a red fox that was checking us out. Pretty amazing.

Thanks for reading.
Dirk

Tasting the night life

2006-12-15T15:49:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm sitting here in the school waiting to hear from our plane to see if they will fly in the current weather. I kind of feel like I'm in an airport. Most people leave from the school when they fly. My first flight was already canceled, so we are waiting for the next one. Might have to wait until tomorrow morning.

Last night I went out to look at the night sky and met up with my friend Brett (guy with the dog team). The Aurora Borealis was showing itself in the late night sky and Brett actually got some descent pictures of it. It was about 15 degrees outside, so I didn't stay outside too long in order to not freeze my keister.
The Aurora isn't usually very visible this far west, but we had a pretty good show last night. A few shooting stars as well, but we didn't get any pictures of those.

In case I don't get another posting up before christmas, I hope everyone has a fantastic holiday season and a wonderful new year. I'll be back in Toksook by Dec. 30th hopefully. Thanks to everyone for all the support you have given me through this first part of my 1st year. I think of you often.
Happy Holidays,
Dirk

sled dog pics

2006-12-10T17:34:00.000-08:00

Here are the pictures of my friend's dog sled team that I meant to attach to a previous posting. He has nine dogs total, but has only been running six of them for now. Brett has taken them out about three times now. The dogs love to run and it helps keep him sane.

It is a pretty expensive hobby, but it looks worth it. Brett usually draws a small crowd when he is hooking up the team. He usually is just trying to keep people from reving their snow machines around the dogs.

Here is a picture of my house. It might not look like much on the outside, but it is warm and spacious inside. The plumbing system however, has been a little bit of a nightmare. I recently had my water turned off again because we discovered a leak. Turning your water off in Alaska is a risky deal, because if your pipes freeze, you are looking at being without water until summer. You just can't thaw pipes in 0 degree weather.

Overall, it has been a great living space for me though. I have my mountain bike set up on the wind trainer in my bed room with my TV, so that I can watch classic cycling races while I ride. It's a little too snowy for biking outside right now. I'm told that the snow is going to be in six to seven foot drifts in front of my door. Nothing like a little manual labor to relieve some stress.

It's about time I get to experience a real winter though. I'm psyched! Willamette Valley, eat your heart out.

Dirk

Finding my ski legs

2006-12-10T17:16:00.000-08:00

Well, I have almost made it through the first part of year number 1 here in the village. I tell it hasn't been easy and sometimes I feel like it's my first week of work. This week should be a little lighter with Christmas celebrations going on in the school and all. Friday will include some movies and we have Santa's workshop on Thursday. I also get a break from the after school program this week, which is a huge relief.

I''ve been really enjoying my new x-country skis lately. I've been out three times in two weeks and look forward to many more adventures to come in the new year. Yesterday was absolutely beautiful in the morning with perfect snow, but I decided to get some work done before I played. By the time I got outside the weather had turned my beautiful day into a windy, frozen, low visibility, ominous day to be out of view from the village. People get lost in bad weather and literally disappear up here every year.

I didn't get lost though. I am still trying to master my downhill turns on x-country skis. The snow gets so inconsistent when the wind starts cranking at 20 - 30 mph and drifting snow in some places and uncovering ice in other places. Any secrets you may know, please email me your advice.

Hope everyone is doing well.
Dirk

snow machines and dog sleds

2006-12-03T13:50:00.000-08:00

Well, winter is officially here. Most of the four wheelers have been replaced with snow machines (mobiles). The snow machines are considerably louder and people drive them a lot faster. I'm not sure if there is a legal age for driving a snow machine, but it seems like it is around 7 or 8 years old here in the village. People go tearing up the hill with snow boards and sleds all day and most of the night, especially on the weekends.

I helped my friend Bret get his dogs hooked up for their first venture out in Toksook Bay this year. It was pretty awesome to watch his team of six take off across the tundra towards the frozen bay. Pictures coming soon!

