When I started writing this blog, I could not have envisioned the tragedy that is happening in the Ukraine right now.  I was feeling bright with hope. The world was beginning to open up after almost two years of people being isolated from each other. Have we learned nothing as humans, after two years of semi-isolation, about how to treat our neighbors with dignity and respect?  I think not and this is very sad! As I go to publish my blog and muse on what last March brought for me, I wonder what this March has to bring for the world…..

 A year ago, my birthday coincided with the publication of my memoir: Journey Through Fire and Ice*. Covid gave me the opportunity to launch my book. However, the virus extinguished the celebration of my significant birthday. Starting last March, many of us were slowly able to be vaccinated against Covid, hoping to regain some normalcy to our lives; to some of us it meant being able to travel again. For me, the vaccine, simply meant I could see some family. My older daughter and grandson flew in from California in July. During her visit, Trudeau announced that on August 9, all vaccinated people could cross the Canadian border.  My younger daughter, youngest granddaughter and I went to Canada in mid-August for three glorious weeks. It was a joy  to be up there! I was overwhelmed when my two brothers and their wives graciously hosted a delayed “Big Birthday” and happy to celebrate with family and old friends. 

March of 2022 marks the one year anniversary of my book. For me, writing this memoir, was a journey that was several years in the making. I started writing it after my husband died, not sure if I would ever publish it or even if I wanted to. When the book was finished, I knew I wanted  to publish it. I felt women should learn they could deal with a life that was very different than the life they were brought up in. My life in Alaska would show others an example of how to adapt to the triumphs and tragedies that happen along the journey called life.

Publishing was more difficult than I expected. I had sent the memoir out to a few agents with little response. About two years ago, my brother called and said “Deanne, life is short, you really need to get this published”. In the end, I took the self-publishing route, hiring Authority Publishing, a non-fiction company to publish the book for me. They helped me all the way through the publishing process. On March 1, 2021, I had a copy of my book in my hands. It was an exhilarating moment! Of course marketing a book is never easy…I had a social media expert, Cheryl Callaghan, help me as well as a PR agency. This has led to radio interviews and podcasts which were interesting for me, and I hope for others as well. 

Since writing the book, many of  the Inupiaqs who live in Kivalina have been in touch with me and are friends of mine on Facebook. This has been the greatest benefit of all. I often wondered what happened to  the people I knew and loved when I lived there. Most of them are deceased but their children and grandchildren are still living in Kivalina. I live their life through their posts and photos on Facebook. When we lived there the population was 150 people and it has exploded now to 450. However climate change is forcing this village to move upriver. By 2025, the island of Kivalina will be underwater.

For those of you who have not read Journey Through Fire and Ice, it takes place in 1964-1965 and is a short period in my life. Kivalina is a place  where I learned that life is not a fairy tale. At the time, I had to live with a different culture, in a village with no plumbing, electricity or running water. My life, on a small island 83 miles above the Arctic Circle,  was different than anything I could have ever dreamt of:  a white city girl cutting up seals, living under the midnight sun and suffering through the minus 30 below weather when darkness set in. I became the woman I am today because of the triumphs and tragedies during my life there. If you haven’t read my memoir, come and take the journey with me and you will understand why Kivalina will live in my heart forever. This memoir is only part of my story. 

Writing  this blog, I never intended to end this as wish for peace. Today all eyes are on Russia and Putin’s takeover of the Ukraine. I wonder how our country can just stand by and do little to help this proud country. The sunflower, a flower full of happiness is the national flower of the

Ukraine. For those of us who are on Facebook, please post photos of sunflowers in support of and prayers for this country. They never asked for this war and don’t deserve the horrible act of aggression that is taking place now. 

* Authors Note: This coming  month, to celebrate the one year anniversary of publication, the kindle version of the  memoir will be selling on Amazon for $4.99 instead of the regular $9.99 so if you have friends who  haven’t read it or if you haven’t read it, I hope you will consider buying it. I have been happy with the reviews and have been surprised to find that although I thought my market was primarily women, men enjoyed it as well. Reviews are very important and I appreciate all of you who have taken the time to write a review for me.

Thoughts on Snow

The Scottish people have 421 words for snow. The Inuit culture has 40 to 50 words. Of course we have snow, sleet freezing rain and a myriad of other words as well.

I have always loved snow, and look forward to it each year. This year it didn’t arrive until Friday. As I looked outside at the landscape blanketed in white, I thought how peaceful and quiet it looked. It was a winter wonderland, only to be lost today by freezing rain and ice.

