Sometimes we take things for granted . . .
It has been hard to find time to post lately as many things are happening right now so finding time to sit and let the writing flow has been hard for me. Not writers block by any means but I just haven’t felt like putting words to paper or in the digital age we live in type or text to some machine.
I traveled to a couple of villages last week and seeing them in an unfrozen state with children playing and jumping off the bridges into the water (freezing cold to many of us) and swimming in the river enjoying life in a much simpler way than many in the modern cities.
I enjoy my time in the villages and talking with the people and children who always seem to come out to see me when I am there. I do not know if it is because a ‘stranger’ is in town or they are curious to this dude with Hawaiian shirts and baseball cap riding around on a 4 wheeler. They come out and want to ride or see if I have anything for them, like kids all over the world have done in my travels. It is nice seeing the impact we have on the lives of so many people with sometimes doing just the little things.
I think we tend to forget that in our hurried lives.
I was talking to one of my crew in Kipnuk and it reminded me of a blog post I read several years ago in another of my villages so I thought I would post it here for you to see how other people live and function in a not so modern environment.
This was first posted in The Mudflats Blog from 2009 so gas prices are much lower than today and with the heat wave going on across the country in the Lower 48 I thought a refreshing ‘cooler’ story would take your mind off the heat.
From The Mudflats Blog . . .
I went shopping the other day. I zipped into Carrs on the way home from work, picked up some salad stuff, a couple loaves of bread, a box of Wheat Thins, and a few sweet potatoes. The gas station was across the way, and I filled up at $2.33/gallon. Then I headed back to the car that was still warm, and was home in about 10 minutes. I pulled into my heated garage and brought the food inside. I wasn’t worried about loading up because I can do this again tomorrow, and it’s not really an inconvenience.
That’s what my day is like when I need groceries, and it’s probably not too radically different from many reading this. As a matter of fact, if I ended the post here, you’d all probably be saying, “Yeah? So what?”
So, since we’ve been talking quite a bit about rural Alaska lately, I thought I’d share with you a great diary by Mudflatter Ann Strongheart who lives in the village of Nunam Iqua. Here’s what her day is like when she needs to go grocery shopping. Anyone who has lived in rural Alaska will be able to identify with parts of Ann’s story, but urban dwellers and those out of state – prepare to be astounded.
January 24, 2009
Today my husband and I decided to travel the 25 miles to Emmonak to get groceries. Here is what getting groceries entails in Nunam Iqua.
We got up and had to build a fire as the house was getting chilly and we had run out of stove oil a couple of days ago. Then we made coffee, using water that we had packed the night before from the watering point across the village. We took a 30 gallon Rubbermaid trash can (our water bucket) that we use STRICTLY for water storage across to the other side of the village and with two tokens (tokens are one dollar each) we got 20 gallons of water. We went across by snow machine towing our sled with the water bucket in it. Once we filled it we carefully brought it back across to our house and then lifted it out of the sled and up the steps into our porch and then into the house.
After having coffee my husband went out to chop firewood to keep the house warm. First he had to start the chainsaw and saw the logs he had gotten from across the river and then split them into the right size for our woodstove. While he was doing that I checked to ensure our baby sitter, my sister-in-law, was going to be able to come up to watch our 18 month old daughter, Cecelia (CC). It’s too long of a ride to take our baby with us during the winter and it’s too cold also.
My daughter, Cecelia, woke up and I changed her diaper make a mental note that I HAD TO REMEMBER to get diapers we are getting low. Then I made her breakfast. I felt bad because we had run out of bread and canned/dried fruit for her so her breakfast was dry cereal, cheese, and some 100% fruit juice gummy snacks plus a sippy cup full of very, very diluted grape juice with her liquid vitamins in it. We don’t let her have anything but milk and water during the day because I worry about her having too much sugar.
As she was eating my husband was finishing up chopping wood. My sister-in-law arrived with her two daughters to watch CC. During this time our power had gone out in the entire village while they worked on the generators. So we had to keep a close eye on the wood stove to keep the house warm.
My husband and I then started on putting on our winter gear. Long johns, sweatshirts, down snow pants, double layer coat, cap, neck warmer, goggles and heavy duty gloves. We let my sister-in-law know which way we were going to travel and then we went out and checked the snow machine over. Then we hooked up the sled my husband made out of plywood and 2” x 6”s and started up to Emmonak. We left Nunam Iqua at 1:30 p.m. We decided that the short cut trail was safe to travel on and going through the short cut would save us about 2 miles of traveling. The temperature was at 25 degrees when we left with a wind coming from the North. So with the wind-chill the temperature was about 15 degrees Fahrenheit. We had gotten several inches of new snow and there was a lot of powder on the trail and lots of snow drifts. After we had traveled about 8 miles on the short cut trail we came to the Yukon River.
My husband was driving and I was riding behind him. Usually, we would take two snow machines as it is safer to travel that way, in case one breaks down but with the high cost of fuel we couldn’t afford the gas to take both our snow machines. When we got on the Yukon my husband had to keep a close eye out for overflow. Overflow is water and holes in the ice. It is caused by the tides, when the tide comes in the ice rises and cracks and water seeps through the cracks and sometimes even makes dangerous holes that a snow machine could break through.