After Bret took off with his dogs, I headed out for my first x-country ski venture in about six years. I was pretty psyched to be breaking trail across the Alaskan tundra to get back into my form, which is pretty sloppy. I only went about 1/3 of the way up the hill (please refer to previous blog postings and imagine snow everywhere), and I had a pretty good wipe out as I tried to negotiate the terrain coming back down.

Teaching is a constant struggle but going well in general. I'm looking forward to getting down in the lower 48 for a couple of weeks. It doesn't seem like I've been up here for 4 months already. The year is about 1/2 over. I hope everyone is doing well and enjoying their winter.

Dirk

Home visit PTC

2006-11-03T18:28:00.000-08:00

I thought I might as well make up for slacking on the blog, by making two entries in one night. So this was a big first for me too. We recently had parent teacher conferences (PTC) this past week and I had some students that weren't able to make it, so I had to reschedule. One parent had another obligation, butchering a seal, so I decided to stop by the house for a visit and possibly take care of the conference at the same time.

I walked into the house and sure enough there was a dead harbor seal lying on the kitchen floor. Someone in the family had killed it a couple of days earlier and after letting age for a couple of days, they butcher it. The women generally do this work after the men hunt the animals and bring them home. Women use a special knife called an Uluk that was designed has been used for centuries by the Yup'ik people. It is basically a large curved blade with an ivory or wooden handle directly on top of the blade and you hold it in your palm. A well sharpened Uluk can cut through fish, seal, elk, or musk ox in no time.

She was going to work on this seal beside us on the kitchen floor while we were talking about my students school work and attitude in class. It was a little distracting and amazing at the same time.

People generally cut the seal blubber away from the animal first and remove any pieces of meat from the blubber. The blubber is then cut into smaller pieces and allowed to drain of the seal oil, which is used for everything. I had a chance to try some a couple of weeks ago when I was visiting one of the elders in the village. I was offered some moose soup, which I eagerly agreed to and told that I should try a little (very little) seal oil in the soup. It is very very strong, but kind of tasty. Word of advice, a little bit goes a long way. The seal meat is sometimes used in soups, but most often cut into strips and hung to dry like beef jerky. I haven't tried any yet, but I look forward to it.

Hope everyone is hungry after this, cause you're all getting seal jerky for christmas.

Thanks for reading.
Dirk

Native Youth Olympics

2006-11-03T18:05:00.000-08:00

Hello! Yes, I'm still here and kicking. Sorry it's been a little while. I've been sort of tied up with this whole teaching gig.

Two weekends I got to be a part of history as Nelson Island High School hosted yet another Native Youth Olympics meet on Oct. 27th and 28th. Personally I have a good bit of experience with what most lower 48ers would call track and field, but this event/meet gave me a whole new appreciation for middle school and high school athletes. Let me just name a few of the events and then I'll go into greater detail about a couple of them.

The meet started off with the Kneel jump, then to one hand reach, two foot high kick, Eskimo stick pull, one foot high kick, Alaskan high kick, wrist carry, Indian stick pull, toe kick, and finally the seal hop, which was held on the second day. The kneel jump is pretty self explanatory. Athletes kneel on a line and see how far they can jump forward onto their feet without falling over, very similar to the standing broad jump. The one hand reach was pretty amazing to watch. Athletes arrange themselves pretty low to the ground and balance on two hands at first, but then they have to reach up with one of their hands to touch a ball suspended from a string above their head. If an athlete can touch the ball and come back down on two hands and stay balanced, they move on to the next height. The ball gets higher and higher with each successful round until no one can reach it. Some girls were reaching 50 inches up in the air on one hand. Pretty awesome.

Two foot high kick involves athletes trying to kick a suspended ball with both feet, toes even, and land back onto their feet again with out seperating feet or falling over. Some of the guys were kicking 92 inches high, which to me is totally mind boggling. One foot high kick is kicking the suspended ball with one foot and landing on that same foot. I think 96 inches won that event for highschool men.