I grew up in Toronto, before climate change. There was more snow then (perhaps even now) than we have in Harrisburg. I picture myself as a child walking in snow that came to my waist.
I never knew what lay ahead of me as a child and what snow might mean to me in the future. Back then it was something to play in, to go sledding with my friends or to build snowmen outside.

I fell in love with a man who loved the north. I mean the far north! Although he grew up in Pennsylvania, he had lived in a small village, called Kivalina.t was on a barrier island eighty three miles above the Arctic Circle. When I started to date this man, I knew that if I married him, I might live in Kivalina, so far in the north.

After seven months of dating, my future husband, Ernest Burch (known as Tiger) asked me to marry him. I hesitated at first, did I really want to live above the Arctic Circle? Could I even do it? Being young, I didn’t think about his proposal for very long. I said yes, not knowing what I would get into when we lived above the Arctic Circle. Anyway, I decided, we wouldn’t’t be living there for two years and that was a long way in advance.

We lived in Chicago for seven months after we married. I experienced the coldest weather I had ever been in! It seemed as though there was snow on the ground from December to mid-February; that didn’t prepare me at all for the snow and cold In Kivalina.

We arrived in Kivalina in mid-May. The snow was up to the windows of the houses and up to my waist as well. The ocean was still a frozen mass of ice, covered with snow. You could hardly distinguish the land from the sea. Slowly, the snow melted. By the time of the midnight sun, it had almost disappeared. Yet, the cold lingered on. This photo was sent to me by Sonja Barger.It is a photo of our house taken in 2021. I took out the power lines as we had no electricity but this is what the house looked like when we arrived in 1964 

We had a brief respite from the wintery weather: the land turned green and wild flowers popped up all over the place. By late October, it was winter again. The ocean started to freeze. I remember thinking what fun it would be to skate across the ice to the mainland. The snow had blown off the ice and when the sun shone the ice reflected the colors of the sky with peaches, lavender and blue. It was a magnificent sight, something I had never experienced before!

By the time mid-November arrived the snow was once more up to my waist. Instead of all day light, I started to experience all day darkness and felt hemmed in by the ever present snow. After Thanksgiving, Tiger took me on a camping trip and it was then that I found out how deadly snow can be. It was 35 below and on the third day of our camping trip, the tent burned down. We were left in the middle of nowhere surrounded by snow. It was a camping trip that we were lucky to have survived. (To read more about this, read my memoir: Journey Through Fire and Ice (available at Amazon.)

This year I was told by some of the natives, whom I correspond with in Kivalina, that often people bury themselves in the snow when they are stranded in the middle of nowhere. The snow insulates them and the hope is that they will be found. I don’t know if Tiger knew that this was a way to survive and I don’t know if I could have done it anyway.

In 1969, after spending snowy and cold winters in Winnipeg, we took our two daughters to live in Kotzebue. We went out every day in the winter, ignoring the cold and the snow. Karen and Sarah seemed to thrive up there. As the days grew longer in mid-February, they would play outside, trying to make snowballs. The snow was too soft and snow angels became the thing to do. The snow seemed to last forever and then suddenly, in early April, puddles started to appear and spring arrived.

I often think back on those early years, when the children were small. They experienced the fun of all that snow has to offer- sledding, ice skating and tobogganing. When we moved back to Winnipeg, we had a small skating rink. David, at the age of three, would skate on it hockey stick in hand. Karen and Sarah also loved our little rink. Tiger often made the children igloos out of frozen chunks of snow. The winters there were always cold with plenty of snow on the ground.

Moving to Harrisburg, life was different. I learned to cherish snow days , when the schools were closed. Life seemed to come to a standstill, as the snow fell gently to the ground and left everything a blanket of white. Winters were not like they had been in Winnipeg or in Alaska. As the years went by, it seemed as though we had less and less snow.

When we moved to Harrisburg we decided to spend a few days, between Christmas and the New Year, at our winterized cottage that we have in Canada. We often escaped the brown land of Harrisburg hoping for a land of white further north. Often we would wake in the morning and watch the snowflakes drifting lazily to the ground and covering the lake in a blanket of white. Winter picnics with friends, cross country skiing and tobogganing filled our days. At night we would sit in front of the fire enjoying hot chocolate or hot toddies. It is a time I look back on wishing those days had never ended.

