Sunshine sparkled on Puget Sound July 19 as Danielle Homola and Mischa Burnett were married at the Japanese Pagoda in Tacoma's Point Defiance Park. The 1997 Western graduates were in Maui the next day. Mischa and Danielle are two of eight non-Yupik villagers and two of four 1997 Western graduates who, by coincidence, are starting their teaching careers in Kwig. Sean Morris teaches seventh and eighth grade while Lara Guthrie, who came to Kwig with her husband, Norman, teaches fourth grade. So we grabbed our luggage and started walking toward the biggest building we could see.
Transportation is, in one sense, very simple.
There aren't any cars, because there aren't any roads. In the summer, people drive four-wheeled ATVs, on boardwalks built like spider webs over the mushy thawed tundra. In winter, the boardwalks are buried, but everything is frozen solid, so you can drive anywhere on snowmobiles. Even the river and ocean freeze up, so those become highways. One mouse can gather a bundle that can barely be held in two hands.