The March Edition: Rolling Tundra Review

March is almost gone and the snow is melting here and turning the roads into streams of mud and potholes into ponds. It has been sunny nearly every day, even the days that begin with thick fog or progress into snow flurries in the afternoon. The days are increasing in length quickly, especially in the evenings when the sun is still relatively high in the sky at 9 PM already. The sun is still not up by 8 AM yet, but coming soon. One of the things I’m looking forward to is the sudden explosion of every green growing thing into the short, intense burst of summer we have here.

We actually had a tundra fire here about 3 weeks ago! I was listening to the dispatch on the EMS radio at home and trying not to laugh. I think every volunteer firefighter , engine, ambulance and pumper truck from both Naknek and King Salmon showed up. At one point I heard, “Dispatch this is engine two with three buckets and two flappers.” Flappers, I think, are sticks with, well, flaps of some material on the end that are used to beat out flames. I’ve seen them, but never used one. I figured that I would be called to the clinic shortly to treat twisted knees and broken ankles on people who hiked in the dark across tundra carrying buckets and flappers. But the wind blew the fire to the edge of a little lake and it went out all by itself. No one figured out how it got started, but no one got hurt and it was a great training exercise.

Speaking of tundra, if you have never tried to hike across it, let me try to describe it to you. Picture bowling balls of widely varying sizes randomly strewn across a sloping floor. The balls must have a flat side because they don’t roll down the mild slope. Then, cover the bowling balls all up with a layer of soft foam rubber that varies in thickness from ½ inch to 4 feet in no particular pattern. Get the foam rubber wet. Then cover the whole thing evenly with very low-growing ground cover plants and the occasional shrub, making sure to camouflage the sometimes-precipitous difference in height between the bowling balls and the floor. Try hiking briskly across this, while also leaning into a 30 mph wind that is blowing your hair into your eyes and mouth and two VERY large Inuit huskies slam into you from the side or behind every so often. OK, so the Inuit huskies weren’t out during the fire, but I did experience this scenario twice daily when I took care of my friend’s sled dogs and chickens while she was out of town for 10 days. You can only walk two dogs at a time otherwise they turn into a pack and are likely to chase caribou. Not that I’ve seen any caribou yet, but people assure me that they are not infrequently seen down by the grass flats and even on the beach.

My friend’s house is really an amazing thing! She built it herself, with some help from friends, from a lot of salvaged material as well as lumber and supplies that all have to come by barge in the summer. It has solar power and the water system consists of captured rain and snow melt that feeds into a 1,000 gallon tank located in the second floor of the house. She also has a back-up generator, a propane heater, a wood stove and a wood cook stove, so she’s pretty well set even without being on the grid or having a well. I have located a bigger place to rent starting in May, and if nothing goes wrong I’ll be in a 3 bedroom, 1.5 bath house on 2 acres off the highway with a sauna and a smokehouse and lots of tundra for the dogs to run in. It’s a little farther from the clinic but not much, and is just down the road from my boss. So now I’m trying to accumulate some furniture, since the place isn’t furnished. The place everybody turns to for buying and selling, as well as announcing and commenting on whatever is going on, is a Facebook page called the Bristol Bay Exchange. It’s kind of a digital newspaper, or at least fills some of the functions of one. And speaking of newspapers, one of the funniest reads I have encountered is the Dillingham police report that comes out in the weekly paper that serves Bristol Bay and the entire Aleutian chain. There are also police reports from other towns and villages, but the guy that writes the Dillingham one is obviously a frustrated journalist who is having to start at the bottom and work his way up. I will share some of the best ones in the next blog entry. Laying in your supplies for the winter when you live off the road system includes making a barge order in the spring to come from Anchorage when the ice is off the oceans and rivers. There is a catalog with just about everything you can think of in the way of foodstuffs (not fresh, but canned or boxed or jarred), household supplies, dog food, even straw bales, steer manure and fertilizer, all of which I ordered for gardening this summer. You have to buy at least 25 cases total (a bag of fertilizer counts as a case) and it costs 23 cents per pound for shipping. I went in with a friend on an order since neither of us had 25 cases by ourselves. It’s interesting how we comparison shop here—we check the barge catalog, then we check Amazon.com and see if they have the item cheaper or for the same price but free shipping on Amazon Prime. I do splurge on a weekly Full Circle Farms CSA box of fresh, organic produce flown up from Seattle. I am continuing to really enjoy the Camai clinic and all my coworkers. Katie Copps-Wilson is my PA counterpart and we are not only seeing patients but teaching sex ed and puberty at the school, painting and remodeling the provider office, and working on forming a Wellness group along with the Park Service and other community members. I think we will work well together! Here is Katie with some of her educational models:

I did a little exploring around the Red Salmon cannery the other day, which was deserted now but will be bustling 24 hours a day in June. I will close with a few of the pictures I took there.