The Lap Game

 A festive crowd gathers on the river every night now.  It's been going on for the last two months, ever since it’s been light enough in the late afternoon.  They get out on the ice and play 'lap game'.  It seems like over half of the village is out there some nights.  They start small, a few people show up and start the game around 8pm and by 9 it's in full swing, with some times over forty people.  The sun doesn't set until around 10:30 now and at 11 it's still light enough to play.  Lap game is a hybrid of baseball, dodgeball and red rover.  There seems to be no limit to the number of players and it looks like the rules change on a whim.

     On their solitary island of civilization out here on the tundra the people of Kotlik get together for things like this the way a bunch of families in the South gathers for dinner on a Sunday after church.  There's lap game, Eskimo dances, basketball games, and bingo at the community hall.  There are no strangers here.  Everyone knows everyone else and their parents and grandparents.  Such is small town life but especially in a place so remote. 

     So the lap game goes on into the sunlit night and everyone out there knows they had better play while they can.  The 'break up' is coming soon when the river ice thins out and flows out to the Berring Sea.  When that happens the lap game field is gone and our freedom of movement will have melted away.  Restricted to the boardwalks, we'll find ourselves confined by the soggy tundra on one side and the river on the other.    No more fields of ice to play on.  No more striking out in any direction on foot or snowmobile to see what's over the next line of trees or to visit a nearby village.  Everyone will feel just a little more isolated and wait longingly for next Fall's freeze.