Another Polar Bear

This is the hide of the seventh polar bear to be taken in Gambell since that first one on April 10. April has, needless to say, been an exciting month here.

Looking North Toward Gambell

This is a view looking north toward Gambell coming back from camp. Compare this shot to the one taken last September at the bottom of the blog page.

Another View of the Shack

This is another shot of the building we stayed in with our trusty Arctic Cat.

A View of Seal Camp

This shot is looking north toward Gambell. There are three buildiings in the background that comprise the seal camp. The one farthest to right is the building Jeff and I stayed in. Note Jeff's polar bear defense weapons.

A view of from the inside

This is a shot of Jeff in the breezeway. Note the 55 gallon drum stove. It's pretty warm in the breeezeway too.

Destination: Seal Camp

This grouping of three buildings is similar to many of the hunting camps scattered along the coasts of St. Lawrence Island. This site is primarly used in the fall to hunt ice seals that come in with the wind. These shacks are nothing fancy, but like everything Eskimo, they are very practical and comfortable. The building we chose in this pitcure was well insulated with wind- blown snow as you can see. Like most of the shacks out here, the building has an attached breezeway that fills with snow in the winter. This serves to further insulate the building much like breezeway in an igloo. Inside you'll find a standard 55-gallon drum cut in half that serves as the stove. It got the place warm in a hurry despite a continual 20-30 mile wind on the outside.

More Tracks

Thought I'd post a different view on the same tracks. You can see the pack ice of the sea in the background looking west towards Russia.

Tracks Leading From the Sea

Jeff and continued to travel south from the crash site looking for the next seal camp on the coast. On our way, we ran into these recent polar bear tracks that, because of the effects of the wind, had eroded into what appeared to be three dimensional, almost inverted casts of the bear's feet. This spectcaular effect cast an errie pale over the rest our trip as it became apparent that we would be sharing the tundra with the largest land carnivore on earth, an animal that is a strict carnivore and was here for the same reason the Eskimos come here; seal meat. These particular tracks literally come right off the sea ice disappearing west onto the tundra. Our camp was a mere 300 yards to the south of these tracks. I had the foresight to bring along spray but considering the wind conditions out here, I figured we'd have a one in four chance of spraying with the wind depending on the drection of a charge.

Cold War Relic: Navy PV-2 Crash June, 1955

Here's the plane I mentioned in the previous blog. the rest is buried in the snow.

Winter Camping

Even though May is almost here, the island is still in the midst of a solid winter out here. Jeff and I decided to revisit the seal hunting camp that is pictured towards the beginning of this blog. That pitcutre was taken last September and it was great to come back on the tundra when it was solid. We loaded up another teacher's 4-wheeler and left on a sunny Saturday afternoon expecting to camp out 8 miles south of the village at the shack. Unfortunatley, we discovered that after getting all of the way out there, one corner of the shack had a big hole burned in it. The place was filled with 4 feet of snow and obviously uninhabitable . We'd heard of a another camp about 3 miles further south along the coast so we decided to press on. It was the best impromptu camping decision I'd ever made. On the way to our new location, we came across the remains of true Cold War relic. In June of 1955, a Lockeed Pv-2 Neptune with 11 Navy airmen onaboard was shot down while on a reconnassaince mission near the international dateline some twenty miles west of here. The nearest runway was in Gambell so the crew struggled to make it there falling short here in the tundra. All of the crew survived thanks to the quick efforts of the Gambell Army National Gaurd. The following picture details the tail boom of the big twin engine airplane.
Note the burned out hole on the corner of the shack.

The Second Bear

This hide was taken from the animal I saw (the second visitor to the dump that day). Fred Kaningok gave me and several of the other teachers some choice rib and hind flank pieces that have made for good eating.

Polar Bear Hides

This hide was processed by Kenneth Iwoorgin (the first bear that was taken at the dump). A large male, this one was still not considered to by "big" by Eskimo standards.

A Lost Bet

In December of last year, I made a bet with one of my students who has lived in Gambell all his life. Fifteen year-old Ala Apassinggok told me I would see a polar bear sometime in the near future here in Gambell.

