On the Corner of G and 6th

Monday, September 21, 2009

This week is training all week to become my role in the Sexual Assault Response Team (SART). With a multidisciplinary group, I was one of the novice advocates among nurses, police, and Alaska State Troopers. But I was young. So young. Most of us from my work are about the same age. In our 20’s. We’re the average age of the victims, the survivors, not the problem solvers, the professionals.
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Getting back from training to work. Count the money for the thrift store. Check my emails. Think about how inexperienced I am. “Can you stay a little longer today?” “Sure!” Eager to help, eager to learn. A woman, drunk, comes in. She’s been assaulted. I’m staying to be her advocate through the police interview. This is what we do. Experience matters, but it can’t be a requirement; there’s too much work to do. This is an average night in Bethel, looking for the fallen.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

A call comes in at 10 or so at night for Joe. His boss, a cheery, short woman, needs his assistance. He dons his glasses and his shoes quickly. I follow with a camera and my own shoes. Drive to BIA, Bureau of Indian Affairs Road, go down until we see her car, parked, headlights on. We jump out. On the ground between our two cars, a bird the size of a chicken is flopping around, flops right off the road. She points into the tall grass beneath the low-set telephone wires, directs Joe in. She and I link arms and hop and shout encouragement and directions as Joe finds the ptarmigan, gets the ptarmigan, drops the ptarmigan, and cannot find it again. After a good laugh, we pile back in to our cars. His boss leaves. Joe and I drive up and down BIA. He hopes he’ll see another to make it up to her, a lost hope by that hour with that little light. We drive back on Chief Eddie Hoffman Highway, our one paved road, listening to days-old NPR on the radio. Prairie Home Companion—needs a fireplace and steaming mug on this already cold night, luxuries not warranted this early in the season.

So that was ptarmigan picking. A pastime and a subsistence strategy, when you can actually get one. They fly into the low wires at twilight and people come by to scoop them up, wringing their necks if they’re not already all the way gone. This is an average night in Bethel, looking for the fallen.

Friday, September 25, 2009

The end of our week of training for the Sexual Assault Response Team. Would you report? Mixed reactions. An advocate who grew up in the village: no; too much to try to fit into upon return, too possible to be re-victimized going through the system. A nurse from outside Alaska: maybe; she knows the system, knows how it may be helpful, knows how it may fail her after her own post. A State Trooper: yes; he believes in the system, but says it wouldn’t be hard because it just wouldn’t happen to him. Who ever thinks it would?

Sunday, September 27, 2009

A co-worker of John my housemate is gone in Anchorage for two weeks. We get his worn out blue station wagon and head back down to BIA. Community night: Ptarmigan picking. It’s cold and PJ hangs out of his front seat window anyway, scanning for the unlucky birds. John does the driving; Justin refuses to be photographed. Jill and Joe can’t really see anything out of the way back, and it’s all Abby and I can do to stop laughing at our adventure. Needless to say, the birds were the lucky ones that night.

Monday, September 28, 2009

My parents sent me up a care package far superior to any that I’d ever received in college. Included here was the mysterious but ever-loved and appreciated quinoa. I didn’t really know how to pronounce it, let alone prepare it, and the directions on the back would only result in plain, though cooked, quinoa. And so I run into the dilemma that plagues my inspired evenings. Whenever I get the whim to creatively cook something, the whim becomes a wish to call my mother, who has infinitely more practical knowledge than I do, especially in the kitchen. However, not only would I have to dial roughly 38 numbers with a calling card to reach her, but due to time zone differences, I would also have to wake her up every time I try to be a grown up. So I took the matter into my own hands, determined to be an adult. I looked up quinoa in a cookbook, cooked it up, and added coriander. It called for fresh, which of course is unheard of in Bethel unless you secretly are a millionaire, or at least have a salary, so I went with the dry powder. And, of course, added too much. Determined not to waste it, I ate some, put it away, and began the epic quinoa week of 2009.

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

My first week on-call for SART. Three calls in two days after no calls the week before. Exhausting, exciting, frustrating, and hopeful. This has been my favorite part of my job so far. What I do, I only do for the hope and comfort of one person at a time. And it matters.

