Greetings from sunny McGrath! Below is the forecast for most of the rest of my time here.
Some of you asked for more photos of my little village, so yesterday I went on a major expedition, starting with the dump. I waited until the weather app said it was going to reach maximum heat for the day, around 3 PM when it was forecast to be around minus 9 degrees F. Compared to the minus 26 that I had when I woke up, it seemed like a heatwave. Sadly, I didn't get any pictures because there was a very nice man there who helped me unload my trash from my vehicle and I didn't want him to think I was a complete cheechako taking pictures of an enlarged, rectangular, roofed burn barrel currently smoldering. I haven't seen a dump quite like this before. There are some containers for batteries and aerosol cans, so it's not completely primitive. Turns out the dump is only about 1/4 mile beyond my cabin so it wasn't much of an adventure, so I decided to tour more of McGrath and take some pictures. At that temperature my phone quickly lost it's battery, so in spite of cuddling it inside my coat, I didn't get a lot of pictures, so I'm including a few that I got last week. First stop the tidy little cemetery.
By the time I took this picture my phone was refusing to focus and then just quit altogether, so the beautiful carved wooden prop and pilot's picture was actually the last one I took. There is something very moving about these small village cemeteries; so many of the headstones or markers are so personal and almost intimate. Many of them are quite old, and many of the names on the wooden Russian Orthodox crosses can't be read anymore. I didn't take a picture of it, but there is a nice little roofed kiosk at the front of the cemetery that has a map of graves and names . The marker below is an ordinary heavy iron plate stood on end. I think the small marker with the name and dates was probably added later.
Apparently some of the interior tribes still do the customary burial house for the dead. I'm not sure if that's what this is, but it looks a lot like the ones we saw last summer in a cemetery in a small village on the way to Talkeetna. The Russian Orthodox man who takes care of the little church and the cemetery was an incredible wealth of history, especially of the Russian Othodox religion and it's history there. He is the one who told us about the custom of making a house for the deceased, and there were quite a few in his cemetery, although most of them were smaller.
Right across the road is the McGrath school. Right now they have about 40 kids. There is a very nice full fenced playground behind the school. The museum is just in front of the school. I have been there a couple of times, and I will go back. It's an amazing museum; it's only open Wednesdays and Fridays from noon to 3, so I have to go on my lunch hour so it may take me every Wednesday and Friday that I'm here to see it all. Stand by for those pictures.
Across the road from the museum is a wonderful display of lawn art. So much more interesting and creative than gnomes or flamingos! I wish I could get a better picture because all the caribou and moose antlers all up that leaning pole just don't show up very well. The fence in front is also adorned all the way across with racks.
This is the side of the shed adjacent to the lovely fence.
Here's the post office--in case you want to send me a care package--PO Box 10.
Here's the view from my cozy one room cabin:
Here's something that tells you that you are in interior Alaska:
It's a stanchion to plug in vehicles out in front of the clinic. I think we may see more of this kind of thing in other places for electric vehicles, but up here it's pretty hard to get a vehicle to start without plugging them in. I'm pretty sure that my co-workers looked askance at me taking pictures of these.
In northern Idaho you see old pictures of draft horses pulling huge loads of huge logs; in Alaska it's dog teams.
Here's our local radio station, KSKO, which has been in business for a lot of years and is a public radio station.
I took a walk along the Kuskokwim river and came across this lonely bench with this sign just across the road:
I don't know the story behind this or even if the two are connected, but I think it likely.
Here's the frozen Kuskokwim with a creek coming into it.
It was kind of strange to happen upon these two Blackhawk helicopters parked at the small air strip next to the river where the small Alaska Air Transport planes come and go. Apparently the military does maneuvers around here. I flew in on Reeve Air, which uses 9-seater King aircraft and has a small terminal at the larger airport on the other side of town (not far away, believe me).
This assignment has shown me a couple of things about myself. I need my solitude like I need the air I breathe and the water I drink, but even I have had more solitude than I really want. There is satellite TV here and all I can say about that is that I have never seen SO MANY channels before; and very little to nothing that I care to watch. Public TV is the best, not in small part because it doesn't have so many commercials, but for the first time in my life I have turned the TV on just for the sound of a human voice. I have discovered that I just can't watch TV anymore. Not having had TV reception most of my adult life, I just can't get used to having to sit through 10 minutes of commercials for every 5 minutes of a show. I also can't relate to much I see on there. I don't feel in any way a part of the culture anymore. I never really did feel at home in the mainstream but now I don't see anything that I recognize. Alaska has changed me, and there is no going back. It's not just about TV, it's so many things. I should have been born here because Alaska feels more like home to me than anywhere else, but my heart is even more with my family, so there I will be based from here on out. But a large part of my heart will always be here in the villages of Alaska, and I hope I can continue to work up here at least a few months a year. That being said I am looking forward to Christmas with the whole family this year for the first time in several years!
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