The attached photo is of the Eskimo stick pull. Athletes are trying to pull the stick out of the other persons hands. And yes, that is yours truly acting as the judge. Indian stick pull is kind of similar, only the stick they use is tapered at both ends and completely covered with Crisco. That's right, don't let your mind wander too much on that thought. This event took the high school girls 3 hours to complete. It was rather mind numbing. The toe kick is probably one of the more challenging events. Athletes have to do a standing broad jump and while in the air, use only the tips of their toes to kick a 1 inch dowel rod backwards and then land on their feet. It will take me many moons to perfect this event or even do it successfully without breaking my legs.

Well, there you go. I don't write for months and then you get the mega blog entry. I hope you enjoyed. Wait until the next one. Coming soon!
Dirk

Dropping the hammer

2006-09-25T01:13:00.000-07:00

So I am starting my 6th week of teaching tomorrow. I can't believe it myself. Next week is October. Time is really flying up here now. I am busier than ever with my teaching and keeping track of all the information for our math, reading, and writing students.

The 7th grade class has really been pushing their limits with me and I have had to drop the hammer of justice on them a couple of times. I am going to wear the hammer on a holster by my side for the rest of the year. I'm still learning tons of new information about this field of teaching, although it is making me gray.

Last week was probably my toughest week so far with everything from disciplining students to coming up with meaningful assignments for my six subjects that the students enjoy and learn from. By the end of the week, I was totally fried. So this morning I went hiking up the Tundra and did some fishing.

My first Silver on the fly rod. Yeee - haa!
And now it's back to the grind stone.
Thanks for reading.

Pictures of the Berry fest.

2006-09-07T19:28:00.000-07:00

Here is our number one varsity runner on the ridge during the X-C meet. Maybe?

All right, maybe not.

Today was another unique experience for me in the village. A native woman in village passed away earlier this week after battling cancer for a couple of years. The whole village was at the funeral. We let students out of school at 1:45 today so they could attend. The woman was the mother of one of my students. It was pretty difficult walking past the family and offering strength, hope, and prayers to them while looking at their deceased mother, aunt, wife, etc. She was only about 36 years old.

RIP

Black Berry Festival

2006-09-07T18:58:00.000-07:00

Last weekend was indeed the most fun I have had since I've been here. The weather was absolutely beautiful, which allowed all planes to travel without delay. Therefore, we had lots of people coming and going in the village. Saturday was the Nelson Island Coastal Classic cross country meet. There were about 6 schools and about 40 runners that competed overall. This photo is from the top of the ridge where they turned down a steep hill and returned to the village. I walked the course twice and I've concluded that this course was the most intense cross country course I've ever seen. Runners had to slog through streams and tundra, scramble on all fours up steep climbs, and negotiate technical downhills without flying head over heels. Our top runners in junior high and high school place first for their races. Many runners were left with their tongues dragging and their egos bruised.

Speaking of bruised egos, Saturday afternoon was a 3 mile fun run that I chose to compete in. The first place high school runner did the race too, not 2 hours after he finished kicking everyone's teeth in during the x-c race. Greg Lincoln, recent Toksookian, also did the race and both of these guys left me in the tundra dust. The next day was the bike race and I was hoping to return the favor on my trusty mountain bike, which I had just received in the mail the day before the race. No one seemed to show up except for a bunch of kids on BMX bikes, so I proceeded to make them look like slugs in the desert. Truthfully, as I sat up coming across the finish line, one of my 7th graders squeeked past me for the win. I did wait for 5 or 6 times during the race and he didn't even let me have my moment of glory. He deserved the win I guess. He got a new Walmart bike for 1st place and I got 50 bones for 2nd. Not bad.

