23 and 3 hours old

Well, I knew it had been a while since I posted, then I finally looked at this old blog and realized it has been another month.

Yesterday was my birthday. I took the weekend off from the youth facility, and spent the day at NSEDC's Fishermen's Fair in Teller. Teller's about 65 miles north of Nome, so I drove out on Friday and spent the night in the KNOM rig, then went to the fair Saturday and drove back that night. I even got a story or two out of it for the news folder. (Now it's 2:30 a.m. and I have to be at work at 7:30, but I can't fall asleep. I've been trying since 9:15, so now I'm at work getting a head start on tomorrow... well, I WAS getting a head start. Now I'm obviously writing on my blog).

On the drive to Teller I saw some wildlife: a fox was hunting by the side of the road (the Nome-Teller "Highway" is 1.5 lanes of pockmarked dirt and gravel...). So I watched him for a while, then kept driving. I saw a herd of reindeer farther along, near Woolley Lagoon. There must have been about 150 of them, and one was almost completely white, just a few patches of brown, and he stuck out from the rest.

It rained almost constantly this week, but I took a nap while parked along the side of the road, and when I woke up it had stopped. I took the 12-gauge and my .22 and went for a walk out on the tundra for a couple hours. It was cold, and the wind kept the mosquitoes down. I found a reindeer skull with the antlers attached, vertebrae, jaws and ribs scattered around. I took a rib bone back but decided not to disturb the skull. It was set up too perfectly, and I'd like to remember it that way, I suppose.

(By the way, I haven't been able to find my camera the last couple weeks, so I don't have photos; you'll have to take my word for all this.)

I was walking along next to a stream, and I found a nice little knoll above a pond to test out the .22. It's pretty accurate. Moreso than I am, anyway.

Alongside the stream the ground was solid, but it got mushy as I walked back another way. One thing about walking on tundra: it's squishy. The ground just kind of wobbles and rolls under your feet. There are bulbs of solid ground jointed to muck, or at least that's what it feels like. Stumbling through it, the only way I could think was, "This must be what it feels like to walk on corpses." Yeah, it was gross.

***

Kristina left last month. She was a fellow volunteer and housemate. Her flight was scheduled for Sunday evening, and it was a big deal for her last night in Nome, and seeing her off at the airport, since she had been here for a year. She went through security early, so she could be one of the first on the plane. Then the fog came.

Her flight was cancelled, so she rescheduled for the next morning. Yep, cancelled again, but not before we all went through another round of goodbyes, and checking her bags, and driving her to the airport and making sure her connecting flights to North Carolina were in order.

(I was going to post a full blog entry on the airport ordeal, but as you can see, that never happened...)

Anyway, the short story: 4 days of fog and 8 itineraries later, Kristina finally left Nome Thursday night.

Wow. Just writing about that made me tired. Maybe now I can go to sleep (It's 3 a.m.). Oh, and for those of you who have not heard, I bought my ticket home. I leave August 4th on the 151 (morning flight) and get into Sea-Tac at 7 p.m.


Take care and God bless. Good night.
Jacob