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.