All over, climate change has arrived. The snow arrives in Kivalina later and later and this year, the ocean didn’t freeze until early December. Here the temperatures have been warm — well above freezing, and when Friday arrived bringing with it nearly five inches of snow, it was a day to treasure.

Happy New Year to all. May your life be filled with love, health and happiness.

On August 9 the border opened for all vaccinated Americans, many of whom flocked to the border that day after it had been closed for a year and a half. Like so many, I could hardly wait to get into Canada again and on August 16th my daughter Sarah, my granddaughter Regan and I finally arrived. As we crossed, we wanted to jump with the joy. Arriving at our summer home, the air smelled different. Perhaps it was the smell of love, home and family — a smell that had greeted me every time I had been there for the last fifty four years. For me, it was hard to believe that last summer was the only one I had missed in so many years. This was my summer place, the place where I had grown up as a child, the place where I met my husband so many years ago, and the lake in which his ashes are scattered.
I am deluged with so many memories of summers gone by — the smell of petunias that we had on our dock, the sounds of the waves lapping against the dock and the millions of stars we could see on a clear night. I watched my children grow up and then watched my grandchildren grow up as well. It is a place where friends gather each summer and we feel as though we have known each other forever.

The next morning we were up early to shop and parked at the blueberry stand to buy the luscious blueberries that grow wild up here and a treat for all of us who don’t live in Canada.

And suddenly I am reminded of the summers of 1964 and 1965 , two summers that I spent away from my beloved place here. Those were the summers Tiger and I spent in Kivalina, Alaska and as we bought our blueberries, I realized that it was berry picking time in Kivalina now. The berries there grow wild as well and because of the long hours of sunshine, they were plumper and more abundant. Below is an excerpt from my memoir: Journey Through Fire and Ice: We had just taken a family upriver with us. The weather was unusually warm and Tiger promised me we could go upriver by ourselves, the next day and swim. As you can see this didn’t happen.
“Unfortunately, the warm weather doesn’t last and instead of swimming upriver in my underwear, I go berry picking with Mildred Sage and a group of women from the village, traveling in one of the skin boats. One man always comes along to drive the boat. A whole slew of kids come as well.
“Lots of berries to pick,” Mildred says. We both see an abundance of blueberry bushes growing by the lagoon.
“We’re going to have to work fast to pick them all,” I tell her.
I love watching the older children scampering around and picking the berries. Their lips get blue as they pop berries into their mouths. They are adorable, and I decide to ask Tiger to give me a camera for Christmas. I am ready to learn, and I think he could teach me.
We work most of the afternoon, taking only a couple of breaks, and head home at sunset. The days are getting noticeably shorter and our time to work is limited. Occasionally, Tiger and I go berry picking by ourselves, but usually, I go in a skin boat with the women from the village and several of the children. It’s a treat going on these expeditions with the women. With them, I feel as though I am a part of the village life. We take a thermos of coffee along for our breaks, chat for a while, and then go back to picking. Often, the women carry a baby in their parkas, and during the break, they might nurse the child and change its diaper. The infants are content in the parka and sleep most of the time. The women carry toddlers this way also, and sometimes, I see the child peeking out of the hood. I seldom hear a child crying.
The berries we pick on these outings taste just like the wild berries we get back home, although they are larger and plumper. It reminds me of my childhood summers at the lake picking berries. Back then, I could hardly wait until the berries were ripe enough to pick and was always proud when I had a pail full enough for my mother to make a pie. I feel a pang of homesickness as I think about those days. Right now, the berries growing at the end of the point would be ripe and the raspberries that grew near our cottage would be over for the season. Looking around, I realize that here, there are enough berries to last a winter for all of us. At home, we usually only picked enough for a couple of pies.
As I fill my bucket, I look forward to pies and oatmeal covered with the ripe fruit. The women will preserve the berries in seal oil for the winter. Tiger wants me to preserve them in seal oil too, but the thought of mixing oil and berries is not palatable to me. I figure that it won’t be long before the first frost and tell him the berries will keep when it freezes. It will be so much nicer to have frozen berries than ones that are preserved in oil. I decide instead to put them in water and wait until they freeze.
Two weeks later, I’m sorry I didn’t listen to Tiger. We have yet to see frost, and the berries have fermented in the water. If I had put them in the shed where it’s cold, they would have been all right, but I didn’t and now they’re ruined. We have to dump them in the ocean. “

As I look back on those two summers in Kivalina, I realize that it was an experience I will never forget. I remember the midnight sun, walking in the village at all hours during the night and the children who came to our house or our tent just to watch what we were doing. I think of the light when we travelled up river to get water and the way it seemed to shimmer and the magnificent sunsets as the days grew shorter. These unrecorded images will stay in my mind forever, like photographs that never fade and memories that will never be forgotten.

