Welcome to Naknek

Naknek Week 1 I traveled uneventfully through Spokane, Seattle, and Anchorage airports, arriving at King Salmon around 7 PM on Wednesday the 22nd of January. I was met by the gracious and thoughtful Kat, our executive assistant at the clinic, who had also cleaned my cabin, washed bedding and towels and put fresh sheets on the bed, and bought me some breakfast makings for the morning. My guitar and dulcimer and my giant suitcase all arrived unscathed, and I pretty much went right to bed by the time we got to my new home in Naknek. Now picture a solid, homey little log cabin in a remote clearing, surrounded by trees. Now wipe that out of your head, because my cabin doesn’t look anything like that. It’s in a group of rental cabins owned by the local tribal corporation, right off the Alaska Peninsula Highway that runs between King Salmon and Naknek. It is very clean and quite comfortable, and as the director of the clinic, Steve, describes it is “a little lower quality than Motel 6.” But really it’s fine, nice and warm and only 2 miles from the clinic. The walls in most of the place are painted an interesting color, somewhere between salmon, coral, orange and pumpkin, depending on the light. It has most of the things I need, and will be just fine as soon as the 6 more boxes of my stuff arrive.

The vehicle I am driving is a 1998 Nissan pickup with a canopy on the back. It’s interesting to see as many really nice rigs here as I’ve seen, since most rigs get the stuffing beat out of them on these roads in a short time. If I decide to purchase a vehicle, I’ll be looking for a beater. It costs about $2500 to barge a vehicle here in the summer from Seattle or Anchorage, so everything is worth at least $2500. I am already in love with this place! I can’t describe why or how much I already feel at home, except for maybe it has a lot to do with how welcoming and friendly everyone has been so far. I met the mayor at the high school basketball tournament this weekend and got the skinny on all kinds of things. On Saturday I drove out to the cliffs just above the Bering Sea (about 1.5 miles from town) and noticed another pickup there with a guy sitting in it who waved me over. Turns out he was the Fish and Game wildlife biologist here for about 40 years, and he invited me to use his binoculars and spotting scope to look at the Beluga whales that were feeding out in Kvichak (kwee-jack) Bay. All I could see was the occasional brief flash of back as they fed on the smelt that were being pulled by the tide out toward them. Apparently the whales actually come quite a way up the Naknek river, which is about the size of the Pend Oreille. Then he gave me a copy of Sibley’s Birds of North America, saying that he gives away 10 or 15 of them every year! The beach was littered with chunks of ice, most of which were covered with sand and pebbles and were in some pretty unusual shapes. The weather has been ridiculously warm for January—in the ‘40s, and the snow is pretty much gone. Hopefully there will be more snow so that the sled dog races can still proceed this year.

Later that day Ann Shankel picked me up to go to her house and go for a walk with 3 of her 4 sled dogs out in the tundra. Ann is the local Rolfer and apparently the only one who still has sled dogs in the area. She is also a very successful cold weather gardener and fills many other roles in the community, including swim team coach (yes, Naknek has an indoor swimming pool!). Her dogs are mostly Inuit Huskies, who are the aboriginal sled dogs, still found in Greenland as well. They are HUGE, and amazingly friendly and playful.

Today I was invited out to Linda’s house that she shares with our director’s daughter and her husband and kids for lattes. Linda is one of our two Medical Assistants, and according to the other providers I’ve talked to, makes us all look good in her quiet way. They have chickens and will be my much-appreciated source of fresh, homegrown eggs. It is so beautiful here, even in the winter with tundra brown and gold!

I will have to figure out how to make peace with the wind; I have never liked wind and it’s windy pretty much all the time, I think. At least that ought to help keep the mosquitoes off in the summer! Stay tuned for more of the Rolling Tundra Review (you probably have to be a certain age to get that)!