SATURDAY, AUGUST 31

SATURDAY, AUGUST 31:

     A long and somewhat disappointing day.  We had booked a tour for Barrow.  We wanted to sample some part of northern Alaska – and had considered a few different options.  Did  not  want to drive, even just the truck, up the Dalton Hwy (aka the Haul Road), which ends at Prudhoe Bay, even if we went just part of it.  An awful road, few services, and not much to look at; essentially a road for truckers supplying the oil fields, although some intrepid tourists do drive it.   We eventually chose a fly/tour pkg for Barrow.

    We chose Barrow because it’s the northernmost point in North America (well, I guess if you don’t count Greenland) – definitely the northernmost American town.  Right on the Arctic Ocean.  So we thought that was distinctive and would give us bragging rights.  And, it’s a definite Native Inupiat (an Eskimo sub-group) community (although certainly not exclusively).   It’s actually the largest town on the North Slope (of the northern Brooks Range mountains girdling northern Alaska).  So we thought we’d get some good exposure to the Inupiat culture.  Most guidebooks talked about how they blend the traditional with the modern.

     The day started with an early commercial flight from Fairbanks.  We landed in Barrow shortly before 10:30.  After a while, we met our tour guide.  There was some confusion & disruption to the normal flow, as the night before, the Top of the World hotel burned & had extensive damage.  The Native corporation up here owns this particular hotel (one of I think 3 in town), and also owns the tour company.  So they were in crisis management mode, trying to handle their overnight customers who now had no place to stay, as well as this tour (which had about 8 or 10 people on it).  Pepe’s, the restaurant adjacent to the hotel, and known for being the northernmost Mexican restaurant in the world (T-shirts advertised the same), was also destroyed.  We heard a couple of people in our group moan, “But that’s half of why I came!”

     We were let off at another restaurant, and invited to have breakfast or lunch on the house, to compensate for the confusion of the morning.  Which we thought was a very nice gesture, and it allowed the young man who was our tour guide & driving the van to take some displaced guests to the airport.  

     After eating, we all boarded the van.  Of course, this is all tundra territory.  Not a tree in sight, and totally flat.

 

 

 

 

    Our first stop was the Arctic Ocean.  Man, did that look cold on this cloudy, cold day.  (We were told that the wind-chill temp today was 25.  Mild compared to normal double digit below zero temps in the long winters – even to 40 or 50 below).  Low waves today. They can get up to 8 or 9 feet here during a storm, we were told.  I got brave enough to put my hand in the water – that was fun, dodging the waves while getting close enough to sample the water.  A few of us were running around like little kids doing that.   I felt the biting cold on my hand for several moments afterwards; could hardly move my fingers!

 

     Then we went to the Inupiat Heritage Center in town, where some of the locals performed traditional dances & song for us. 

 

Very similar to what we’d seen in Southeast, with the Tlingits.  Only the dance movements here seemed to only be from the waist up, no leg movement.  It was ok, but not any better or substantially different than what we’d seen before.  Many focused on kids’ performances – so it seemed a little like a school program.  All of the singing sounded the same.  Even Bill said they only used 4 notes.

 

 

 

 

 

.  They also had a little demonstration of some simple traditional indoor games that they play during the long winters, such as getting the little ball into a cup (similar to what some of us have played, but made with animal bones) and a type of tug-of-war.  When asked how universal these games & activities were, the response was totally reasoned:  “It depends on how much the individual parents promote them.”   

 

 

 

                                                This young man was our tour guide, as well as a game demonstrator:

 

 

 

 

      We visited some afterwards with some of the performers, who were very sweet and willing to talk & share & answer questions.  A couple of the teenaged girls had been raised on traditional Inupiat food – a lot of caribou & reindeer meat, and muktuk, made from the skin and blubber of the Bowhead or Beluga whale.  When asked what it tasted like, they said it had a salty taste.  They also use it to mix with the caribou meat, which is very dry, so the blubber gives it some moisture.

     After this, we looked at some of the exhibits in the other part of the center.  A large portion is devoted to whaling.   Whaling was a huge, integral part of the Inupiat’s traditional lifestyle for centuries.  They conducted both springs and fall hunts, and were extremely skilled.  In fact, when the New England whalers began running out of the lucrative resource on the Atlantic (not only was the blubber used for lighting & lubricating the machines of the Industrial Revolution; the baleen in the whales’ upper jaw was had properties like elastic, and was used for everything from women’s corset stays to fishing poles), they were forced to sail around Cape Horn and into the Pacific.  Necessity drove them further & further north, where eventually they stumbled upon the whaling grounds in the Bering Strait and the Inupiats.  The New Englanders began using much of the Inupiats’ technique and technology, as well as the Natives themselves on their crews, and a combined  new type of whaling evolved that was a fusion of both Inupiat & American techniques & knowledge.  At the same time, some of these New England commercial whalers decided to stay in the Arctic and build new lives there.  They married Inupiat women, and founded new dynasties in Barrow.  Whaling is still practiced today in Barrow, both as a subsistence lifestyle, and, somewhat less, for its traditional ceremonial & religious value (a successful whaling crew traditionally believed that a 60-ton whale had given itself to them as a result of their virtuous living in the preceding year.