There was also lots of berry picking, Agutaq eating, and fiddle dancing at the school. The fiddle dances were more like country music stand up shows. Hank Williams would have been proud. Lot's of people dancing though, until 2 am Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights. All of the runners from different schools stayed in the high school as well, so it was a very busy place. There was native Yup'ik dancing at the memorial center in town and men and women from different visiting villages got decked out in the native dress and pleased the crowd with their story telling girations. The drumming and dancing combined is actually very energizing and quite the unique experience.

Double take

2006-08-30T19:23:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure why that last post had duplicate pictures. Here is a picture of the Alaguchik river that I was fishing. This river isn't very long and runs out into the bay not more than a half mile from the view point of this picture. There are some shallow lakes around too, but they freeze over during winter and don't hold anything.

I really enjoy waking up on mornings with a beautiful sunrise for two reasons. One is that it's easier to walk over to the school to take a shower with a nice sunset to look at. Two, you know that it's going to be a nice, but windy day outside. The water in the background is actually the harbor and bay. The Alaguchik is almost 3 miles in the distance.

Fishing the Alaguchik

2006-08-30T19:00:00.000-07:00

This posting is for all my friends who like to fish or who like hearing me talk about fishing. I managed to put my school work down for a few hours on Sunday and go for a little hiking and fly fishing adventure. I loaded all my fishing gear up in my big pack and started hiking out towards the airport, about 1 1/2 miles from my house. Then I turned onto a fourwheeler trail over the Tundra, which are everywhere. Following this trail/road down to the river I just started hiking up the river to a place where it looked the fishing might start getting good. I changed into my waders and rigged my 7 wt. rod up and felt my heart start beating a little harder. It had been about 3 or 4 weeks since I had been fishing and I was ready.

Hiking up the river, I saw a couple of Silver Salmon hanging out next the bank or just above a rapids. I made a cast to them and they emediately darted away. They are really hard to sneak up on. I had heard that there were Dolly Varden in the river as well and that they were sucking up Salmon eggs like a hoover vacuum, but all I saw was tiny, tiny fish attacking my egg pattern. I kept hiking up and casting in holes that looked like they might hold a fish. Again, Salmon that either saw me and bolted or stubborn Salmon that would watch my egg float right by them and not budge. Really frustrating!

After about an hour and a half, I got to a bend in the river that was deep right against the bank and a nice tail out from the rapids above. I made a couple of casts and felt a little bump. I set and much to my surprise, I hooked a 17 - 18 inch Dolly. Thinking that I had stumbled onto the a rogue fish, I moved up and kept casting. Within the next 10 casts, I had hooked two more fish of the same size. Woo-hoo! This was fun. I wished I had my net, because a couple of fish shook my hook before I could get them to my hand. My 12 lb test was going to hold them no problem. All in all, 6 Dolly's and two came home with me for dinner. Pretty tasty. I even tried to cook the roe, although, I wasn't too fond of that.

I'm discovering a more comfortable life up here. Once my bike gets up here, I think I'll be set. I wouldn't mind some visitors eventually as well. Better make it quick, winter is coming. Brr!

My First Steam and Eskimo Icecream

2006-08-30T18:47:00.000-07:00

Well, with my first week of classes under my belt, I was thoroughly drained and helpless. But my first week was under my belt. Friday afternoon and Saturday morning were spent crunching more data and trying to figure out how to help our kids succeed in Math, Reading, and Writing which would ultimately help Nelson Island High meet AYP (Academic Yearly Progress). After that was over, my brain was an egg frying on a stove top. Sizzle, Sizzle! My fellow teacher, Marty invited me to join him and two others for a steam. I had heard that my first would be one to remember, because I would get initiated. I'm not really big on the whole fraternity concept of initiations, but I knew this would be a little different.

