It hasn't been easy going from days where I'd be so busy I'd forget to eat, to days of open ends and possibilities. Clocks are, after all, human inventions. They first appeared in Europe in the fourteenth century and became common by the sixteenth. With them came a whole new sense of order and demand for discipline. But here, where seal hunting takes precedence over doctor's appointments, nature still leads the charge.
Time is in the hands of the fish, the animals, the weather and the moods of the sea.
When the ice goes out in June, fish-camp season begins. When snowstorms shut down the 72-mile gravel road that connects our village to Nome, isolation season begins. And it lasts until the snowplows set us free in May. I'm not saying no one makes an effort to be on time around here. On Sunday mornings, the church bell rings fifteen minutes before eleven o'clock to help people make it to services on time.