Tonight, I add onion and garlic powder to my quinoa.

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Pentecostal Church service. Says the man in front looking back at us, at me. “You must not fear. If you have fear you do not and cannot have faith.” Seems hard to not have fear when I am about to walk home alone in the dark. Seems hard to not have fear when women I work with every day face violence in their own homes. Seems hard to not have fear when one woman I met was raped by a stranger walking home alone at night last weekend. Seems hard to not have fear unless you’re in some privileged position of being fearless and ignore the reality of many lives in the YK Delta. Would Jesus have more fear if he were a woman? Our faith should not be ignorant of our situation, but cognizant that people make sometimes harmful choices. Isn’t our faith in how we act not in how others will; how can this dismiss fear? And still I have faith that God is in this somewhere, somehow.

Tonight, I add tomato to my quinoa.

Thursday, October 8, 2009

Tonight, I take a break from my quinoa.

Friday, October 9, 2009

Most nights, my roommate and I at least cross paths, usually on the way to bed. Fill each other in on the goings-on as good roommates do. Then talk of minor things, like what the center of the alphabet is. Between M and N I say. Between L and M she says. But the halfway is after number 13 I say. We count along on our fingers. No she says. There are 26 letters in the alphabet I say. What? Oh she says.

Tonight, I add left over hamburger and more tomato to my quinoa. It is finally delicious.

Saturday, October 10, 2009

I woke up this morning to the unfamiliar: dull sunlight. Lately, the morning has been streaked with darkness. My alarm unpurposefully timed just right to have blinks of the school bus’s night light dance back and forth on my wall as it first passes me, then comes back, meeting its match with the cul-de-sac.

And then more unfamiliar. Wind, strong, unceasing wind. Of course I’m used to the winds of the Midwest: Chicago; Iowa. But here, where our houses are up on posts above the permafrosted tundra, the wind takes a different toll. We move, or rather, are moved, and the tundra grasses are pushed fervently down. The rumor holds from Father Chuck that at this time of the year in this part of the world, we get the hasty leftovers from the typhoons of southeast Asia: a ragged batch of warm weather and the mighty scraps of forceful wind.

Sunday, October 18, 2009

As soon as I conveyed my concerns, maternal instincts kicked in. The seven or so middle-aged women sitting around the dining room table eating quiche with me all had something to add. Recipes, window sealers, winter tips, savings advice (start with a little every day now; you’ll appreciate it when you’re my age). It’s refreshing to be cared for so concretely. Mom won’t be so worried that I’m all the way up here; she’s got her extended network working in high gear.

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Tonight we light candles for all those affected by domestic violence, especially those who have had their voices silenced and their lives stolen.

Friday, October 23, 2009

Four of us walk down the corridor staring in every direction. Especially the floor. The tiles are shiny and perfectly laid. Turn on my cell phone that has only gathered dust in the last two and a half months. Two of the group stop at Starbucks. I call my brother. “Ariel?” he squawks. “Is that you? How are you calling me right now??”. I feel I must be emerging from the twilight zone. It only takes an hour flight east to Anchorage.

We gather up our luggage with space pocketed for a later Costco trip, which will save us at least a hundred dollars of groceries. Then we gape at city life, climbing into the van to pick us up. More than two story buildings. Traffic lights. Lots of cars. Lots of people, especially white ones. So much paved road. Mail boxes.

We have some hours to explore. Dropped off downtown. Food we can almost afford at greasy mall restaurants. Watches for less than $40. Escalators. We walk around outside, start catching up on other house gossip. Pose with moose decorations. This pace, this context, has become unfamiliar, and much less desirable. I miss hearing Yupik. I miss hearing people’s stories.

