Margaret is a local photographer. She grew up in Nikolai a village of 75 people 58 miles from here. You can get there by snow machine, boat, plane or dogsled. She said she was both Athabaskan and Yupik. I don’t want to use derogatory terms but Athabaskans are interior Natives and are considered Indians, and Yupik are coastal Natives and are considered Eskimos (which is a derogatory term). She kind of chuckled and said, “you know they are not supposed to get along.”
She pulls her camera equipment around town in the best sled we’ve seen here. She’s been encouraging me to visit both the museum and the McGrath Light and Power office to see her work. With quarantine over, we headed to the electric company office. The only office employee there, a man named Ralph, 29 years old, turned out to be Margaret’s son. Margaret is married to Ralph the mayor. Despite any possible favors from either Ralphs, she had a great shot of two owls, a beaver, and Denali.
It warmed from -6 to 19. A good day to get out on the river. Terry on ski and me winter running shoes. No balaclava, mittens or large jacket. Easier to move and breathe. We found two booties one we could extricate from the ice and the other embedded frozen evidence for the future to postulate on what we were doing to our dogs.
We hoped to get four miles up river, but at three miles we ran into overflow ice and after trying to walk gingerly with spayed toes inside my shoes, and intentional breathing slowly, I’d had enough. The ice is 40 inches thick, so I wasn’t worried about going under, but getting shoes and socks submerged would not be good.
Closer to town, a plane appeared to be buzzing us. It had the blue and yellow colors of Alaska on the bottom. It was the State Trooper’s plane, our landlord. He dipped his wings to wave.
Mountain Peace 