Thoughts on July Holidays

This weekend marks the true beginning of summer. Last year,everything was shut down. Playgrounds were closed , restaurants were for the most part closed and many of us stayed home as much as possible. There was little travelling for any of us, and for me, no way to cross the border to get to my summer home in Canada. In a way, I enjoyed the quiet of last year even though most of the world was fighting to keep the dreaded virus away, terrified that we might be next to succumb to it. The quiet however, gave us a chance to think, to catch up on reading, and to form a bubble of close friends or family. Now all that has changed and we are once again caught up in the hurry of daily life.

The pandemic shut down everything and forced us to rethink our lives. We are emerging from the cocoon that we have all been living in, daring to go to restaurants, and often going to stores without masks. It has been a liberating experience for most of us.
Did we rethink our lives? Somehow I doubt it. Where once the streets have been quiet, highways are again congested; stores are crowded with people jostling each other to be first in line at the counter or to be the first seated in the restaurant.

Today, as I write this is July first, — Canada’s birthday and usually their celebration is similar to ours. As a child, growing up there, I remember the delight I took in watching the sky rockets erupt in the midair and hearing the boom as their colors painted the sky with thousands of flashes. When I moved to United States, my early summers were spent at my cottage in Canada. We usually arrived before July 1, just in time to be part of Canada’s events. The sound of the explosives could be heard all over the lake and often we were lucky enough to view them from someone’s deck or dock. I was proud of my Canadian heritage and happy to be there for Canada Day. Canada Day, 2021 is different as people mourn the recent revelations of unmarked graves at former residential schools in British Columbia and Saskatchewan. To many there, this day is not one of happiness and pride but one of grief and anger.

Last year, because of Covid, Independence Day never happened. Soon the country will once again be able to embrace the usual festivities. It’s a time of family reunions, picnics, barbeques and partying— a time to fly The American flag to show pride in the country.Two years ago, we enjoyed the evening on the Susquehanna River watching the fireworks and gorging on food from one of the many food trucks. This year we’ll probably do the same.

For a few years, John and I went to Pittsburgh, a place renowned for July fourth events. Our time there was always wonderful, as we joined the crowds to listen to live music performances and savor the food at one of the many stands at Point State Park. There were boat regattas and breathtaking Airforce flyovers. The highlight of the whole day ended with the 30 minute Flashes of Freedom fireworks show — one of the most incredible displays I have ever seen.

My First fourth of July:

Excerpt from Journey Through Fire and Ice: “Today is the fourth of July. There will be some festivities this afternoon, maybe some games and races. I look out the window to see if some flags are flying but there are none in sight. Two old ladies are wandering around town dressed in red, white and blue.
Tiger tells me not to expect fireworks. “There would be no point,” he says. “It’s light all the time. And one little spark could ignite one of the houses.” He doubts that anyone here has ever seen fireworks. They are missing out on an incredible experience I know they would enjoy.”

I can still remember that day 57 years later. There was a three legged race for the children as well as a wheel barrow race. And then the women were asked to race. Tiger pushed me to the crowd of contenders —fat women, young women, old women and pregnant women. I raced with all of them, not coming in first but I was far from last. Suddenly joining in with their fun, I felt as though I were slowly becoming a part of the village and as the midnight sun warmed us, I realized what a great adventure I was having.

I was lucky to have experienced my first fourth of July with a group of people who had always been part of this great land. They were there long before United States as we know it today was discovered. Some of their children as well suffered after being sent to the lower forty eight boarding schools.There have not been any stories as grievous as those in Canada, and yet some of the children’s experiences in these boarding schools were traumatic.Despite this,the people in Kivalina celebrated the birth of the nation although they had been there long before its beginning.

Enjoy the holiday. God bless America.

May blog

Today is my daughter Karen’s 55 birthday. I look back on that time so many years ago when I knew I was carrying her. I felt the child I was carrying would be the light at the end of a very dark tunnel. Although our time in Kivalina had come to an end and although we had experienced so many wonderful times there, we had also experienced a tragedy that would live with us forever.