I stand waiting for a bus. I am giddy at the prospect of navigating a city again via public transportation. I was directed by the Anchorage JVs, but things aren’t running as they are supposed to exactly. I sit on a bench. He comes up on a black bike. He is my age and Native. “Are you from the Southeast?” (Meaning, Southeast Alaska). “I live in Bethel.” His mouth drops. He laughs a bit. Introduces himself and says who he’s related to in Bethel. Asks me if I speak Yupik. I tell him I know some words, how to count to five. He rattles off the numbers quietly, grinning. Tells me about weather and families and subdivisions. I ask him about the buses. He smiles the whole time he talks and listens, moving inches forward, inches back on his bike with his feet. Before he leaves, he shakes my hand and gives me his weeklong bus pass. I like what Jesus is like here on the corner of G and 6th. My bus comes soon after.
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Eventually we pack into vans and drive faster than I’ve gone in months. In Bethel, the wind goes faster than the cars. We curl through the mountains, back seat dozing off from the early flight. Wasilla. More strip malls, a public library. No Palin sightings, but there were mountains and trees and other things strange to Bethel.

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Wake up in a warm cabin. Climb down from my bunk. Try not to make too much noise as I get ready. Put on the candy corn leggings. Put on the purple velvet dress, the leg warmers, the 80’s work-out shirt with shoulder pads, the wool patterned sweater, and lastly, the pink flamingo sunglasses. At breakfast, I’m first of our community. But eventually, in walks PJ, silver pants and flowing button-down pastel patterned shirt. Joe, paisley-patterned red shirt and a red, white, and blue bandana. Jill, the one-piece pajamas and short cream turban cap. Justin, sweater vest and short black skirt over khakis. Later, in comes John, an Alaska sweatshirt with cut off sleeves. Abby, sparkly orange dress with feather trim. And Jamie, our area director, in a blue bunny sweatshirt with sewn-in collar. Nothing builds community like Saturday morning retreat costumes. Most items found around our house, bestowed by past Bethel JVs. Many items traded around between us throughout the weekend.

Later, Abby and I walk through the woods. She leaves orange feathers accidentally along the trail and keeps appearing in my photographs like a much-too-easy where’s waldo.

Our first JVC Alaska retreat gave time for both reflection and community—needed ingredients outside the weekend that while not necessarily in short standing, can be strange to us still in Bethel.

Monday, October 26, 2009

After buying out Costco on our meager budget, we creatively repack our bags. I get the olive oil and the dish soap. Almost everyone gets spaghetti sauce, there’s so much. At the airport, we tape up the honey in Justin’s backpack to be checked. Stuff the oatmeal last minute into one of Jill’s extra bags. At the line with no people at security, we shake our heads at the sign for no knives with a picture of an uluk, really only found in Alaska. Head through security, almost. PJ can’t get through with peanut butter; check that bag. Jill’s flour in a garbage bag is inspected for drugs, pass. Justin’s baking powder is inspected for explosives, pass. We take our groceries, head towards our gate, and use our cell phones one last time before they’re obsolete again.

Friday, October 30, 2009

The heat’s not working at the thrift store. “I’m going to let you use one of your co-workers to figure that out.” So I ask one, tell her that because she’s lived in Alaska her whole life, she must know how to fix it and she scoffs at me. We go next door. Look at the furnace and have no idea what we’re looking at. It’s got fibers sticking out inside of it like a whale’s mouth. We ask one of the customers who takes a look. She says it’s probably the fuel’s out. We go outside. My co-worker pulls a long stick from the ground, takes off its twigs. I climb up the ladder to the fuel tank in the back, open the top. She hands me the stick and I guide it down into the tank, pull it out. Nothing. Out of fuel.

Saturday, October 31, 2009

I call for my roommates. I’d finally found both my boots and my coat after a two minute frantic search in the dark mud room (entry room) of their house. Daylight savings time left me at an hour’s advantage, awake enough to face the outdoors, or it’d be a rude awakening instead. I call again and hear the two girls answer. The guys all headed out earlier in spurts towards home. Just the three of us padded down the snow-hugged wooden steps to the river’s edge. Step purposefully on the driven down snow toward our house. Cross the highway, skirt alongside the bottom of the cultural center heaving down on its posts above the ground. Decide to take the tundra instead of the boardwalk tonight; Jill has her headlamp. Up the stairs of the college and around one of its three buildings. Onto the tundra just like Justin and PJ walking across it this afternoon with groceries.
By now all shades of fall have been erased and winter has made its home, snug until mid-May. A week and two days ago, we had our first real snow, and real winds of thirty miles per hour. It forced the falling snow in my face like a sand storm. But now, the snow lays still, but not the wind of course, and we clamor across the tundra on the paths set out by snow machines and sleds. As Abby and Jill unfold the evening for scrutiny, I watch my feet under my pink Halloween dress pass loudly by the tuffs of frozen weeds until we reach our house.