 

     There is a room in this Center called the Traditional room, which actually serves as a community room where locals can remember, practice, share, and pass on some of their traditional activities.  For example, in February and March, whaling crews build, repair, and cover their skin boats in this room.  Bill and I were just heading down there when our tour driver said the van was getting ready to leave.  We would have enjoyed spending some time there.  It’s a very comfortable, attractive building, and actually a part of the NPS, and affiliated with the New Bedford Whaling National Historic Site.  

     The rest of the afternoon was essentially driving around town.  A few of the stops were mildly interesting . . .   the football team playing on a $1 million playing field.  Our guide told the story of how Barrow High School had never had a football program until just in the past 10 years, when the wife of Miami Dolphins  player Larry Czonka raised half of the needed funds for the field, and the community raised the other half.  Their team’s name:  The Whalers, what else??  And until recently, after every winning game, the team & coaches would celebrate by jumping into the Arctic, just 100 yards away.  (They recently stopped due to a spate of catching colds & flu!)  

    Also, there’s a small monument erected to Will Rogers & Wiley Post, whose small plane went down just a few miles from here.  Our guide told us how his great-great grandfather (I think) was out hunting right near the crash site, saw it, and ran all the 16 miles to the village to report what had happened. 

     Some of the guys got out at the Napa Auto Parts store to see the other products sold there which wouldn’t be found in any other Napa store in the country:  firearms, ammunition, and sophisticated whaling harpoons (based on the whaling techniques developed by the traditional Inupiat whalers centuries ago).  (We have no photos of any of these because somehow Bill’s outer camera lens got cracked when it went thru security, and the battery died on my camera, which we carry as a back-up.)

     But most of of what we saw around town just looked like bleak, colorless poverty.  Ramshackle houses, heaps of machinery and/or motorized vehicles (mostly snowmobiles) lying around, etc.  Dwellings placed very close together.  All dirt, muddy roads.   Looked like pictures I’ve seen of Mexican or Nigerian slums.  Was depressing.   But we don’t live here and know the whole story.  We don’t know if the way the housing appears is truly due to poverty, or to other factors.  Maybe the ultra harsh weather has more to do with it.  I’m sure that’s why there are no paved roads – because of the permafrost just underneath the dirt’s surface. Likewise why nearly all of the buildings are up on stilts, giving the landscape a kind of tentative, fragile quality.

 

 

    And it is another culture.  Clean, neat, kept-up homes just may not be important to these folk – or they may have never been exposed to them.  (Their traditional homes were not necessarily igloos – those were mainly used as “hunting lodges” – but kind of lean-to’s dug into the earth,  for insulation & protection from the fierce winds, and supported by whalebones).  And I’m talking about exterior qualities, not interiors, of the structures.   I tried to look up some data on Barrow’s poverty rate as compared with other Alaskan towns, and Barrow’s rate is right at the state’s rate as a whole.  And slightly less than that of Wrangell – that Norman Rockwell-appearing town!).  And  less than Glennallen and Seward.    So – no real answers as to why the community looks as poor and flat as it does.  I think you’d need to live here as part of the community for a while to really come up with those answers.

     At any rate, we both think that we would have enjoyed the afternoon more if we left on our own to spend more time at the Heritage Center/Museum.  We could have spent more time interacting with the locals in that one Traditional Room and probably left with a more positive, lighter feeling.

     But we had the opportunity to spend a few hours in a truly different culture, around people who have survived and even thrived amidst one of the harshest, most unforgiving landscapes on the planet.  We were blessed by their happy, sweet faces & spirits.  And, even as I write this, I realize that there were definitely more positive, warm images to take away with us than negative.  

     Back at the Barrow airport about 5:30 for a 6:30 flight to Anchorage.  Barrow has daily (at least) commercial air service from Anchorage & Fairbanks, which delivers the town’s mail, as well as most other supplies.  A 1 hr 45 minute flight to Anchorage, and then a 3.5 hr layover for our 40-minute flight to Fairbanks.  So back at the RV at 1:00 a.m.   Good, good Pappy was so happy to see us, with no accidents!