AKs in AK....

It's been quite awhile since we've last updated you on our adventures in bush Alaska. It seems like the closer we get to Christmas break, the busier we seem to be. We're definitely looking forward to jumping on a plane next week and going home for some precious time with family and friends. When days get tough, we daydream about the food we're going to eat or the shopping we're going to do (that last one's mostly Christina). At the same time, though, we've had some unique experiences here that we wouldn't trade for anything. Here's a brief look at what we've been up to for the past month:

For Thanksgiving, the teachers gathered at our principal's house to share a meal together. Everyone was supposed to bring a dish to share. We ended up bringing turkey, stuffing, gravy, deviled eggs, and green bean casserole. Someone made a comment that we didn't have to bring so much food and we responded, "We wanted to make sure all our favorite foods would be here for Thanksgiving!" It was a nice day to just spend some time together outside of the often-stressful context of school. Everyone enjoyed themselves so much that we're instituting a faculty dessert and game night. Saturday night we'll be getting together to play games, have some laughs, and chow down...I think we're going to name it "Mental Health Night"!

I took the opportunity of having a few days off from school to set some canine traps out in the valley, with the hopes of catching something exotic (i.e. wolf, wolverine, lynx, etc). The day after Thanksgiving, I was driving out to check my traps when I spotted these tracks along the Honda path.

My heart beating in my throat, I realized these weren't fox tracks and I was too far out for it to be somebody's dog (about 7 miles out, up and down some difficult terrain). I realized the tracks were headed straight for one of my traps about a mile away. 

Lo and behold, the animal came over this hill on the trail to the right, down the conjoined trail at the bottom, then turned around and came back up the trail to the left where my trap was sitting at the near edge of those bushes. The animal ended up stepping ONE INCH from my trap! (which I had baited with an unusual cocktail of wolf lure, sheep wool, the rib bone of a seal, and some of the innards of our Thanksgiving turkey). Later that day, I showed Gary a picture of the tracks, and without batting an eye, he said "Wolf." Guys trap out here their whole lives and don't come close to nabbing a wolf, so I feel pretty lucky that I came so close my first attempt. Word got around about my near miss, and when Russ heard, he said, "Ah, I thought it might have been a wolf. I saw three little piggies running over the hill." Needless to say, Russ supplies us a lot of comedic relief around here. His corny sense of humor reminds us of our own fathers!

Speaking of seal bone, we got the opportunity to try seal when one of my student's fathers caught one across the bay in Platinum.

The meat is dark and oily, and has a unique, pungent smell to it. We cubed it and cooked it like steak. Christina took one bite and was done. Ben and I ended up eating a few pieces each. It is not unpleasant, but is definitely an acquired taste. It doesn't have a fishy taste, but you can tell it came out of the ocean. Many gussacks (Yupik word for white people) don't really care for seal meat. While I wouldn't pay for it, I would still eat it if it was offered somewhere.

Dusk in the valley looking out across the Bering Sea. 

Sometimes I'm reminded we live on the edge of the world.

Last Saturday, Gary took Rick and I out past the airport on a trail that leads to some old beaver huts. I told Gary that I wanted to try to catch an otter, and he thought they might have taken up residence in the old huts.

Overgrown with tundra grasses, this big mound is the remains of a beaver hut.

Rick and Gary shootin' the breeze while I set traps.

I ended up setting a few traps, but the next two days we had a lot of rain, making the soft, permeable tundra floor almost impassable. On Monday, I headed back out to check my traps, and there were a few scary moments where my Honda sunk in so far I couldn't see my tires. With daylight fading fast, getting stuck three miles out from town wouldn't have been much fun. Before I made it to the sets, I decided to pull the traps no matter what I caught (or didn't).

Fortunately, I ended up catching this mink, putting a nice end to my '14 trapping season. I plan on trapping for fox when we come back in January, but for now I'm done.

Ben, the other new teacher, recently bought a .22 rifle off Rick. After waving it around his living room one day with the clip in backwards saying he was going to go shoot it outside (this was around dusk), we decided that he needed to have a little hunter's safety course before picking up his new gun again. So, Nado (our itinerant social worker), Gary, and I took Ben out the trail for some practice.

This was one of the most entertaining evenings we've had in the bush. Gary, Nado, and I all grew up hunting and around guns, so of course everyone was standing back and peppering him with advice, laughing hysterically at his shooting and his stance, and screaming and cursing at him whenever he pointed the barrel towards one of us or did something else that would be unapproved by the NRA. After some practice on the .22, I brought out my .45 and showed Ben how to load it, handle it, and shoot it. I warned him about the kick and then let him try it out. On Ben's first shot, the gun flew back in his hands and almost smashed into his face! Fortunate that it didn't, because a Medivac trip to Dillingham wouldn't have been much fun. But we enjoyed ourselves, and feel that Goodnews Bay is a little safer now, even if Ben did conclude the evening by saying, "Now I'm gonna get myself an AK-47!"