Sunday, November 1, 2009

At UU today, one man shared about his wife. She’s doing medical volunteer work in Sudan. A half a world away. She seems to be loving what she’s doing so far; working in unfamiliar settings, with unfamiliar issues, with unfamiliar people. Sounds a bit familiar to me.
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Dealing with bumps in community that are more than just bumps and talking to my family on the phone makes me miss home more—the home that isn’t where you live, but where you grew up under quilts and around living rooms, peeling potatoes for Mom and arguing about whose turn it is to do the dishes we all help with after dinner. I put on my classical guitar music and wish it were Dad playing it in real time and look forward to Christmas when I’ll be home again.

But Jill’s assembling a casserole in the kitchen. We just watched a movie altogether that PJ almost stayed awake for. Abby’s laundry hangs over wooden rods in the living room. Joe brought home leftovers last night, which included a fish eyeball that Justin ate at breakfast. John recounts stories of riding on a snow machine with a teenager from down the street and just came in from cutting up wood for our stove. I’ve been teaching Jill songs in different languages with our house guitar. And Justin will be home from leading youth group soon. I suppose we’re learning how to make home after all.

Funny the Feeling of Freedom in Fitting Shoes

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Every Sunday, we’re invited to eat with a family down the street. Our fill of reindeer sausage today. We leave a couple hours after arrival per usual. We walk and I note houses and gardens we go by, the same walk I make from work. Just a day or two ago, I noticed a house I had not noticed before. A domed house. There are a few of them around Bethel. Someone in the 70’s felt the freedom of expression and insulation and put them to good and practical use. Today, my housemate Justin and I were curious enough. We knocked. A fragile young woman opened the door to us. And with some cheeriness on my part, invited us in to peak at the sloping loping ceilings. She apologized for her 4-year-old’s strewn about toys, soon said her husband hides when visitors come, hinted our three minutes to gape were up. We thanked her kindly, slipped on our rubber boots on her porch, and kept walking down Napakiak towards home.

Monday, September 14, 2009

I find my way upstairs to the shelter at work today. I usually do, as it’s my time with people not too busy for small conversation. I volunteered to take a resident somewhere. I wait in the kitchen. I stand by the long table there. I watch with big eyes as two residents, one young, one old, pluck ducks. Donated dead ducks with long feathers. The older one takes the small under-belly soft feathers off first. They kept the feathers in a black garbage bag. To be saved for stuffing pillows.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

I went to court again today. Typically I’ll go accompanying someone in filing a protective order. This morning was different. This morning was a sentencing.

We file in, the four of us attending from work, through the court house doors. Through the metal detector, which I set off every time, because every time, I choose not to avoid wearing my grandmother’s belts that tick it off. We gather our shelled off jackets and wind through the hallway and up the elevator one floor to court room six.

The “victim” was always referred to by her initials. In sexual assault cases, they have that right to anonymity, though people slipped up and said her name at least once. In this town of 6,000, people will know people and people probably already knew what happened with these people. But it’s a right nonetheless.

I sit through this, taking in my first sentencing experience. I keep assuming it will be like Law and Order or some familiar TV show. But it isn’t. The speeches are good, but not TV worthy. As it should be; it’s real life, not TV. Somebody’s life. More than one somebody. And now one somebody is going to jail and the other somebody is known supposedly only by her initials here.
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I walk twenty minutes to work everyday, and twenty minutes home. Uphill both ways, naturally. First arriving in Bethel, I began to dread walking, only because my many year old sneakers hurt my feet. My other ones came in the mail from my family a few weeks in. Funny the feeling of freedom from fitting shoes.




On my walk to and from work, I feel the contentment of small town life. I pass the well-kept, odd looking garden. Blue and purple flowers toppling out of slender metal barrels like someone’s second grade hat made in art class with fuzzy yarn.