“On our last night, Mildred brings over a huge bowl of Eskimo ice cream as a parting gift. It’s full of fresh blueberries and blackberries, and it looks delicious. After she leaves, Tiger manages to find a spoon and starts to dig in with gusto. He hands me the spoon. “Here, have some,” he says. “This is probably the best we’ve ever tasted.” 

My stomach turns at the sight of the purplish sweet. “I can’t eat it right now,” I tell him. 

“Why not?”
“I don’t know. I just can’t.”
I do know, but I’m not saying a word about it, not yet. I am carrying our baby, who will arrive next May. I can hardly wait to share the news with Tiger when I’m sure I’m not going to miscarry again. “ excerpt from Journey Through Fire and Ice published March 2021

I remember that night so clearly — the akutaq that Mildred brought over to us and the look of delight on Tiger’s face as he ate it. Eskimo ice cream was always a treat for us but for me, on that occasion, the sight of it turned my stomach. The next day, we left Kivalina, 

“We wait at the airstrip with Pepper and Clover at our side. The whole village is here to say goodbye. I look around at the familiar faces—women, men, and children. What adventures I’ve had here, marvelous adventures, terrifying adventures, challenging adventures. I’m not the naïve young girl who came here with her new husband sixteen months ago. I’m a woman ready to face whatever lies ahead. (excerpt from Journey Through Fire and Ice.)”

Charlotte and Bobby and Sarah were part of the crowd who came to say good bye to us at the airstrip.

 As we left, I wondered if I would ever return to Kivalina. I hated saying good bye to these people who had accepted me as a friend.  

We did in fact return there: once with Karen and Sarah  when we lived in Kotzebue from 1969 to 1970 and again in the summer of 1976. We spent two weeks in the village with Karen, Sarah and David. We probably experienced the best weather we ever had. Karen and Sarah made friends with Cheryl Sage (known to people in Kivalina as Girlie.)

David never missed a chance to play with the dogs who wandered freely around the village. I look back on those times and I remember the village as I knew it: the blue hills in the distance, the sound of the waves lapping on shore and the people we knew and loved when we were there. Most of the elders were alive in 1976 and the visit we made will be with me forever. Tiger had always promised that we would return there one day but it never happened. Most of the elders we knew are now gone but many of their children and grandchildren still live there today. Now, Kivalina is on my bucket list. As an elder, I may never return but at least I can keep it tucked away in my heart as a pipe dream. 

A mother is one who loves. A woman who steers her dependents, cares about their well-being and social contribution. A mother is love. If she provides love when in their presence and struggles with the desire to improve the world for her loved ones, she is a mother. (written by neice, Amy Mcleish)

I was lucky to have three wonderful women in my life who gave me the strength to become who I am today.

The first was my grandmother,Jenny Christmas,whom we fondly called Gage ( pronounced Goggy.) Her strength was remarkable as she was married with children, living in a remote area in British Columbia with a husband who was ill. He died four years after they were married. Gage had the strength to carry on and bring up her children as a single mother. I often think of her and the stories she told me. Without her in my life I would not have learned resilience.

My mother, Ruth McLeish ( and father) brought my brothers and I up in a happy home, and loved us unconditionally. She was the epitome of what a mother should be, often sacrificing her wishes for the sake of her children.

And then, there was my mother in in law, Elsie Burch who had the strength to live through the tragedies in her life. She greeted each day with optimism and wanted to be strong for all of us. She was a role model to me and to my children.

As I think back to my life in Kivalina, there were two women there who provided me with love when I was in their presence. I was a young woman and didn’t realize this at the time but as I wrote my memoir: Journey through Fire and Ice, I realized what a profound influence they had on my well-being. 

The first was Ruth Adams. Because she shared my mother’s name, I could have called her Ana, the Inupiaq word for mother. She was a mentor in a way to me, teaching me the ways of the native life in Kivalina. She helped me make my rabbit skin parka and we would sit in her house and talk like mother and daughter. 

The second woman was Mildred Sage. She lived behind me and was like a mother to me as well. When I was alone ,she came to check on me making sure I was all right. When Tiger and I came  home from our fateful camping trip she arrived to find I was freezing. Seeing this, she lifted her skirt and made me warm my feet against her body.

