From: system@coldbox.cojones.com (Bryan Lockwood)
Newsgroups: misc.rural
Subject: More Alaskana
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 92 00:59:30 PDT
Organization: The Generation Gap

Well, folks, I got a lot of mail in response to my introductory post.
Probably 20 peices already. Most folks are asking questions about this and
that...

I received one particularly good list of questions from this fellow Peter
Nielson. Having read and responded to it, I thought, "Why should he hog all
this material, when I could post it for all the other ruralites (and ruralite
wannabes) to see? So, anyhow, here are "The Answers" to the Alaska test. Hope
you folks enjoy 'em.

I hereby solemnly swear that everything I'm about to say is the Real Thing.

So, to business:

>I am quite sure that most folks in the smaller 49 states are very much
>unaware of the actual facts of living in the rural arctic.

Actually, we Alaskans speak of the contiguous states as the "*lower* 48", and
we tend to ignore Hawaii altogether. Except at vacation time. Yes, we have an
attitude. You would, too, if you were still picking ice out of your eyelashes
while lamenting the loss of a good S-K wrench which had *shattered* from
being dropped in the cold.

> On the
>other hand, we all have our preconceived notions and our list of
>things that "everybody knows" about the arctic that just might not be
>quite the truth.  You could probably write a good book based on what
>you know from living there.  First, try chatting with us for a while
>to test out -your- notions of things the rest of us find intersting or
>need to know about you.

Actually, I've been here long enough that I've sort of forgotten the
remarkable things about the place I live (much as a farmer becomes accustomed
to the "remarkable" smell of his pigsty). I've made a few newbies sort of
angry by simply forgetting to remind them of things that they needed to know.

>Here is a list of a few Southern Predjudices and Notions about Alaska
>and its inhabitants, for a start:

>  - Eskimo dwellings - does anyone (or everyone) make igloos?

Actually, the Inupiat (Eskimos from the North Slope region of Alaska) rarely
used igloos (they spell it "iglu", BTW). Rather, they used caribou-hide tents
when on the move and sod huts at their semi-permanent dwellings. There's not
really very much snow in this Arctic Desert, you see.

Folks from 'round here did occasionally build igloos, but more often, in an
emergency, would find a riverbank (or other place where snow tends to drift)
and burrow in. Or so I'm told. I've never seen a real iglu. I'm not sure
anybody in these parts has.

>  - The Refrigerator Salesman and the Eskimo.

I don't know about the past, but today, most folks (yes, even the Eskimos)
live in comfortable frame houses with central heating, and electric or
propane cookstoves. So, it almost follows naturally that just about everyone
has a refrigerator (since butter or mayonnaise kept at 40 degrees below zero
tends to be a bit unwieldy), and, yes, a deep freeze. The deep freeze
actually still surprises me, since one could easily build a box and place it
on the porch, acheiving essentially the same result! However, that would
still leave us a bit unprepared for summer.

>  - How many different words for snow in Inuktituk?

Inuktituk? What's that? It may be a Canadian, Greenlandic, or Siberian
dialect. But around here they speak Inupiaq. I think there are something like
27, of which I can recite perhaps three to five on a good day. And I beleive
all those different words for snow are perfectly valid around here. Y'know,
the words not only describe the snow but the conditions which bring it.
There's the "warm west wind bringing soft, wet snow", the "big fat
slow-falling flakes we get once or twice right at the beginning of winter",
and the "heavy as rocks and almost as hard as ice snow drift", etc. I made
those up on the spot, but I'll bet that if I asked a "real" Eskimo to say any
of those phrases in Inupiaq, he would use at most two words. And, Eskimos have
conjunctions, same as we do.

>  - What on earth does one do for a living in the arctic besides hunt?

Office work, if you can get it.

>  - Does it ever stop snowing?

Sure it does. Right now (11:26 PM, Monday July 27), it's sunny and warm
outside. About 65 degrees ambient temperature and just enough wind to keep
the mosquitos down, which makes it a pleasant day.

In fact, it rarely snows up here. We get a big bunch of snow at the beginning
of winter (usually early September), which peters out around mid October or
so. Then the same snow just blows around until it starts snowing again in
late February (early) or mid March.

>  - Do any plants grow?

Yes. But they grow *real* sloow, man. During my second summer here, I was
lamenting the lack of trees one day. There happened to be a biologist in the
group, and he put my misconception to rest forevermore. Kneeling down, he
rooted around in the tundra for awhile, and finally located... a pine tree!
It was just a little scraggly vine-like thing, hugging the ground. The
biologist guessed that it was perhaps 50-100 years old. In some places, we
get willows that grow like bushes. But these are kind of rare.

The tundra is actually quite amazing stuff if one gets the chance to watch it
throughout the summer. It's been frozen solid all winter long, and covered
with a blanket of snow. Then, one day, you spot the first bit of brown through
the snow. "Summer's coming", you think. Next time you notice, there are huge
brown splotches everywhere, but in some spots the snow stubbornly clings for
a few weeks or even more. Still, the ponds and lakes are frozen. Next thing
you know, the berries are ripening, and flowers are blooming. The tundra
changes color every few days as some other flower decides to bloom, crowding
out its predecessor. It's almost like excitement in slow motion.

And I should note that potatos *don't* grow in the short Arctic summer. Or at
least my father and I couldn't quite turn the trick. Y'know, the hardest part
was actually finding some dirt (which we moved to an ex-oildrum, split
lengthwise)! The tundra is a terrible place to go looking for dirt, since
there is literally a larger volume of roots than dirt! Digging a ditch in
tundra is hard work!

