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What a day! I couldn’t sleep last night because I was so excited, nervous, and antsy, so I’m sleep-deprived again but I’m not really feeling it because I’m hyped up from fun and more than a few cups of coffee. I flew half and half in with me, not a worry.
Let’s start at the beginning. I think I mentioned in my first post that I’ve wanted to fly in a tiny airplane over Alaska since who the heck knows how long, and today I got to do it. I got to see Denali appear from behind some clouds, and my loves, it was an Experience. The weather was basically perfect, so the flight was smooth as butter, and since we were flying so close to the ground, the landscape was jaw-dropping for the whole 1.5 hour flight. You can see where permafrost is by vegetation patterns that end up looking geometric. I don’t trust myself to decipher all this for you today, but I took lots of pictures and I can’t wait for Sasha and Santosh to correct me on my misconceptions when we have the time to sit down with them.
We flew first to Nikolai, which is the larger of the two villages we’ll be visiting, with a population of around 100. Our plan was then to catch a smaller plane up to the other village on our route, Telida, and start our week there. (Also, normally you have to fly all the way down to Anchorage to board a plane for Nikolai, but Santosh and Sasha chartered a plane directly from Fairbanks, which is evidently quite fancy.) What wasn’t so fancy was us sitting on the airstrip waiting for our connection to show up, and then realizing there was a misunderstanding and we had asked for our connecting flight tomorrow. Whoops. So I have internet tonight! I wasn’t expecting that.
I also thought that Nikolai would be pretty, but I wasn’t expecting just how beautiful it is. There is forest around the village, but it also opens up in places, which gives the impression of expansiveness. You don’t feel hemmed in by the trees. When it’s clear (like today), you can see Denali towering in the distance.
Nikolai was also immediately friendly. It’s the sort of place where everybody waves at each other when they pass by, and there is a lot of that going on—the village is quiet, but people are constantly coming and going by ATV or bicycle. Our group includes two women named Teresa and Samantha (Sam) who live outside the village but work for the tribe. Sam is relatively new, but Teresa visits Nikolai and Telida often and is obviously well-liked. She describes her job as getting gas, oil, and wages to the tribe, so while she lives in Fairbanks, she makes a lot of supply trips. This does include odds and ends: for example, she had a request for dog food, so we came with a massive bag of high quality kibble in tow. If I heard right, supplies cost $4/lb to ship on a cargo plane, so when you can get a friend to bring it, you do that.
The Upper Kuskokwim people who live in Nikolai and Telida have been in this area for generations upon generations, and they maintain a largely subsistence diet. This is the main reason climate change is such a concern here. One of the first conversations we had when we landed was about local lakes and streams drying up because the permafrost below them was thawing and allowing water to drain out the bottom. Evidently this is impacting sheefish, which is a fish I hadn’t heard of before, but which sounds tasty and is related to trout and salmon. A note I’ll make briefly here, and which I’m sure I’ll return to, is that subsistence lifestyles are critical in Alaska. Not only are they the only affordable and healthy option in most of the state, they are deeply rooted to long-standing cultural traditions. The Athabaskan communities in this region of Alaska have survived a lot of things since colonization began; climate change is another hurdle.
Here I’ll do my best on what I mean by Athabaskan. Anyone who knows better than me, fill in the blanks or correct me in the comments. I’m linking below to a map of language regions distributed by the Alaska Native Knowledge Network, which identifies six major groups, including Athabaskan. Along the coast, in the blueish regions, you find cultures that fit most closely with outsiders’ impression of Alaska Natives, which you can think of broadly as “Eskimo’; in the interior pinkish regions are the “Indian” Athabaskan cultures. According to the University of Alaska’s Alaska Native Language Center, there are at least 20 distinct indigenous languages in Alaska, so of course all these terms are rough and don’t reflect the diversity of the region. (I was surprised to learn that Athabaskan languages aren’t even remotely related to Iñupiaq or Central Yup'ik). Where you see the Upper Kuskokwim language region, that’s where I am!
Map link: http://ankn.uaf.edu/NPE/anl.html
Anyway, after realizing we were stuck in Nikolai until tomorrow morning, we went about making the best of it. Santosh and Sasha have set up seven permafrost monitoring stations around the village, and we checked all of them. I asked Sasha how they chose these particular spots, and he said “it’s pretty much random.” Cool. They’re in a nice range of spots: some were dense forest, some open forest, and one was in a marshy area (although, it evidently didn’t used to be. When they first set up the station it was dry, but permafrost thaw has made it very slurpy to trod through). There were a lot of mosquitoes. Alaska’s state bird ftw.
At each station, Sasha hooked up a laptop to temperature sensors and downloaded data on ground temperature. At most stations there are four sensors, the deepest at around one meter, and they record temperature once every six hours. The system runs for ages on battery power and will store data for months: most of the stations had been checked six months ago, but at the marsh station, they couldn’t find it in the snow last winter, so it had been a year since anyone visited it.
While Sasha dealt with the data download, Santosh walked the perimeter of the station and used a metal probe to check for permafrost depth. In some locations Santosh didn’t hit permafrost (the probe is one meter long), but when he did, it looked like it took a lot of work to get the thing into the ground. You know you’ve hit permafrost when try as you might, you are just not going to budge the thing deeper.
A woman with a great smile, named Vicki, drove us around to each of the sites on an ATV. This was really fun. We just towed a little trailer and all piled on.
After finishing up with the permafrost sites, Vicki drove us to a store owned by a fellow named John (Jon?), who moved to Nikolai 40 years ago and keeps the last dog team in town. Sam and I wanted to see the dogs, so we asked a bunch of annoying questions. Evidently you don’t choose lead dogs because they’re the smartest, but because they have a personality like people who just get up and get things done. They have stamina and they don’t give up. I’ve decided I would be too lazy to be a lead dog. John also reminisced about when there used to be 18 dog teams in Nikolai. I asked why his is the only one and he told us that he and his wife have led classes and trained dogs for folks, but the kids just don’t seem that interested. “It’s a lot of work,” he told me. “Nowadays there are too many video games.” Grandparents around the world are with him on that one.
After visiting with John we ate dinner and I sat down to write. Honestly, I’m beat. I’m headed to bed. I know I cried wolf last time, but I don’t know whether I’ll have internet in Telida, so you may not hear from me for a few days, until we’re back in Nikolai. Until next time!
Allyson
Read Day 4
Read about permafrost
Date
Expedition
Weather Summary
Gorgeous, sunny, perfect temperature.
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