I pass where giants played leapfrog and left their fun implanted on the road in scattered patterned potholes. I am passed by trucks and worn out cars with driver’s who have the Midwest small town wave. We make eye contact. Small smile. They lift up three fingers off the steering wheel. I lift my arm up at the elbow. Keep driving. Keep walking.







I turn briefly onto Mission Road, then with my hood up in the light rain, turn my whole body to see the empty road, looking before I cross. Move back behind the green dumpster reading “Private” in sprawled letters. Come to the top of the small slope down, survey the crowded graveyard with white crosses.





Peer down the cylinder carrying water above the permafrost. Hear its goings and its comings.







The path is wetter today and there are bike tracks and shoe prints in the mud. These disappear and reappear every other day as the dirt re-hardens in the long sun. Slackened and firmed up. A familiar process to a 22-year-old in new places. Bethel and adulthood.
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My walk home from work is shaped by the mud I walked over several hours before. I slip on it down a hill just barely, enough though to elicit an “oofta” out of me. A Norwegian/Minnesotan expression. I am neither. Borrowed culture. It won’t be long until Bethel cultures too get into my blood and out through my words, just as the dried mud now never leaves my freedom shoes.

Friday, September 18, 2009

“I hate Casper.” Impending laughter. Our housemate Justin has just returned from a work assignment with Father Chuck. They blessed a house infested with ghosts. Apparently. If you don’t believe it though, the blessing probably won’t work. Justin seemed to take it seriously enough. He certainly thought it was neat. But when Casper the Friendly Ghost is brought up upon his return. Well. Maybe fiction ghosts are different.

Saturday, September 19, 2009

I sit in the intermittent hallway at the back entrance of the cultural center. Here I get wireless and am allowed noise, unlike the library. I sit. I talk. I hear. On Skype (a miracle) with my roommate (from college, not Bethel) and then my brother. Now and again, others walk by. Through that door, then this door. Look at me strangely. Seemingly talking to myself. Or seemingly a confused hunter in my bright orange sweatshirt with a big “I” on it that arrived from my sister early this week, paired with my candy corn leggings. I suppose we’ll each shape our reputations in the small town. But it’s a town of sweatshirts and, well, jeans, not patterned leggings, but the same feeling is there. They pass by with a smile anyway.

A view from our back porch onto the tundra.

Travel Stories

So it's been a while since I've updated. That's mainly because this site is blocked at work and there's no internet at my house, so I have to wait until I go to the library. I have been writing some in the meantime though. I read a really good book in the style of travel writing, so I thought I'd try my hand at that. Here are some stories since my last update...

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Sit up, sit down, speak, listen, hold hands, march to the front, stay still. Catholic mass is a cultural experience for me. Even more so when a third of it is in a throat-heavy language, pronounceable slowly by only some syllables printed between dashes.

It’s my second time at this church here in Bethel. The first was our first Sunday in Bethel, the morning after we arrived. Having been to Mass before, I already knew my prescribed limitations, barred from the Eucharist as a non-Catholic. I checked with Jill and made sure of the sacred signal of crossing my arms over myself to get a blessing instead of a wafer. I stood up, joined the humble, trudging forward line. I approached the deacon, crossed my arms, awaited my blessing. He recounted the words he’d said many times already, picked up a wafer. I wanted to open and protest, protect their rules and decisions. I ended up with a wafer in my mouth. I walked down the side aisle back to our pew, eyes wide with surprise and a bit of worry. Jill offered a knowing, somehow forgiving shrug and half smile as we kneeled to pray. Thanking God, I reflected on what the ironic and historically burden meanings could be of force-fed communion.

Monday, August 24, 2009

I tromp through the chilly jungle that is Alaska in August. Past the lazy wires and discarded rosy insulation. Past the silver cylinders that beg to be climbed through like their McDonald’s play-land cousins. Past the blue-speckled grass blades, too planted to escape the scattering spray paint. Make my way between the building with recovering-or-maybe-not men, housed away in the middle of the community and somebody’s falling apart garage.

To something snarling. Again.

Sometimes I notice that I hold my breath here. But sometimes I just try to get by fast as I can, edging away from that rattling chain. The neighbor said she thought that one’s neurotic.

Who knew salvation would come in the face of a different dog with one blind eye, clipped into a red leash on a red house with a damp hay yard.