Picture a small wooden shack with a small entranceway and a front room with a low ceiling where you get undressed and keep your clothes. There is cardboard on the floor to soak up sweat and change when they get too muddy. Now imagine a door leading into a smaller room with a lower ceiling, forcing you to stay bent over. Everyone sits on the floor and the heat wave is intense. Yeah, it's kind of like a sauna, but a little smaller and really well sealed from the elements outside. Lava rocks are piled on a pretty darn big wood stove and water near by of course for dumping on the rocks. Well, the natives up here like it hot. How hot? Hot enough that you have to wear something over your ears or they will burn and blister. Hot enough that any moving air will burn you....period. That includes your breath. Therefore, you have to be careful not to breath on anyone. You still have to breath, therefore, I had a burned tongue and gums from the heat. There were a couple of times when I had to cover my eye lids and really get as close to the floor as possible or it felt like my flesh was melting off.

Anyway, we steamed two or three times, each time getting to the point where we can barely stand it. Then we go back out to the entrance way to cool off and then go back in again. The sweat is literally running off you and you have to drink water regularly to keep from hallucinating. The last time you go back in there is no more water added to the lava rocks and you get a basin to totally wash yourself with. My blood pressure was so low and I was soooooo relaxed that I went home and went right to bed. I think it is the cleanest I have ever felt. I definitely look forward to my next steam.

Also, the 4th grade class went out to pick berries last week. When they returned they made some Agulak, which is what most non-natives call Eskimo Icecream. Equal parts Crisco and sugar and then add what ever berries you have available. These were black berries, which actually look more like blue berries, but a little smaller. Anywho it was pretty tasty. Better than I thought it would be. A little Criscoey aftertaste though. It doesn't melt and run all over your clothes like regular icecream does. Bonus!

Visiting the little people

2006-08-17T08:52:00.000-07:00

I have been in Toksook Bay for a solid week now and enjoying it very much. The weather has been dry, which means that you don’t have to wear rubber boots when you step outside your door and people are oot and aboot everywhere. Many women and children are out picking berries, the men are working or doing odd jobs and a couple of people, including myself, go hiking or running.

I’ve climbed the hill behind the village for the past two days in a row now and it was just as spectacular the second time as the first. It’s only about a 4 mile round trip, but would make a pretty strenuous run. There are several 4 wheeler trails that climb the hill, which isn’t very steep for the most part. The trails make me wish that I had my Mtn. bike right here, right now. Of course when it rains, which it does more often than not, it would be a very, very muddy trail.

Near the top of the mountain, it actually gets very characteristic of tundra, meaning the ground is very spongy and there is standing water in places. If you are careful and able to leap from one dry mound to the next, you can keep your feet dry. The structures that you see at the top are 7 – 8 foot tall mounds of rock covered with a yellow/orange lichen, sort of like giant cairns.

Native folklore has it that there are tiny people that live among the holes in the rocky ground. The little people are a mountainous tribe and are known to be tricksters, getting hikers and wanderers lost or disoriented. Sometimes they will reach out of their holes and pull down under ground with them, sort of like leprechauns.

I haven’t seen many people up there from the village, nor have I seen any little people myself. They must stay well hidden.

A quick look at Toksook Bay

2006-08-14T19:15:00.000-07:00

Well, after wrestling my way through Blogger and creating a new blog I am back to putting material on the blog.

Here are a couple of photos from town that I took while walking around. A couple of things that I noticed include. Kids will say "Hi" and come up to ask you questions without hesitation. Sometimes they will come right into your house and stay until you tell them they have to go. Over half of the population in the village consists of people between 0 and 18 years in age. Dogs around the village are usually tied up outside to endure the cold, rain, and wind, sometimes without any shelter. Hence, they are tough dogs.

Speaking of tough, I'm having a tough time uploading pictures to my blog, so I apologize for the lack of visuals.

Back to info about Toksook Bay. All roads are dirt, so it's either dusty when it's not raining, or it's really muddy when it is. Right now it is and it will probably continue for another few weeks. Looking at all the skeletons of old snow machines and 4 wheelers and you quickly realize that people don't just throw things away, but pillage parts from things until there is nothing left.

Well, I started getting my room together today and it's been busy busy busy. More information as I get closer to the students arrival on August 21.