After two weeks with temperatures hanging around -20 and a double digit wind-chill factor added in it feels great to be back up around zero, almost balmy.  For the duration of that frigid spell I'm afraid me and Hobart had to truncate our tundra time.  Fifteen minutes was about the most we could last out there at a spell. 
     Before I take Hobart out I put a little musher's wax on his paws.  This keeps the snow from sticking and icing up the fur between his toes.  Without the wax he was getting hard ice balls building up oh his feet.  I didn't get him any boots because he would run out of them really quick as he goes through the woods. 
     Now we're back in the single digits and life is good.  We were out there for over an hour yesterday.  The sun was still up because we are gaining over 6 minutes of daylight a day now.  Sometimes Hobart wants me to chase him and sometimes he wants to knock me down.  It's all good until he runs full bore into my knee and has me limping for a week after. 

This a row of typical houses in the village.  One thing to notice is the antenna mast at every home.  Everyone here has a VHF radio.  News of the village comes over the radio like if someone dies there will be an announcement over the VHF to inform everyone and to gather volunteers to assemble at the workshop to construct a coffin and make a cross.  Severe weather alerts also come over the radio.  On one channel you can listen to pilots of incoming planes alerting the airfield their landing times.  People in the village listen to that channel when they are expecting visitors.  All of the boats also have two way radios so they can announce a particularly good catch or to summon help if they get into trouble. 

     You can learn a lot during a walk home from the village store when the temperature is zero.  Like, that coke in your coat pocket will do the same thing as the coke you put in the freezer at home.  And that a good quality Carhart coat which is waterproof from the outside in is also waterproof and coke-proof from the inside out.  And if you take your coat off really careful, and have a straw handy, you can still enjoy that coke slushy you made with just a little lint at the bottom. 

 MUCH ADO ABOUT THE MAQI

     You can take a maqi (pronounced "mucky") but you can't give a maqi.  Maqi is short for the Yup'ik word maqivik.  A maqi is a building in which you take a maqi which is kind of like an atomic sauna.  Maqi's consist of two rooms.  You enter the maqi into the larger room where you hang towels and clothes (it's a naked kind of thing traditionaly).  When you're ready you go into the smaller room where you sit or kneel as close to the floor as possible.  The smaller room has a fire stove that heats rocks.  The maqi master pours water on the rocks once the room has reached the temperature just hotter than Hell. 
     From what I understand the resulting heat is nothing less than unbearable and excruciating to the uninitiated.  After a few minutes of being blanched you go back out to the first room and cool off before you go in for round two and three.  People take maqi's to cleanse their body and spirit.  It's also a good chance to socialize with other sweaty, naked people.  If you're into that. 
    

Sediment entrainment in river ice

I know many of you are asking “Does the river ice play any role in the sedimentary processes on the Yukon River?”. And I have to answer “duh!”.  Here are some pictures I took earlier in the year shortly after the freeze up.  Before the river was completely covered with ice there were enormous chunks floating around.   These pictures show a huge slab of ice with the soil that was underneath it frozen to it.  I estimate that in this slab there is about half of a cubic yard of sediment.  In the spring when the river ice breaks up it will flow out to the sea and drop the sediment as it melts adding to the Yukon delta.  Multiply the soil on this slab by a few ten thousand and you a significant depositional event. 

This Eskimo Dance was held on the evening of 1 January.  I learned that each family has its' own song and a dance to go with it.  You will notice that all of the dancers are either wearing gloves or holding dance fans to ward off evil spirits.  By the time I left the community hall was packed.

With the sun coming in at a low angle the ice crystals really look cool.

If you like sunrises and sunsets this is a great place to be.  The sunrise lasts for half a day and the sunset takes up the other half of the day. 

The New Year's Eskimo Dance.  This video was taken early in the evening.  Not many of the townspeople were there yet.   Later in the night the hall will be packed.  This is the end of one dance/song.  My battery ran out so this was all I got.  You may notice only women stand up and dance  If men dance they kneel on the mats up front.   The dancers always wear gloves or hold onto home made dance fans of feathers and beads.  This is to keep evil spirits from entering the dancer's body while they are dancing.  Only men play the drums. 

So New Years Eve came and went in the village.  The festivities started with an Eskimo dance in the community center.  Then at midnight there was a fireworks show that lasted 15 minutes.  Normally the fire works are set off in a wide part of the river just to the west of my house.  This year that wasn’t possible.  We had two days of above freezing weather and although the ice is still over a foot and a half thick with no danger of falling through there was too much standing water to make setting the fireworks off there a good idea.  Instead they were lit from an area behind the town between the post office and the waste-water field. 

            For the rest of the night and into the morning the drunks were out in force.  I could hear shouts and yelling and the occasional celebratory shots fired outside until late in the morning.  Yes, this is a dry village but drinking still goes on.  Sometimes people get angry when they have been drinking and sometimes that anger is directed towards outsiders.  That’s why I stayed in my house this New Years Eve.  I think all of us teachers here did.  There’s no use stirring up trouble if you don’t have to.