Seth Kantner's Changing Alaska

December 8, 2008

Photo by Seth Kantner: Midday Sun

The sun is fouled in an orange cloudbank to the south and seemingly not going anywhere.  At this time of year sunrise and sunset are joined, glorious in pastel colors, but a failure if success means the sun lifting off the horizon.

Snow has been moving; it’s been blowing twenty to thirty out of the northeast, with temperatures ten below zero to ten above.  Night—which is long—the moon is up there looking cool and white, about how your nose and cheeks look after a few minutes walking into the wind.

At the Kikiktagruk Inupiat Corporation hardware store I’m carrying a can of starting fluid and examining plastic bucket lids when I run into Herbert Foster.  He’s wearing a sealskin hat and a big parka with a fur ruff. We shake hands and talk about the weather.  Herbert used to have some of the best dogs around, and he gave me and my brother our first two sled dogs, at the beach tent camp at Nuvurak, in 1974. We were nine and ten years old; we named the puppies Murphy and Bonehead. They grew up to be good pullers.

I don’t know exactly how old Herbert is now, maybe seventy-five. He’s in good shape, and like many of these old Eskimo guys, still gets around the country hunting and traveling by snowgo and by boat. 

“You living in camp?” I ask him.

He tells me he’s living in town, since before Freezeup.  He steps closer. “Seth. This fall, the weather. Like it used to always be.” He goes on to tell me what I’ve been noting, too—that the ice froze when it should, in October, the way we remember Octobers. The days slowly dipped colder and colder, until travel was possible on the ice, and it grew thicker, until chopping down to water took effort. No surprise rains had poured down on the new trails, as has been the case most falls for a decade and more.

“Seem like no more global warming now,” Herbert informs me. 

I smile. “I wondered if you were going to say that.” I go on, mentioning how climate change is not solely about warmth but more an unpredictability in weather patterns. Herbert is not wasting a lot of effort listening to this meaningless white babble.“I know how to predict the weather, not like some of these people.  Those old people let me learn.  You watch the sky.  Clouds. Moon in falltime.”

I glance down at the plastic bucket lid in my hand, and wish I had a good memory—or nowadays, at least a good digital voice recorder. Inupiaq elders, of whom English is their second language, have a unique and boiled-down way of describing the world. It’s not only fun to listen to, it’s often right-on. (And then again, it’s sometimes way off, too.)

“I wish I was good at predicting weather,” I comment. “The old-timers spent all their lives outside, no wonder they were good at it.”

Herbert’s talking. “I won’t teach you. The moon gonna move all around in the sky again.  I know what it means. I don’t need computer.” He shakes his head. “That weatherman on KOTZ, he always make mistake.”

Finally I relax, and give up wishing for a voice recorder. It’s good to see this old friend of my parents, and I’m happy too to have a normal fall again after how many “strange” ones. As quickly, Herbert shakes my hand and heads down the aisle, looking for nails or gloves, or maybe just conversation.