Another time, I rushed into our house which was full of smoke after the men had come to carry Tiger who had been badly burned out. I was in shock, and unable to move. Despite the smoke, Mildred arrived, found my parka and hurried me out of the building. After our return to Kivalina, she continued to be one of the best neighbors I could have asked for. I remember her saying to me after she saw Tiger’s scarred face “We don’t care how  he looks as long as he has the same smile.”

I think of so many of the women elders there, most of them long gone. and how they welcomed other children into their home and became a mother to them. To Mildred and Ruth, I was not a child but I was a young naïve woman who was in need of a mother at that time and both of them welcomed me into their life as one  of them. How lucky I was to have had them at what was for me a time when I was far away from home and in need of a mother. As my niece, Amy McLeish said on Facebook today, a mother is one who loves and both these women showed me love when I needed it.

Do you believe in equal rights? 

Lately, I have been thinking about being a teenager in the late fifties and early sixties, when the rights and expectations of women were extremely different. As young women, we were taught that if (God forbid) we didn’t get married or if our husband died we needed a career to fall back on. Unless you had been brought up in a family that championed the independence of women you were left with few options: a nurse, a teacher, perhaps a physical therapist or a social worker. Rarely were we told that we too, could be doctors or lawyers, although many of us were capable. Some of us were not expected to go to university at all. Father Knows Best or Marcus Welby M.D. were the popular T.V shows. Women were portrayed as housewives, never doctors and never having careers.

I went to university but I worked and saved my money to help pay my tuition. Because I was a female, it was not expected or assumed that I would go on to a higher education. I remember at my university there was a song that many sang: My father sent me to Victoria and resolved that I should be a man. In the casse of the women it was and “resolved that I should get a man.”Was that all we were going to university for or were we there to to get a better education and a chance to live-up to our potential? I hope and believe that for most of us it was the latter. Yet most of my friends including me had a ring on our finger by the time we graduated.Some of the women I graduated with had no intention of doing anything with their education except get married and become a housewife.

I am not sure what my goals were. I had a B.A in Liberal Arts and a B.A in social work. I thought someday I would work with autistic children.See my memoir: Journey Through Fire and Ice for the reason I never did this.

I married my husband, Tiger at the age of twenty two, knowing that nine months later, we would move to Alaska to a primitive village where we would be two of four white people. Did I give any thought to this? Could I do it at all? The answer is a resounding no. If I was going to marry him, I would do whatever he wanted and not question it. This was the way life was for many of us. Of course I had the choice of not marrying, but that wasn’t a decision I wanted to make. I loved him and was willing to live a life I knew nothing about. So I left my safe cocoon for a life that was full of challenge, adventure and hardship. 

My B.A in social work came in handy when I interviewed the native people.   These people are now known as Inuit, but then they were known as Eskimos. I was doing a participant study with my husband Tiger. I didn’t want to live in primitive conditions away from everything I loved and I didn’t want to skin seals or clean and dry fish with the other women.  I did it for him and not for me. Had I been more independent, I would have said “Do the seals yourself.” In those days most of us were afraid to speak up. 

When we lived in Alaska, I had no money and no credit cards. They weren’t needed in the village we lived in. When Tiger was in a tragic accident, and we had to leave Kivalina, there was no money for me to stay in a hotel or to buy something to eat. I had to rely on the kindness of strangers. I was a naïve woman, depending on my husband and trusting that he knew what we needed to live above the Arctic Circle. I never thought that some day I would need money for something and neither did he.

We left Alaska in the fall of 1965 and in May of 1966 we welcomed our first daughter. Our second daughter came two years later in May of 1968. Alaska loomed again. My husband had decided to take a sabbatical there in 1969. We would go to Alaska, and live in a small town for spend ten months ; it was his choice, not mine. He just announced to me one day that we were going to live in Kotzebue when he took his sabbatical. I went along with his plan. I didn’t want to go, fearful for  the safety of our two tiny girls. Tiger was a good man and I loved him. I followed his lead because it was expected of me. He promised me that when we returned to Alaska we would have a telephone, running water and electricity; unfortunately only the latter was available.

We were happy for the most part, going along with what our spouse wanted to do. Some of us were liberated by the early seventies and decided to work. We learned to speak up for ourselves. I developed a passion for photography and opened a studio, becoming a successful photographer. My husband supported my choice, making sure that I didn’t need his signature on the property I bought.  He also made sure that I didn’t need his signature on my bank loan. He encouraged me with every step I made in my career. After all the time I had let him chase his dreams, he encouraged me to pursue mine.

