Sleetmute finale and more news here

Bat update:  I went over to the apartments to take photos for the new teacher.   No bad smells assailed me; the maintenance guys used a carpet cleaner and obviously did some scrubbing.  First floor looked and smelled great.  Upstairs, the furniture had been moved and the carpet cleaned too.  I was nervous about the bathroom because those bats went for the washer (top closed) and toilet last time.  I turned on the light switch and yep, a very live bat flew out from behind the washer, heading for the dark hallway over my head.  I ducked and headed out.  The bat deterrent has not yet deterred all the bats.  

The sky is so blue that when you look up, it feels like you can fall right in.  Thinking about friends and family in Washington, Oregon and California in their smoky worlds on this beautiful Fall day.

The ladies here have been so kind.  One ran out to give me this dried moose meat when I stopped to chat during a walk.  It's delicious! I'm saving some for family back home.  It smells deliciously smoky.

I was excited to be invited to pick rosehips tomorrow with a neighbor.  Good tea ahead!

Here are my last curated photos of my trip to Sleetmute last weekend.  It was difficult to decide which ones to include, but less is more I think.

An inviting homestead along the way in approaching Sleetmute by boat.

Riverside in front of S & D's place.  It seems so laid back it's hard to remember how much work it took to create this space.

B's tiny house that he created from a storage trailer.   Creative use of local resources.

Angela's moose stew- 40 minutes from freezer to bowl in her Instant Pot.  And fabulous with veggies from her garden.

T flew us home in his (and Angela's) plane.  It was overcast with high clouds and took 15 minutes from Sleetmute to Stony River.  Here are 2 views from the air  of the tiny island that houses Stony River .

The big blue roof is the school and the longest road is actually the airstrip.  That's it!  The whole village!  If we go out the front door of the school to the road and turn left 3 times, we've gone 0.99 miles and we've seen (almost all the houses). 

The bend in the river at the top of this photo is downriver to Sleetmute from Stony.  

We had lots of company last week, the superintendent, the literacy coach, the curriculum director, the special ed director, the tech director and maintenance men twice.  Nobody likes to stay overnight here because there really isn't any privacy sleeping in the school.  As I know first hand.  The apartments, modern as they are, are still housing bats. So, this week when the itinerant special ed teacher arrives to spend a week here, we'll see how it goes.

BTW:  Science is focusing on plants.  Kids chose a tree to observe through the season.  We collected examples of types of leaves, and did rubbings.   This week I hope to have students set up a controlled experiment (in distancing pairs) to graph plant growth with a selected variable.  I'll keep you posted.  Insects are still bad in the warm afternoons (55 degrees) so no hibernation yet.