Our "Lock-In" event

 Our student government leaders designed an overnight called, "A Lock-In Evening". Any age could come to the event, but 6th grade and under needed to have a parent. 7th - 12th graders were able to stay for the overnight. It was an opportunity for the community to get together, play games, eat, and discuss issues and concerns that the region has.

  Games were the first order of business.  Here we had to get up and change chairs if we heard something we liked.

 Musical Chairs is always a big hit, especially when half the village is involved!

 These two in the green did a great job spotting available seats when the music stopped. They would jump up and shout pointing, as did other members in the audience.

 The circle got smaller and smaller.....

 and smaller and smaller until.........




there was a winner!


 These two needed to show me their lost teeth.

 

 

 So next on the agenda was the egg toss. It's pretty popular here.

the end result

 Fannie and I worked together 25 years ago. She was an aide that helped out with the special needs students we shared. She now has her grandchildren in school.

  After the eggs were used up the little ones did a balloon relay where they had to blow up their own balloons, run down, sit and pop them, and run back home to tag their teammate.

Some had a hard time landing on the balloon when they plopped down.

The real reason everyone was gathered was to listen to these two women, Rose and Marty, from Bethel. They had their own stories to tell of abuse, addiction, suicide, parenting, and family values from the Yup'ik perspective. A lot has changed from the days of old. In the past tuberculosis and flu killed many in the region, where whole generations, whole villages were lost. Children were taken from their homes and sent off to boarding school, and maybe returned to the village. The community responded to these women warmly. I heard several comments on how much they appreciated these women's courage to share their stories.

A prayer to end the evening.

Out water skiing...not really

 The school owns about 15 pairs of cross country skis, but like a lot of things out here, they were all over the place. Boots were easy access, but the skis and poles were in an old storage shed tossed about with all kinds of stuff on top. We were able to find three matching pairs and off we went. The first time out was about two hours south of the village. The wind had a pretty good clip so fought it going, but sailed on the way back. There are people out of Bethel that do use sails with their skis.

 Since we have had some pretty warm temps, the surface water was getting deep in some spots.

On the third trip out I found these track. Couldn't figure out what they were until I saw the animal that made them.

A mink!

 This little one was quite curious. We stopped and it watched us for quite some time. As we began to move forward he scurried into his hole eventually popping back out for another look at us.

 Moving to the other side of the beaver den we found several large beaver tracks showing quite a bit of activity.

Several willows had been chewed off. I thought I had shot beaver scat, but then my aide asked me, "Why did you take a picture of ptarmigan poo?" So, lots of ptarmigan in the area too.

 We noticed some movement and sure enough, there were two beaver outside their tunnel.

 For the first time, I took two video clips of the mink and beavers. Not sure they will load up on this, but want to give it a shot. I'm a bit embarrassed by the commentary as I got rather quietly excited. I remembered watching Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom as I grew up.

 We continued to watch the mink as it loped its way past us.

 This is a good shot to show the distance of the beaver tunnel. The den is on the right, dark brown lump, and about 30 feet to the left is the opening to the tunnel.

 We started to ski over and the larger one went into the tunnel. This one took no notice of us.

 We got within ten feet and stopped as to not disturb it further. It could have cared less. These days the beavers are so hungry they are concentrating on their food source. This was one lucky beaver, and mink for that matter. We were only about a mile and a half from the village.

It was time to head on back. There was quite a bit of water on top of the ice so it was wet and slippery. This was much easier to ski across as the tundra is opening up, and in some areas little snow.

Under water on the way home.