“Hello Ruffian” I manage to speak, relief fluttering from my padded down anxiety.

I am dog-sitting for a woman we barely met. We inherit her trust by way of the people who have lived in our house before. And now I, the one of the seven who feels a self-misunderstood discomfort for dogs, am scurrying with feigned confidence to reach them, the ones who do not snarl, who just bounce and shed.

Severe knocking in the broad daylight of seven or so p.m. alerts the front room movie watchers. Normally we expect our neighbor who comes by every day, knocking as he walks straight in. But today it’s just another housemate, fist meeting the door as the rest of his hand curls around slipping white garbage bags. One fish, two fish, white fish, salmon. Impromptu invited on a boat with a boss’s brother (who may be a cousin instead), he comes back bearing a later winter meal. The boys assemble themselves at the base of the back porch. Embark on cutting and gutting. Ask for pictures to be taken. I stand at the neck of the red rust wooden stairs, pajama paints fairly pushed into rubber boots, hooded sweatshirt hood up, and capture the blood and bugs and vacant fish eyes jammed on our kitchen’s cutting boards.

I’m still itchy from the bugs that snuck inside. But my camera job was not enough of a contribution. I earned my bug bites joining the inside line of clean, wrap, tape, name. “Joe’s catch, 8/24/09, white fish (or silver)”. The curls of the letter J may sneak part way into the freezer paper. The smell of the marker masks the smell of the fish and I hope I’m not poisoning our dinner in three months.

The sunlight pretends to fade close to 10 p.m. now. I think it’s still only laughing at us, hidden behind the darkened clouds. Supposing to be daylight for so many hours, instead we are provided dull gray varying across miles and miles of open sky.

Sometimes the sky opens a peak to bestow light spit on the dampening earth. And then mud. Mud and mud and gravel. I slop through it both ways, to work, from work. I don’t really mind the mud and mist. It twinkles of an English-Irish, or Irish-English, forest. Full of mystery and novelesque promise. I think tea with milk. And with gruffness, remember milk is kissing ten dollars a gallon. That will be my reason for visiting “home” in the winter. When all my real reasons become so visible that I must ignore them, I will go home for milk.

Yupik sounds with many y’s and k’s to my foreign ear. Odd to be foreign in a place I can re-register to vote. But I am the foreign one. I am the guest in my own country in another’s nation. People mention “the Yupik way” and leave bread crumbs to its direction. I am still nervous of stepping wrong, speaking funny, and becoming horribly offensive. Like if the underside of a fish turned out to be hairy and coarse. A rude awakening, kassaq—white people. Oscillate between acutely aware of my white-ness (sometimes made my most defining but not self-owning feature) and my downstates origins (this I do not shy away from, a proud Midwesterner). The parts of one’s identity raised to high import are those that convey origins and group belonging. I am a white not from Alaska. Here, one asks the natives who their family is. One asks the whites when they moved to Bethel. Hard pressed to find a white native to Bethel. Hard pressed to find a native generations back native to Bethel. Maybe no one is from here. But (almost?) everyone stays.

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

“Today’s AA meeting right?” …Silence. She looks up at me. “…Alcoholics Anonymous?” Silence and she looks at me again. “Oh right, that means yes.” I hope she laughs as I struggle with the nonverbal customs; I would. My boss told us last week, raising the eyebrows means yes, and that would often get school children in trouble when as they answered silently, affirmatively. I try catching on and find that it’s used frequently, unquestioningly. Like a nod or shrug only subtler.

Thursday, August 27, 2009

I spoke with a Yupik coworker today. I’ve begun to recognize how the culture I come from is abrasive and assertive. Having the power of persuasion celebrated. But this has wreaked havoc here, leaving much historical trauma and current imbalances in its wake (and continued use). Instead, seek humility and empowerment. How do you seek empowerment? Listen. And let others make their own choices.

After work we were enticed to attend the Parish Council meeting (it had pizza). May have not been the most exciting or efficient meeting, but it seemed fairly typical for a church board meeting. It’s as if that meeting strategy is an unspoken but unwavering cross-religious tradition. Perhaps the most exciting moment was the church secretary whispering swear words when building maintenance seems out of hand.

