Trip 3 - Days 26-28

Maqinermi /maq.ɩn.əɣ.m̥i/

Saturday was a bland day. I know this because now on Monday I'm having a difficult time remembering what I did. I know that I couldn't go use the internet. I went to the store and bought some food. I re-looked over my data and inspiration, and realized that I forgot to account for some data, so while I think I'm still on the right track, I'm slightly less ecstatic and excited.

Then the real fun began in the evening. The wind started blowing down from the North-East and the house started rocking. Then the tide came up. Two years ago, the river had frozen over and then it became warm again and the village flooded causing all sorts of destruction to the point that the Governor of Alaska came out and said some words, which were never acted on because who is going to hear what he said out here? I never understood how the river could cause that kind of mess but accepted it. I understand now. Wow, do I understand. The river didn't flood. The Bering Sea flooded. You see out here on the tundra what counts for a hill we would call a mound. We're already in the Yukon river delta so rivers and ponds out here are like roads to a city. And Low land, perfect for a river basin to form, is pervasive. So when high-tide comes in during the fall and the water levels rise 4-5 feet so as to negate the beach side cliffs, well when this happens Kotlik stops being 8 miles from the Bering sea and becomes prime coastal, archipelago real estate. The bearing sea starts to pour inland and fills these low depressions and new rushing rivers form and the Kotlik river begins to flow in two directions at once. So by dusk, I was no longer on the tundra but on a private island belonging only to this house, and the house next to us was atop the new river which just stretched across the village. Lucky we knew flooding was possible and the dogs had been moved to a high part of the board walk earlier. So watching this transformation was my evening. Now just imagine this happening after a thaw of the river ice where the tide is pushing chunks of ice inland. So now you know why everything is built on stilts and board walks out here and why that flood two years ago was so disastrous.

DIAGRAM OF FLOOD HERE IN PROGRESS.

Agasanermi /a.ʁa.za.nəɣ.m̥i/

By Sunday morning the flooding had receded and ignoring the slippery board walks, some of the houses still on private islands, and the vast expanse of newly formed ice all over what used to be grass land... everything was balk to normal. I went to church and on my way spotted a little white weasel with a black tip tail running around and under the boardwalks. It was cute. The I watched a guy and his little puppy try to catch it, but he never got close and the weasel eventually just disappeared around a corner. I met a nun who is out here for a bit. A little kid kept playing with my beard throughout the whole sermon-y thing. Then I headed back and read for a bit. Headed to the internet and after using a school computer to have J IT me we got my computer reconnected to the internet (I shut it on and off again and it worked). So we talked for a while. Then I went home and had moose and rice and crackers for dinner. The moose this time was quite good, it still had a layer of fat covering it but then there was real meat under that, so it must be a different cut and I like this cut a lot more. After dinner, I played the google ghost-magic flash game I kept loaded on my computer and beat it several times, but it is now my favorite game of all time! Basically, its a great game. I then spent so time preparing elicitation questions for Monday and principally for Tuesday. And then stayed awake until 3am listening to the radio.

Pekyutmi /pək.yut.m̥i/

So after a restless night I have officially decided to leave and go stay with a teacher. I made the arrangement last week but then started to second guess my choice to leave the house of a community member to go stay with a teacher who has two little girls. I've grown fond of this loft, and its a great place, with great dogs, and even though the guy is a bit of a recluse, he is at least Yup'ik. So maybe I'm a little bit more a part of the community. On the other hand, he doesn't talk at all, I don't think other than saying I'm staying with a member of the community, staying here does anything to make me more of an insider. And I'm tired of the radio being on all night when I have an early morning, and creeping past him to take as quiet a shower as possible in the morning when he's asleep. And of risking coming home to the door locked because he went out and I don't have a key. So I appreciate his hospitality and the native foods especially, I'll be sad to leave this place for new irksome events (like waking up early because they are going to school in the morning) but I think its time.

So on to a different topic. I woke up to see a line of sunrise bursting over the horizon like fire, it was magnificent. Of course true sunrise was still about 2 hours away (sunrise is about 10:30am and sunset is about 7:30pm, so the days are slowly getting shorter.) I prepped and walked very slowly over the ice infused wood walkways. Arriving at my consultants place, I met the dog musher. He's an elderly man who has had numerous surgeries and accidents and can barely hear anything and his sight is not much better. But once he gets talking, he just keeps talking. So, we talked about dogs, and dog sledding, and sled racing. About language. About the region. About his life. About dogs some more. I tried to get him to speak Yup'ik, or tell a story in Yup'ik. And after a false start he would go off on a tangent in English. He wasn't really comfortable speaking the language, he talked about how it was different language than down south and they speak more like the Inuit which has truth to it, but he doesn't use it much and has forgotten it, so besides a few gems of Yup'ik words and sentences, I have a two hour recording of him talking in English. It was interesting and I learned a bit and It will be useful, but It wasn't what I was hoping for. But I have a meeting again tomorrow with an elder and one on Thursday to record nursery rhymes hopefully.

So, I stopped by the store to pick up candy (HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!) and then headed home. I balanced my finances. Uploaded the recording to my files and meta-data-ed it out. I payed rent to this hostess for the last time (always sad to see money disappear), wrote this and then I will head to the school and talk to J and then come back and eat and pass out candy to people who come over. And then another early morning tomorrow to work!

Piurra! /pi.u.xa/