The Big Weekend That Wasn't

Well, I suppose it's official that the holidays are upon us. But, up here, it still seems like a distant dream. Corny, but true. I had intended to go to Homer, Alaska, with my friend Segue. She and I had made plane reservations to go to Homer on Thursday evening. We were spending Thanksgiving proper in Anchorage, eating at a nice restaurant, staying in a nice hotel, and seeing a movie. Then, we were on to Homer to walk in snowshoes, go to a spa, see another movie, eat out, and, of course, drink a beer.

Then, the Monday before Thanksgiving came and Segue called me with bad news. The river was thawing. You see, Segue lives in Oscarville, which is so small it doesn't have an airport or roads connecting it to anywhere else. During the warm months, she can get places by boating on the Kuskokwim River. In the winter, they can snowmachine over the land to Bethel or, when it's frozen enough, snowmachine or drive vehicles on the river into Bethel. However, for about 3 weeks in the fall and 3 weeks in the spring, she's stuck. The river is too icy for boats and not icy enough for snowmachines.

The land was frozen enough for snowmachines about 2 weeks ago. Then, we had four days of above freezing temperatures. This is bad. Both the river and the land were not frozen enough to get out. Segue was stuck in Oscarville.

Now, I had three options:
A. go to Homer alone
B. find someone else to go to Homer
C. stay in Eek, cancel all reservations, and eat the deposit money

I chose C. Frankly, if I couldn't go with Segue, I didn't want to go. Luckily, I got 100% full refunds on everything from the hotels to the plane reservations. So, my bank account was happy.

The holiday here was quiet. We had another teacher from Quingahak (the next village over) come and visit with her brother and two friends. There were eleven of us at dinner. The highlight of Thanksgiving was the wolf/dog.

Dirk had come over for breakfast from his man cave when we all decided to watch a movie. So, I put on my knee high boots over my pajama pants and slung on my North Face fleece and walked with Dirk to his house. As we came back with classics like "Pulp Fiction" and "The Abyss", I said to Dirk, "Who's the weirdo with gun walking behind the housing?"

"It's Brett (our new principal), " he answered.

"What's he doing?"

"Feeding his dogs (side note- my new principal has a dog team the he mushes)," Dirk said like I was an idiot.

"With a gun?" I answered. So, Dirk and I stood in the now freezing temperatures and watched Brett walk out to his dog team with a gun. That's when we saw a black shape running around the dump which is behind our housing unit.

"Is that a wolf?" I asked. Little did I know that that would be the question of the day. Dirk and I stood and watched for while before we went back to my apartment and told the others. So, for a while, like half an hour, seven of us stood at my windows drinking coffee and watching my principal hunt this animal.

We still aren't sure if it was a wolf or a dog. Nobody can decide. One of our Board of Education members shot it, but it ran off and we haven't seen it since.

For the record, my principal maintains he was not hunting dogs.

That was the high point of an otherwise lovely, but laze break. I didn't fight nay Black Friday crowds, I didn't have to drive to anyone's house which are all good things. So, overall, it was a good weekend.