I loved photographing all my subjects but for many men, the idea of having a female photographer was not appealing. I had been hired to photograph a doctor at the Hershey Med Center. He was expecting a male photographer and when I appeared he told me where he wanted to be photographed and how he wanted to pose. The lighting was not appropriate and so I did what he wanted and what I knew was best. At the end of the session, he asked me what would happen if he didn’t like his photograph; I knew at that moment, he had made up his mind that because I was a woman, I wasn’t “good” enough. Two weeks later I was asked to photograph him again. I had enough confidence in myself to say no. In  fact, I decided not to do any more photography of the doctors at the med center. I was finished with the men there who didn’t want a woman photographing them.

Young girls have so many choices now. Several years ago, when I was photographing a four year old, I asked her what she wanted to  be when she grew up. She put her hands on her hips and said “ My mommy told me I can be anything I want to be.” I watched Sophie grow up through the lens of my camera. The last time I photographed her, she had become an intelligent and self-assured young woman. I knew she could be “whatever she wanted to be.”

Women are starting to break the glass ceiling. They can become vice president of our country or the poet laureate for the inauguration. Times have changed and although we have come a long way, we still have a long way to go. Many of my friends are successful and respected by the men they work with.To the girls who are growing up today : You will be able to succeed in anything you want to do. You may have to try harder; you may not get equal pay but you can achieve your dreams.

My grandmother(fondly known as Goggy) was prescient. She seemed to know things  before they happened, or she dreamed about them after they occurred, even when she wasn’t present for them. One day, my grandmother said to my mother, “Ruth, I don’t want Elizabeth living with the Eskimos.” (My grandmother often called me by my middle name, Elizabeth.) 

      I was fifteen at the time, and still in high school. I was about to enter our small kitchen when I overheard their conversation. They were sitting at the metal table and as I watched from the doorway, I could smell the smoke from the cigarette Mom always lit when she was agitated, which was most of the time. My grandmother was drinking tea and eating her lunch at eight in the morning. For reasons unbeknownst to us, she started her day at three a.m. 

“Don’t be ridiculous, Mother,” my mom replied, flicking her cigarette, “Deanne wouldn’t do that. Whatever gave you this idea?” (Excerpt from my upcoming book: Journey through Fire and Ice to be published soon.)

My grandmother lived with us and she had a profound influence on me. She was a strong woman, bringing two small children up after her husband died. My uncle was a baby and my mother about three. Goggy had had her fortune told and this had all been predicted by the fortune teller, long before she met my grandfather. I never would have my fortune told because of this.

Sometimes I wonder if I had inherited a tiny bit of her second sense. As a child, I was haunted by dreams of fire. My dream which occurred many times was this: I was alone in the middle of a lake  surrounded by fire. I treaded water praying someone would save me. As a teenager my fear of fire continued. I was afraid to light a match, afraid  to light a candle — afraid to do almost anything that might cause a fire.

Suddenly, I found myself at the age of 23 living in Alaska, and these fears came along with me. I was afraid to light the kerosene lanterns that we had in our house and unless I was by myself I wouldn’t do it. Maybe I was haunted by my childhood dream.

Here is another excerpt from my memoir:

“Whatever you do, don’t let the flap of the tent go into the tipi,” Tiger says, as he watches the fire that he has built outside our tent. He’s not paying attention and pushes the flap into the fire with his foot, just as he says this to me. He tries, unsuccessfully, to beat out the flames. We are standing in the tent watching in horror as the walls of the tent burn around us. Within a minute both the tent and tipi are gone. Aside from being shaken up mentally, we are totally unscathed. I am left standing in the frigid air, holding my cup of tea. I’m not sure whether I am laughing or crying when I say, “If my mother could only see me now.” 

We had gone on a camping trip and were 30 miles from our home. Instead of a lake, we were surrounded by snow and were totally alone except for our dogs. The temperature was thirty below and as in my dream, there was little chance that either of us would survive. Strange that these dreams as a child were in so many ways similar to what happened to me as an adult. 

In addition to this, I always feared for Tiger’s life when he was hunting or fishing. I couldn’t sleep until he was safely at home. Was this hyper-vigilance or was it a premonition that something would happen to him? Had I believed my grandmother’s prediction and her fear of me going to Alaska, would I have changed my mind? Would I  have changed my mind and not gone to Alaska if I had known that in some way my dream of being surrounded by fire would come partially true?

