Tamales Part 1

A while back I was able to get some banana leaves; a neighbor brought some back from Anchorage, and I brought some back from my last trip home.  Some time after that I made nacatamales and shared them with some people here.  The Hogans really liked them.  This week they had some friends visiting, friends I had met before.  They used to teach together in Elim, AK.  Barbara and Huston, their friends, had been told about these tamales.  Being fans of other tamales, they were interested in trying some and the process of making them.  So, I had them all over Saturday evening, wrapped Zona and Barbara in aprons, and turned them into tamaleras.

Since making tamales usually takes a big part of the day with several people helping, I had done some of the prep, but it still took us about 6 hours to put them together, cook them, eat, have dessert, and socialize just a bit; however, I think they really enjoyed it.

Zona stirring the masa

Barbara washing the leaves

I make tamales so infrequently these days that I'm not the best teacher, but they hung in there and did a really good job.  Zona was quite adept at building and folding the tamales.  Barbara was a little insecure with the tamales but was a rather good tortillera.  (I thought I would throw in tortilla making while we were waiting for the tamales to cook.)  Ron and Huston seemed to entertain themselves well...I think I heard a football game on at one point.  Every once in a while they'd wander in and see what we were up to.  The quote of the evening was, "You gals have quite the production going on in here."  They both seemed to get into the process well enough when the tamales were ready for unveiling.

 

I have a few more pictures, but I'm trying to publish right  now from the road...I started this post on Sunday, and it's now Tuesday.  I'll edit it or add another later.

Kids Playing on the Bank

After seeing the video clip of the birches in the wind in my last post, I realize the quality of the upload is terrible.  It's a little wobbly, and the sound's not great in the raw video, but it's useless on here.  Sorry if you took the time to load and watch it.

I'm hoping this one will be better.  I took this the first evening in Ambler.  Holly and I went out to pick up some rocks and get some sand to use in some of our lessons.  A few kids were out playing and tagged along.  I think we had 8 or so with us down by the river.  They loved picking up rocks with us, digging in little "caves" along the bank, finding shells, and rolling down the bank in the sand.  They could have done that all night.  When we headed back to the school, they followed all the way to the school building.

It's refreshing to see kids outside playing here.  They get dirty, but I don't think they're ever bored.  The schools may have unique issues to deal with, but the kids have a foundation to build on in science because they're outside and observe.  They can have fun with simple things.  I got a chuckle out of watching them.  Maybe you will too.

Ambler - Round 2

Last Wednesday morning I made sure my Honda was chained up, packed my bag and headed off to Ambler -- my first village visit of the school year and 2nd time to this particular village.  This time I had company.  Holly, one of our seasonal rangers who's here until December, got to go with me.  It's a treat for someone who's here for just a few months.  It's usually a treat for me too, but I'd had some difficulty getting the Ambler teachers organized, and I was a little nervous about this trip.  I've also just been so extremely busy that I wasn't ready to just enjoy getting out there.

Ambler is a beatiful place.  First of all, if you fly direct from Kotzebue, you usually fly over Kobuk Valley National Park and get to see the sand dunes.  There used to be 300 square miles of dunes (not sure how long ago); currently there are 25 square miles.  I haven't been on the ground out there; I've only seen them from the air a few times.



Kobuk Sand Dunes, Kobuk Valley National Park - Alaska

Then, of course, Ambler has trees!  You might not realize how nice it is to have trees around until you live in treeless Kotzebue for a while.  Ambler has a few species of spruce, birch, cottonwood (not what we called cottonwood in TX), and probably some others.  I remember being told last year that I had missed the vibrant fall colors by a couple of weeks.  This time we were told we missed it by a couple of days.  There weren't really any reds and oranges, but the birch leaves were putting on a show with their gold colors.  They're papery and rattled and flashed in the sunlight like gold foil.  I have a video clip of them below, but you can't hear their sound or see the flashes very well.

birch trees



spruce trees




Lots of the birch leaves on the ground had a really cool pattern.  I'm not sure what causes it.  I also found another kind of mushroom.

fallen birch leaves

another cool mushroom

So Ambler is a beautiful little village.  I've had smoother school visits, but it was alright.  It's always fun spending time with the kids.  They're so eager to talk to you.  If you go walking like Holly & I did the first evening, you end up with a whole gaggle of kids following you.  I think we had around 8 or so of them helping us pick up rocks and sand for some of our lessons the next day.  They had fun rolling down the sandy bank along the river.  The next evening we had a couple of good helpers as we were collecting spruce needles, cottonwood buds and rose hips for other programs.  Alice and Oscar stuck with us all the way out to the airport a couple of miles out of town.  They even showed us a neat fox hole by the runway, and Oscar crawled part of the way in for scale!

fish drying rack by river

Oscar in the fox hole

Ambler airport -- middle of runway

view from the back of the "taxi"