Friday, August 28, 2009

I walk to work in the awkwardly place sunlight of Bethel nine a.m. The sun glares happily at me, right in my eyes. So I keep them cast down. The stones on the road –the road is mainly made of stones and rocks and caked mud—have long long shadows. Pointy at their ends. Like icicles that have laid down their lives for the worship of the sun’s rays.

Sunday, August 30, 2009

I walk to return to the Unitarian Universalist group of Bethel after a missing week hiatus. I walk down Napakiak to the intersection with Akiak. Turn left. I start muttering a Unitarian meditation song to myself as I make my way across the gravel brown road. There’s an odd, invisible nestling of birds in the taller grasses to my left, someone’s front yard maybe. A dog whines behind them somewhere. I think, as I repeatedly do, how much my dad would enjoy this walk, this place. Even though it’s a bit grungy, it seems genuine. It loosely holds the beauty of nature running into lived community life on purpose. It’s not pristine, and by many means it’s not specifically beautiful. If it were a motion, it’d be a shrug. Simple, full of different meanings, and conveyant of its true being, even if that’s somewhat noncommittal in some busier lifestyle’s point of view.

Just as I finish noticing the birds, their sound is over-laden with the barking of two maybe-stray dogs just down the road. I don’t like dogs. Especially ones I don’t want to meet on the street. I stop. Wonder, what am I suppose to do now? They are turned towards me, barking. I am too unfamiliar with dogs to know if their noise is to be threatening or some secret greeting. Are they protecting their space or inviting me to play? I turn around. Walk a little a ways. Turn and observe. Wonder, should I go right by them or turn and walk the very long other way to Pinky’s Park? The Log Cabin where the Unitarian group meets is literally just beyond the dogs. I just want to go to church, I think in my head, frustrated with my own discomfort and fear. Please God, just provide me a safe way to get to church. (Whether or not it is ironic that I pray for safe passage to the Unitarian gathering remains to be judged, but no one’s allowed in the privileged position of judgement, so…). I look back over. They’ve preoccupied themselves with another direction, so I pretend to have courage and walk swiftly the rest of the way to the Log Cabin. Making it inside, I forget until later to be grateful and thank whatever allowed me to escape the charge of the strays.

And perhaps it is odd that a few of the emotionally charged moments that I share here of about my encounters and escapes from dogs. Perhaps it is even odder that my younger brother wants to be a vet and purposefully encounter and not escape them. I chuckle at myself and my family whenever I think about that, which of course, is every time I encounter a dog on the street here, which of course, is very often here in Bethel.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

“I’m on a boat”. (That song often playing in our heads as often we report to one another that one of our housemates is in fact, on a boat.) So, on a boat. In Alaska. Heading up-river? Maybe down-river. On the Kuskokwim River, one direction or another. Looking at the beauty that reminds me of Costa Rica. And singing Taylor Swift at the top of my lungs with my companions.

I came along with the teen group from work that my housemate leads. It’s the first time I feel alive and joyful in awhile. No pretending, not really working, and singing.

Every now and then the boat’s driver quiets us. As we silence we peer around. It’s the first time in a long time moose hunting has been allowed this close to Bethel. We see plenty of people out and zero moose. Maybe a moose track or two.

Each time we’re quieted, I hear a high-pitched whining in the back of the boat. Imagine this to be some sort of moose call the driver has. Not until more than half way through the trip do I realize this is just the raising up of the motor to go slower.

By the end of the trip, I’m sitting in the back of the boat half covered by a big yellow raincoat, next to our one eleven-year-old boy. We occupy our time singing the Jesus songs I know that have hand motions. He asks to sing them again and again, faster and faster. “Waves of mercy” becomes a first line, blurred notes, and speedy “na na na”’s. Until he gets too cold and decides it’s better to camp out under the raincoat or fall asleep sitting up in the wind since it’s almost 10 pm anyway. The sun finally sets.

We pull our boat up to the side where it’ll be dragged in. Well, we just sit there really, as the boat is directed by our driver and our director. Gasps. Eyes move rapidly to our right. Someone got one. A gigantic dead moose is sprawled across the neighboring boat. They pull their boat out and up. We clamor quickly, stiffly out and up, race to their boat being hitched to their truck and gape. Apparently moose have white tongues.