Thinking this would be an easy bet, since very few people I know actually see the great Nanuuq out here, I bet him 20 bucks I wouldn't. Shortly after photograhing the image of the bear track posted here, I went home to grab some dinner and prepared to go back out and look for more tracks that evening. I was going to leave at 7pm to go back out to the dump but decided to make a call back home first. After the call, I headed out with camera in hand hoping to catch a few extra photos of those awesome prints on the pack-ice. As I approached a rise on the hill facing north, overlooking the dump and the pack-ice, I could see it ambling slowly out of the sea coming up the beach not ten yards from the site of the first bear earlier that day. Another Nanuuq! And not 60 yards away! I just stopped where I was, incredulous at the fact that I was actually seeing something I had long since bet against seeing! All I could do was stand there and watch thinking if I hadn't made that phone call, I would have left a half hour earlier putting me right in its path. No sooner had I caught a glimpse of him than three loud shots in quick sucession rang out sending him reeling up on his hind legs, spinning a 180 and falling to the ground. From both the east and west came two hunters on snow machines to close in on the wounded animal. One final shot and it was dead. I ran down to the kill and got the following picture withe rifles. In the attached image, the bear is being cleaned by Fred Kanningok as others look on in satisfaction. It was hard as a non-native not to sentimentalize this splendid animal, but then again I'm sure glad they were there when they were. The next morning in school I walked up to Ala Apassinggok and gave him a crisp, new twenty-dollar bill not saying anything at all. He laughed and said "You saw one?" Yep. And I hope the next one I see is in a Coke ad.

One Day in Gambell

Were it not for the following fortuitous events to have taken place in Gambell in what I thought would be just another average day at school, I'm not sure I couldn't have left here thinking "well, I just doesn't get any harrier than this". On a blizzardy Monday morning, April 9, school was just getting in session when word spread that a large polar bear had been shot at the dump at 9 am by local Kenneth Iwoorgin. I pretty much gave up on the idea of Gambell getting polar bears by March as the pack-ice slowly began receeding further north. As soon as school was out, I went to Iwoorgin's house which isn't far from teacher housing to see for myself what the all the fuss was about. No doubt, this was a big animal. It measured nine feet nine inches from tail to nose leading me to beleive I should be able to find some very impressive tracks to match. Getting directions from the hunter, I went north from teacher housing about 1/4 of a mile to the dump and found the bear's skinned carcass and picked up on a nice set of tracks heading north onto the pack ice. It was here I got this picture. It wouldn't be until later that evening however, that the course of this not so ordinary's day's events would reach a very harry conclusion for me! The tracks here measure about eight inches across on the bear's forepaw instep.

Whaling in Gambell

"Whaling, the most dramatic harvest of the year, calls upon the community to use traditional models of shared work and distribution, and each participant must contend with the tensions that surround caring for family and caring for community."

Carol Ann Zolles,
author of "Food, Faith and Family in a Yupik Waling Community".

Mungtuk

"Mungtuk", the Yupik word, is the dark of the whale you see in this picture. The boat capatin gave out generous shares of both Mungtuk and blubber to the whole village including the teachers. I received at least thirty pounds of meat and blubber and have been eating whale sandwiches, whale stew and even yes, whale pizza! I've got my groceries taken care of for the rest of my stay I guess.

The Whale

This whale was estimated to weigh about 20 tons (it was obviously a young whale).

The First Whale in Two Years

On Tuesday, April 3, during a particularly tough week for the students who were undergoing national testing, the news came into the school that whaling captain Junior Kanooka and his boat sucessfully caught the first bowhead whale in Gambell in two years. When I first came here in August I was told that two years ago, Gambell mayor and three of his cousins perished in a storm in the Bering Sea one night in April while
taking in a whale. Since that tragedy in 2005, no whale had been taken. It was clear to me at this point that this community has suffered a serious setback to its subsistence morale. Afterall, the bowhead whale has been the foundation of Siberian Yupik identity since the first chapter in their long history here on the island. The ecitement in the community was palpable as students and staff alike were released early from school to run down to the west beach to meet the hunters and their catch. When I arrived I was overwhelmed at the transformation these people underwent. Their was a festival atmosphere to the gathering as the crew begin to butcher this 20-ton animal.