Around Town

A while back I had this great idea (I thought) of making a video tour of the village. That could be fun, right? Well, I'm sorry to say that it hasn't happened yet. My video camera recently developed a glitch and refuses to download the videos to my computer.

Bummer.

I'm still hoping to put that together at some point. But, as an alternative, I've been collecting shots of the area over the last few weeks. Rather than post an unmanageable stream of photographs, it would probably be kinder to share a few at a time.

I'm not sure if these photos will answer often-posed questions, inspire new ones, or maybe a combination of both. Although it can appear forbidding, it really isn't as bad as it seems. And, for better or worse, this tiny village is home.

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So I guess the best place to start is at home. My house is a duplex and I live on the right-hand side. This is my sixth year in Atqasuk and my fourth year in this house. It's a half-mile walk to school and a little farther to the all-important post office, but I like being slightly removed from the village. I have a great view of the river from my bedroom window and a pond across the road shared by loons and swans every summer.



The first buildings that I pass on my trek to school each day are a huge garage storing heavy equipment and the fuel station where vehicles can be filled with gas or diesel...at prices that make walking seem like a really good deal.







Between the fuel station and the school, a sentry of satellite dishes stand at attention. All television, telephone, and computer connections are dependent upon satellite signals. Though the airport is our physical lifeline, these towering sentinels are definitely our gateway to the outside world!



Newly-built snow fences are our only defense against the wind and blowing snow. Drifts can accumulate quickly during a blizzard, but snow fences help a great deal. Two summers ago the borough (county) hired a crew to repair our old snow fences and add several new ones in an effort to break the path of snow following easterly winds. Now if we could just do something about the blizzards that come from the south and west!







Well, that's probably enough sight seeing for one session, huh? Anyone ready to book Atqasuk as their vacation destination yet? Okay, maybe July would be more enticing.

Dog-gone!

Well, actually it's not the dog that is gone...just the doghouse. We had a fairly respectable blizzard last week and it pretty much finished the job of burying the dogigloo (no adhesives involved). During one of my digging-out frenzies two of my fingers suffered near frostbite, so the doghouse won't be rescued anytime soon. Until things warm up a little more, Precious will have to stay inside. She'll be disappointed. She actually likes going outside to investigate any traces of recent intruders and bark at anything that is new or interesting. Caribou often wander near my house and that really drives her over the edge!

Here comes the sun!

Yesterday was supposedly the first day that the sun rose above the horizon, but you certainly wouldn't have been able to prove it around here. Overcast skies and unusually warm temperatures (we're up to 33 degrees above!) delivered shower after shower of fat, wet, sideways snow all day and into the night. The dogigloo photos are now obsolete. With an additional layer of fluffy white stuff blowing at 40 mph, all my hard work has been undone once again.

Sigh.

Since our sunshine is being diffused at present, I'll share a couple of photos from last January around the same time. If you check out the sunlight monitor in the weather information area of the sidebar you'll see that it doesn't hang around for long. But that is quickly changing...daily, in fact. By March, sunglasses will be in vogue again.

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This was our first peek at the sun in January of last year. It wasn't the first day that it had risen above the horizon, but it is the first day we were able to see it. Cloudy skies prevented viewing for almost a week. So, the progress here is more than you'd actually see on the sun's first day back. But it gives you an idea of what we see this time of year.



High noon on January 25, 2007. It was a cold, clear day and all the kids wanted to go outside to see the sun. It's an exciting time after a couple of months without rays.