>  - Just how big are your mosquitos, anyway?

I've got one named "Henrietta" who can almost lift a match head. I feed her
lemmings. Or should I say, I give her lemmings to feed on.

In all reality, they are big. And numerous. The tundra is like one huge peat
bog, water everywhere. A great breeding ground for mosquitos. I have
literally been in clouds of mosquitos dense enough to darken the sun. And I
think that mosquito dope just pisses them off.

>  - Is "Eskimo" really an insulting term invented by the Cree?

I'm not really sure (check with the tour guide... the locals don't know!). I
beleive I heard somewhere that the French bastardized an Indian term into the
word "Esquimaux", which was supposedly a contemptuous way of saying "eaters
of raw flesh" (alternatively, "eaters of raw fish", although the Eskimos do
eat both raw fish and raw caribou... though they tend to like it frozen. I've
sampled both, and they're not bad at all.). Maybe the Frenchman who started
it all was having coffee with a Cree... beats me. I do know that Eskimos and
Indians historically didn't get along that well... and in many cases, still
don't. There seems to be more animosity on the Indian side, though there are
certain brands of Eskimo who take the distinction pretty seriously.

>  - What, besides the obvious, do folks do for entertainment?

Mosquito weightlifting championships. Attempt to detain the lemmings (it's
the humane thing to do, after all). Train polar bears to ride unicycles.
Tell tall tales to touroids.

Basketball is a BIG deal 'round here. Folks play basketball night after
night, and get angry when I suggest volleyball for a change of pace. Uhm...
the boob tube is, of course, a big time-eater. Alcoholism is rampant 'round
here, as are pregnancies (and the girls start *young*! Which is, I suppose,
their cultural right..). Softball in summer.

Subsistence hunting and fishing are still quite fashionable hereabouts. What
else? Hmmm... the simple art of visiting is still a biggie, actually. Eskimos
are fairly taciturn folk, so not a lot of talking goes on. Card playing is
popular (and boy are they good at it!). Oh yeah... bingo, 5 nights a week. I
never go. Except when I'm forced to call numbers.

And, of course, Usenet news. A sure cure for those winter blues.

>Mind you, I know the answers to several of these, or at least I smugly
>feel that what I know is much more the truth than what other folks
>believe.  The CORRECT answers, properly written, could easily be sold in
>bookstores, and might even make a decent National Geographic Special
>on TV, if that hasn't already been done.  (I don't watch TV more than
>maybe four or five hours a year, so I don't know much about what's
>been on recently.)

Well, then perhaps I'd better copyright this post! Naw..

I actually got on TV once by being here. I used to live in Kaktovik, which is
the only village in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Currently there is a
political battle going on, to open the ANWR to oil exploration and possible
development. This brings lots of people to Kaktovik... even Jimmy Carter came
up once. I just happened to walk past the camera, in a segment they kept. (Or
so I'm told, I never saw it). No big deal, and I usually avoid the folks with
video cameras. Just this winter, some folks from the Exploratorium in San
Fransisco came to Atqasuk (the village I live in now) and did some filming in
our school.

The gist of the above is, we get quite a few journalists and author-types up
here. And we get quite a few of the kind of folks who do ridiculous things
like riding motorcycles or ultralight airplanes to the north pole. For my
part, I sort of politely shun them... it might be catching.

I don't know if any of these are the CORRECT answers. I suspect that we
Alaskans are just as unhip to some of the hype as are many of the touroids.
One hint, though: if you come here and don't want to be marked instantly as a
tourist, don't use the words "cheechako" or "sourdough". I think Soapy Smith
must have invented those words in order to tell the tourists from the locals
when setting prices.

You see, most Alaskans are transplanted from elsewhere. And sadly enough,
many are just here for the money (though that's dying out as the oil money
slowly oozes elsewhere), and have plans to retire in other states.

Oh yeah:  don't let anyone from Anchorage tell you that they're from
Alaska. The running joke is that Anchorage (our largest city at just over 200
thousand) is "just 20 minutes from Alaska...". I've gotten many of the same
questions as those above from folks who've spent YEARS in Los Anchorage!

What's the absolute coolest (no pun intended) thing about being up here?
Perhaps it's the feeling you get when, in the heart of winter, you put on
your 30 pounds of winter gear and go for a walk, or a snowmachine ride. After
20 minutes or so, you stop, and take a look around. As far as the eye can
see, there's not a sign of mankind in any direction. It's dark out (at 4 pm in
the afternoon), but the moon hangs full in the clear midnite-blue sky, so
close you can feel its presence. The only sound is that of the wind sliding
over the tundra and through the folds of your clothing, gusting and relaxing
with  barely-restrained power (even though it may already be strong enough to
put you off balance if you're not careful). The horizon is unblocked in all
directions. At once, you feel both smaller (against this huge and powerful
landscape) and larger (nothing in the way... you could walk practically
forever without having to alter your course to avoid obstacles) than you did
when you lived in a city. Short of floating amidst the Milky Way, I can think
of nothing which better teaches a man respect for the size of the Universe.

(The flip side pleasure of such an experience is *warming up* again as you
strip off all those wrappings next to the oilstove! Getting the feeling back
in one's earlobes and cheeks is painful and pleasuring at the same time...)


-----
Author: Bryan Lockwood (system@coldbox.cojones.com)
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