When you read my upcoming book, you will read about a young woman, still a child in some ways, who was faced with challenges time and time again. When I look back to that time, I think of the people I met, and the experiences that I had, and I realize I would not be who I am today if it had  not been for the time I spent in Kivalina.That young girl, the one who left on an unknown journey so many years ago, filled with excitement and fear will live inside me forever.

Covid 19 in Alaska

      People living in remote areas of Alaska are getting the Covid 19 vaccine because of the dedication of an all-female team of health care  workers. The team of one doctor, a pharmacist and two nurses travelled by plane, sled and snowmobile to deliver the vaccine. These women had only a few hours of daylight and with temperatures below zero it was a challenge to deliver the vaccine to these people. One of the women had  to wrap the Covid 19 vaccine in a protective envelope and put it under her coat for the ride carrying it like a baby. Otherwise the vaccine would freeze inside the needle in the frigid outdoor air. Together, the women traveled  hundreds of miles to multiple villages to deliver 65 vaccines to people in the remote villages of the north. To travel under these conditions is courageous but the women said they will keep going out until everyone is vaccinated.  Time was of the essence because the virus was starting to accelerate in these small northern villages. Remembering the flu of 1918 and the devastation that it caused, the vaccine was crucial to the lives of these people.

      Pandemics such as Covid 19 are not uncommon in the north. When the first case of the virus was confirmed in Alaska, early in 2020 people rushed off to buy toilet paper  and checked each day to see the virus death toll in the rest of the U.S. This reaction was not unreasonable because the 1918 flu took a heavy toll on the Alaskans, especially the natives. By the time this flu of 1918 was making its way to Alaska, the territorial Governor knew ways to prevent it. He ordered schools, churches theaters and pool halls be closed in communities. Sound familiar? Mail coming off the ship  in Nome was fumigated but the people weren’t and the flu was given to some of the mail carriers. Those mailmen brought the sickness all over western Alaska. Passengers on the ship were quarantined but one passenger had it and soon the disease raged out of control. What followed was an explosion of illness. Villages were decimated. People froze to death and others didn’t have enough food. Children became orphans. The world as they knew  it was turned upside down and much of the culture was lost. The Elders died and the missionaries imposed a different kind of life  on the natives’ way of life. Much of their culture was lost because the missionaries banned such things as drumming, storytelling and dancing. Now, there is a resurgence of Eskimo culture, lost so long ago to the Spanish flu. 

Some villages quarantined themselves and were successful. My husband used to tell me about a village who had warded off the people travelling there by guarding the village with rifles. Looking it up, I learned that in Shishmaref, the village he had told me about,there were plenty of rifles. The men set up guards eight miles to the south of the village and waited it out. They beat the flu and avoided the deaths that other native villages had experienced.

      As I write this blog, Covid 19 is raging all over United States. The vaccine can’t come soon enough for all of us. After reading the above, I wondered how the Kivalina, the place that is close to my heart was faring and  so I googled it. The village had not been doing well. At least 10% of the village had tested positive and the cases were rising in all the small villages in Northwestern Alaska. Kivalina tribal officials started water deliveries to home bound residents to ward off spread of the virus.in addition people who have tested negative for Covid are being hired to fill fuel tanks and deliver groceries to those who are homebound. People were  told to hunker down and avoid contact with any people outside of their home.

      The residents live in overcrowded conditions, making it hard to isolate the sick from the healthy. It is almost impossible to isolate in any place outside of the home and so the village has been on high alert urging people to wash their hands, wear masks, avoid gatherings and to practice social distancing as much as possible. It’s the same message that’s been given to us — except it’s different. Most of you reading this don’t live in areas accessible only by plane, dog teams and snowmobiles in the winter and by  plane and boat in the summer. Most of us don’t live in overcrowded conditions that only speeds up the virus. 

      If these people become ill enough, they will have to be flown out to the nearest hospital and if that hospital can’t treat them, then they will be flown to Anchorage. I hope the vaccine  has arrived in Kivalina now. I think of the children I knew so many years ago. They are no doubt grandparents or even great grandparents. I think of them and know that without the vaccine this village will be wiped out as so many villages were in the flu of 1918. 

      Knowing the virus is out of control, we can only hope that the vaccine will help obliterate it. In the meantime practice social distancing, wear your mask and stay away from large gatherings. Stay safe and stay well. 

https://thealaskanobodyknows.home.blog

Journey Through Fire and Ice to be published late January or early February