We crossed the Yukon and traveled another 5 miles where we passed Alakanuk and headed another 12 miles to Emmonak. We arrived in Emmonak and went straight to the Alaska Commercial Company Store. We got there at 2:45 p.m. We were surprised when we got there because when we left Nunam Iqua we had ¾’s of a tank of gas which is normally enough to go up and back. But this time when we got to Emmonak we had less than a ¼ tank of gas left. Due to there being so much powdered snow and drifts on the trail we had used much more gas than expected. So now we were going to have to get gas before we started coming back home.
We went into the store and bought our groceries. Here is a list of what we bought:
$ 8.99 —- 2 lbs Raisins
$ 3.10 —- 2 boxes of Jiffy Blue berry Muffin mix
$ 6.99 —- 1 bag generic cheerios
$10.25 —- 3lb Coffee creamer
$ 4.72 —- 8 packages unsweetened Kool-Aid
$17.34 —- 6 cans of fruit cocktail
$10.76 —- 4 cans vegetables (2 peas 2 beans)
$13.35 —- 1 large jar of Mayo
$ 6.45 —- 1 one pound box spaghetti noodles
$10.35 —- 5 lbs white rice
$13.40 —- 4 boxes of rice-a-roni
$ 4.49 —- 1 can spaghetti sauce
$ 5.00 —- 4 small cans chili
$ 8.95 —- 12 cup a noodles
$11.98 —- 2 loaves generic bread
$ 9.95 —- 6 rolls of Toilet paper
$12.90 —- 2 – 2lb boxes of pilot bread
$ 6.99 —- 5 lbs fresh potatoes
$ 5.99 —- 18 eggs
$ 3.81 —- 1 quart cottage cheese
$ 7.99 —- 1 pkg string cheese
$ 6.38 —- 2 pkg blue bonnet margarine
$ 3.99 —- 1 pkg frozen stir fry veggies
$ 9.15 —- 1 dozen frozen corn on the cob
$ 7.41 —- 1 pkg oven roasted turkey (for sandwiches)
$ 6.19 —- 1 pkg sliced ham (for sandwiches)
$14.78 —- 2 pkg Kielbasa Sausage
$11.42 —- 2 lbs ground beef
$22.36 —- 5 pork chops
$16.38 —- 2 pkgs Johnsonville Italian Sausage
$19.58 —- 2 pkgs Tyson IQF frozen drumsticks
$ 9.79 —- 1 pkg Tyson IQF chicken thighs
$ 6.49 —- 6 rolls generic paper towels
$82.55 —- 1 case size 6 Huggies diapers (144 diapers)
Total including tax
$409.26
The groceries were packed into 3 boxes plus the box of diapers. We took this out and put it in our sled and wrapped it with a tarp and tied it down so it wouldn’t slide around. We then went to the Emmonak Corporation Store Deli and shared a plate of fried shrimp and French fries and a can of pop totaling about $16.00. We left the Corporation Store and went to the Tank farm to get gas before we headed home. We bought 6 gallons of gas which cost us $43.50 but we were relieved because we had been hearing the rumors that Emmonak’s gas might jump to $9-$11 a gallon so we were happy we only had to pay $7.25 a gallon. We also bought a quart of oil for the snow machine and that cost us $10.85 with tax. We called my sister-in-law and checked on CC and told her that we were on our way home. It was 4:15 p.m. We left Emmonak and headed towards Nunam Iqua. It was starting to get a little stormy and snowing some and I was very happy that we had our GPS with us in case the storm got any worse. The storm did get worse and white out conditions were setting in we would have lost the trail if we hadn’t had our GPS with us showing us where to go. We had had the GPS tracking our route to Emmonak on the way up so it enabled us to follow our same trail back to Nunam Iqua and avoid any overflow.
When we left the Yukon and started on the short cut trail we stopped to stretch our legs and warm up a bit since the wind shifted a little and was coming from the east. My husband knew that there was a River Otter house close by and he walked over towards it. He found it all right because he fell through the snow as he stepped on its tunnel and ended up waist deep in snow. I laughed as he crawled out and then he asked me to come over and look. At first I hesitated thinking I don’t want to end up falling into its tunnel but then I followed his steps and walked over to look at it. The tunnel was huge and it was really neat to look at. The River otters here can reach up to 6 feet long and this ones tunnel was impressive.
We started up the snow machine and started again towards Nunam Iqua we saw a fox but no moose. Usually we see moose but because of the storm they were in the trees. (Ok when I say tree’s they are more like bushes, but the people here call them trees) We saw lots of moose, rabbit, and fox tracks along the trail. We arrived home at 6 p.m. Where we unloaded the sled and unpacked the groceries.
I made everyone sandwiches. CC was very happy that she got to have canned fruit and cottage cheese with her sandwich. And we were happy we got to have a break from moose and have a ham and turkey sandwich even though we couldn’t have lettuce or tomato on them because I knew that they would freeze on the way back down from Emmonak.
Well that’s what we have to do to get groceries here in Nunam Iqua. If you take into account that we had to use 12 gallons of gas to travel the 50 miles round trip to Emmonak then our total for the day was a little over $500. I hope that these groceries will make it several weeks and I hope the diapers will last until my COD order arrives from Fairbanks Wal-Mart.
I hope this gives y’all an idea of life here in the village!
Ann Strongheart
As you can see, life in the bush is anything but normal and for many the only known way to live and they look at us sometimes as strange people who get bogged down in all of the trials and tribulations that come with living in a city.
I hope you enjoyed this peak into bush Alaska and remember to not take things for granted as there are others who choose to live a simpler sometimes more rugged life style.
Ice
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