Of course, it was an adventure to even make it to Ambler this time.  The weather in Kotzebue was fine, nice and clear.  Part of the way to Ambler was pretty foggy, but it opened up before we got to the sand dunes.  As we got to Ambler, fog.  Shungnak is just a few miles away, and it was clear, but there was no sign of the runway in Ambler.  The pilot decided to go ahead and land in Kobuk.  We dropped off a couple of boxes and picked up a passenger then lifted off to try Ambler one more time.  We could see parts of town, but there wasn't enough visibility to land.  The pilot circled around for about 45 minutes, and I was glad when he finally made the call to head back to Kotzebue.  There have been too many plane accidents up here recently.  Back in Kotzebue there was enough time to call the school, let them know I'd be trying the afternoon flight, eat some lunch, and head back to the airport.  By the afternoon, the fog had lifted.  Such is the way of travel here.  I had it pretty smooth last school year.  I'm expecting more storms and delays this year.

"Blodder for my Fog"

...is what I said to my neighbor Marci as we were on our way to the police station to recover my stolen ATV (no one here ever calls them that -- they're all Hondas or 4 wheelers).  It was just a reflection of how my morning started.  Still bleary-eyed, I happened to wander to my livingroom window which overlooks the parking lot.  I saw Marci's 4 wheeler but no sign of mine.  I shook my head and thought back over last night.  I had gone down the beach on it, but I drove all the way back and parked it right there.  The keys were on the counter, so I didn't leave them in it.  After a moment I decided on the conclusion I was hoping to avoid -- it had been stolen.  I threw on yesterday's clothes and ran down the stairs naively hoping it was just a prank or some kids had pushed it to another side of the building.  Instead, I found the contents of the little trunk compartment strewn around. 

I knew at some point in my sleep I heard Marci go outside with her dogs, so I asked her if the machine was there when she went out.  It wasn't, she thought I was out on it.  So, she joined in the search.  I headed to the office to borrow a park vehicle since getting a stolen machine back usually involves driving around and searching for wherever it's been ditched.  Marci got her 4 wheeler and met me at the police station.  The outside door is locked there, and they never hear anyone knocking.  I forgot to grab my phone, so I decided to swing by the radio station on my way back to get it. 

Last winter a couple of park snow machines were stolen from our warehouse, and an announcement on the radio was what led to their recovery.  The ladies at the radio said there have been probably 10 thefts of 4 wheelers in the past month and mine was the 2nd Honda Recon this week.  She said most of them had been recovered and to try the road down the beach, that there was a beach party last night.

When I called the police, they said there had been a chase and a Honda was recovered.  On the way back to the station, Marci and I were chuckling at the thought of my little machine being involved in a high-speed chase around town.  What I meant to tell her was that it would definitely be fodder for my blog, but being that I never got the chance to wake up properly, I must have had fog on the brain.

Sure enough, there sat my little Honda behind the station.  Muddy, hotwired, and a small part of the chassis  loose, but it was there and runs.  Officer Hughes said it was a 14 year old -- drunk, of course.  This kid had been doing stuff for a while, but they couldn't catch him, so they were hot on him last night as he tried to evade them on my machine! 

There were actually 2 kids involved (1 driving and 1 riding on the back) and multiple officers on the chase.  They clocked them at 60 as they sped through town, blowing through all the stop signs.  Can you imagine the mess if someone had crossed their path at one of those intersections?  At one point the kids went out to North Tent City, the north end of town that turns in to a narrow sand spit.  People have had tents and fish drying racks there for years.

The point at the center of the picture is North Tent City

The kids drove out across the tundra, but there's only 1 way back, so the officers were there in their vehicles, lights off, waiting for them.  They could hear my machine as they got closer.  As the kids raced back into town, the police were right on them.  The kids hit a bump or hole in the road, the passenger flew off the back, and the driver crashed into a fence.  He took off running, and the police picked up the passenger.  He was ok and told the police who the other kid was.  Officer Hughes said they were lucky.  He hit the same spot in the road, and it actually damaged the door of his SUV.  It doesn't open quite right now.

Considering the story, my machine is in good shape.  I have to get the ignition system fixed (still figuring that out) and some pins to reattach the plastic fender correctly.  I'll try to get it out later and ride it well to make sure it's all good, but I think it is.  Of course, it probably needs more gas -- I had just filled it up!

The kids will be charged with criminal mischief, evading, curfew, and whatever else the officer can throw at them.  The parents will also be charged with breaking the curfew because they weren't supervising their kids.  That's the part, really, that makes me happiest because I'm disgusted with the lack of parenting here.  In some households when the kids all grow up, the moms even encourage the young girls to have kids because they want little babies around, but then nobody cares for them; they just become feral children. 

Stay tuned for...the rest of the story.