A girl in one of my classes told me that her father had joined the Army years ago.  She said he was sent to Georgia for his training.  One thing she remembered him telling her was that he found it very difficult to sleep at night.  The noise of the frogs and crickets were too much for him. 

It didn’t occur to me until she told me that story that the nights here are deathly silent.  There is the occasional dog bark and the ten O’clock curfew siren but other than those there is no noise at all at once darkness falls. 

Kotlik Power and Light

     Kotlik get’s all of its’ power from this building, owned by Alaska Village Electric Cooperative.  Four Cummings diesel generators are run by automation.  John the technician who gave me a tour of the facility, was taught by his father who worked here for over twenty years.  Surprisingly, he has had no formal schooling in the trade.  The crew who works here keeps the place spotless.  Periodically, maintenance crews from the utility company spend a week at a time on site and live in a milvan next to the generator plant.  

     On the sleepy Sunday morning when I visited, the town was running on just one generator putting out 198 kiloWatts.  John said that he has seen the load get as high as 400 kW at peak usage.  When the school powers up on weekdays they turn on two generators to meet the electricity demand. 

     Electricity is expensive here (58 cents per kWh) due to the small scale and the high price of diesel in remote locations.  In order to reduce the cost the utility company is toying with the idea of stretching high voltage wires hundreds of miles out to these small villages.  That proposal has met criticism from environmentalists and Alaskan Natives.   Another idea, and something they have done in several villages is erecting wind turbines to supplement the generators.  The town of Nome has four large wind turbines that reduced the town’s fuel consumption by almost 20% last year. 

     The challenge of  building wind turbines here is the same as building anything on a delta.  Constructing a foundation on sediment is an engineering nightmare.  It’s been done though in villages such as Emmonak, Chevak, Hooper Bay, and Nunam Iqua. 

 Just Like Capastrano

Song birds have returned to the Yukon Delta.  For the first time since October I heard twittering, chirping and singing while Hobart and I were walking this morning.  People around the village are hunting geese, ptarmigans, and ducks now. 

What Winter Has Wrought Spring Has Put Asunder
      Sixteen hour long days are bringing a quick thaw to the village.  Walking is hazardous at best and the mud everywhere is epic.  The boardwalks on this end of town are all messed up. 

 When in Kotlik...

     Here in Kotlik, custom dictates that if something wants to leave one’s body then one should endeavor to hasten its’ exit.  What I’m talking about is spit, nose nuggets, stomach and intestinal gas.  Yes, those habits I have grown up to consider reprehensible are perfectly acceptable here, and in fact encouraged in order to rid the body of foul substances.  I have witnessed on several occasions grown-ups and elderly folk out about town hock up a voluminous lunger and emphatically spit it out beside the walkway.  The phrase “I used to be disgusted but now I’m just amused” describes the situation in which I’ve seen the Yup’ik language teacher in my classroom delivering a lesson then halt and summon a lugy from the depths of her trachea and casually walk over to the trashcan to expectorate.  

     Then there are the gastrointestinal vapors.  There are probably more deep-belly belches occurring in class than I notice anymore because I’ve become so accustomed to hearing them from petite girls and older boys alike.  One thing I haven’t gotten used to is the flatulence that follows the morning dose of milk with breakfast.  Not only is it loud and from every direction in my classroom but the miasma I’m forced to endure in the aftermath is worthy of a union grievance.  I don’t say a thing and I suffer in silence but there have been occasions where the room’s atmosphere became so polluted that the children have banded together and forced the most offending individual to move to the hallway. 

Spring Arrives

    

 The days of the snowmobile are numbered here in Kotlik.  Last weekend was a blizzard and whiteout with temperatures in the single digits.  This week began with snow falling every day and the mercury slowly creeping into the teens and twenties.  Now it’s Friday and temperatures are in the mid thirties.  They are calling for 41 degrees on Sunday.  Yeah, a heat wave!

     So the snowmachines (what we call snowmobiles) are trudging around town, the tracks spinning up slush as the engines whine, straining to make any headway at all.  Kotlik is now buried in a foot of grainy chilled slurry.  Walking is a chore with every step sending up an icy splash in every direction.  There is no solid footing anywhere but on the boardwalk now, where the 4-wheeler snowplow has cleared down to the wood planks. 

     The ice on the river can’t last much longer.  Seventeen hours of sunlight a day is taking it’s toll on our frozen thoroughfare and breakup will be soon.  There’s already a good layer of water on the ice’s surface.  The sloughs around town have flowing water in them.  Thank goodness Hobart and I have less than a month remaining here.  Our days of aimless perigrinations are at an end because for the rest of our stay we’ll be stuck on the boardwalk unless we want to go slogging across the muddy tundra bog. 

     This year there has been ice on the Yukon since October.  Around here ice is about two feet thick in the center of the river.  This close to the open ocean the river level is affected by the tides so the surface of the ice moves up and down.  The movement is imperceptible but the difference between high and low is sometimes as much as three feet.  The surface of the river is a solid sheet of ice all the way across so somewhere something has to give as it rises and falls.

       The point of weakness is usually parallel to the bank several feet from the shore.  Long cracks, running along the river open in the ice, never more than an inch wide, as the thick center ice breaks from the thinner ice held fast to the land.  Water from below will seep up through the fissure and flood onto the surface then freeze, creating a new thin layer of ice.  Sometimes the surface of the new water will freeze but then the unfrozen water recedes back through the crack leaving a glassy thin ice layer suspended an inch above the more solid foundation layer.  Stepping on this feels and sounds like walking across a floor littered with fine crystal dishes. 

     On the coldest of days the water freezes before it gets to the surface and the cracks suture themselves pretty quickly.  Sometimes a crack will make a jagged dash across the center of the river.  In the cold of winter that’s nothing to worry about because the ice on both sides of the crack is still feet thick.  No chance of falling through. 

     During one of these tide changes I can lay on the river and listen to groans and creaks.  Sometimes there’s a snap.  It sound a little like the whale songs I’ve heard on television.