Snow Fort

The snow is coming down sideways or as William Carlos Williams says, "spit from the sky". It is filling the little cracks between the jamb and the door and in the keyhole and packing itself into the crevices on the exterior of the old red truck. I'm snug inside with only the pelting against the window to remind me that I'm not in Kansas anymore. (or never was).

Chunky Soup at the AC Store is $6.59 and a bag of chips is $9.99. To get freight here, some people drive the 180 miles from Fairbanks to Circle and put it on a riverboat. But more often, it is freighted out by plane at 50 cents/lb. The last Yukon River barge has come and gone, so most people are spending the weekend getting firewood, affixing their blue tarps over their roofs and hanging visqueen or blankets over their doors. MD, in the picture above had the pleasure of walking to the store with me and is protesting how mean I am. And she ain't seen nothin' yet.



Does this vehicle seem as unlikely here to you as it did to me? It looks like it had been ridden lately, so maybe not. At least no one had any hopes of the heater working instead of being constantly disappointed.


Todd is here teaching vocational classes to the high school students. He is sporting a beaver trimmed hat made for him by Juli and Miki Collins of Lake Minchumina where he lived for 3 years in the West Mountain Lodge. Now that's a place I'd like to visit. He moved back to Alaska from Michigan and is anxiously awaiting the arrival of his family. Jobs in Michigan are hard to find and in this seller's market, don't have benefits. I'm looking forward to going with him tomorrow to a game night with other FY teachers. I hope it's 60s Trivial Pursuit. My long term memory is still intact, even if my short term isn't. The building in the background was a restaurant about 4 years ago. The service was slow and the prices were high, but they were the only show in town. Now, there is a grill at the airport. Maybe I'll take myself out to dinner some evening.

A fun thing about teaching is that it forces you to define what you think and do so that you can teach it to others. I can write, but how can I teach someone how to think of ideas? Yeah, yeah, I know- do lots of prewrites or use graphic organizers...., but when I tell students that we are going to write a persuasive paper on putting a student rep on the school board, how can you counter the blank look that says, "what's a school board?"

The kids and I were talking about haunted schools today, a favorite topic of most students when they discover that I am sleeping in the school. I told them about the sounds outside my window (near a snowmachine trail) and they were very interested. The real Ft. Yukon haunted school though is the main building. One night when I was sleeping in the library, I was awakened to the sound of the vaccuum cleaner in the hallway. You guessed it- no one was there when I finally looked. I'm sure the carpet needed it, but at 2 in the morning, that ghostly custodian should have received a bonus.

The window is rattling. I guess no Northern Lights tonight. Just a good book read by the light of my headlamp and a warm comforter.