Monday, September 7, 2009

We each had Labor Day off. So we each piled into the boat of our neighbor and headed off on the Kuskokwim. An hour later, we each piled out onto the squishy bank, up the hill, through the tall tall grass. We arrived at an abandoned Moravian Mission and Orphanage. Peered through broken glass. Stepped over broken boardwalks, pulsing with mud through holes as each step passed a certain point. Climbed into a slanted chapel with a left over vacuum and three fourths of a record. Up the stairs of someone’s old house with many many mattresses, strewn flour, and an old box of toothpicks. Underneath fallen boards and blunted rusted nails. Onto the roof that was removed for it’s wood where we could see forever in the different colors of the tundra.

Next stop didn’t seem a stop. We pulled up under a life-covered cliff. Looked at a hawk. Then climbed straight up 30 feet, holding onto bits of branches and slipping on the moist dirt. Reaching the buoyant tundra above, we could see a different forever, this one framed by far-away mountains and a cluster of maybe 20 trees that two of the teens climbed up while telling their younger sister not to.

Lastly, we stopped at their not used fish camp. We sat for awhile in their tented structure, enjoying a sanctuary away from gnats. Then helped clear the path for the next users, moving little trees cut for us, all the while hiding in our hoods and sleeves to escape the insects swarming. At the entrance, the green grass glowed, looking radioactive, but soft enough to burrow your body into for daydreaming.

Pile onto the boat again for the last of the fried chicken and the drive back to Bethel.

After arriving, I went back to their house. Cup of hot chocolate with Irish Cream and tutor the distributive property to one of their seven children. Then the mom and I went out back to finish painting the numbers onto the doghouses for their jumpy huskies, ready to start their mushing season again.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

I imagine living in a shelter could be off-putting for kids. But if they’re young enough and buoyant enough, maybe it can be just a new environment in which to play. And so maybe it’s enough if I just pay attention as a four-year-old clumsily slips on the Darth Vader mask for the fourteenth time, looks at me, laughs hysterically as I show a frightened face, then quickly pulls it off to assure me it’s ok. Maybe it’s enough for me to ask him to take turns with the three-year-old who uses gestures in the place of words, grabbing at the mask again and again. Maybe it’s enough that I’m willing to retrieve the semi-deflated red ball that he throws over the work area more than once. Maybe it’s enough. Because in the middle of the morning, he comes back up to the counter door, looks at me, and says, “I like you”, after meeting me an hour before.

Saturday, September 12, 2009

I cried after I made burnt pancakes today and was scolded for it. So I cleaned up, packed up, and swiftly walked to the library across the boardwalk. Already ashamed of my own independence inabilities, already tired of community some days, already missing a settled normal. Wishing I didn’t live with strangers all the time.

Hope comes in the changing colors of the tundra. The promise of winter makes locals excited. The UU group mentioned the glorious colors of the tundra as fall creeps quickly through. My coworker mentioned its brilliant sunsets, which will happen in the late afternoon come winter. I think colors are always my saving grace. No grays of clouds or burnt browns of pancakes. Seek the brilliance of the tundra and await the first-frost-reddened cranberries.

Adventures Begin!

Hello world! I'm in Bethel, Alaska! I've been here two weeks today and it's been certainly interesting so far. Here's what I'm up to:

I joined the Jesuit Volunteer Corps Northwest, went through orientation in Oregon, met my 6 housemates, flew to Alaska, tried not get lost in our town of one paved road, and began my job. I am a legal advocate at the Tundra Women's Coalition, an advocacy organization and shelter working on cultivating nonviolence in interpersonal relationships (i.e. diminishing the frequency and increasing the healing in relationships suffering from domestic violence and sexual assault) here in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. So far, I really like my job, though the subject is certainly difficult. I have great co-workers and fun housemates and I'm excited to become a part of this community! It's already begun.... I have an Alaska driver's license, we eat a lot of salmon, and I know one word in Yupik: Quyana (it means "thank you", a good one to know I think). Anyway, just wanted to let y'all know I still exist. Hope everything is well downstates!