More pictures!

 This blog is dedicated entirely to photos that I have neglected to post all of August-December 2013! As I prepare this, I am praying with fingers crossed that they will all post! Check 'em out! :)

 

Here is a view from the plane flying to White Mountain from Nome the first weekend of October.

 The bank of the Fish River that I see everyday, although it is covered with lots of snow and frozen solid now. The left bank with trees is the base of White Mountain hill.  
(Random bit of knowledge: Iġaluiŋmuit means "Fish River tribe".)

 Here is a photo of teachers combing the beach in Unalakleet past all the driftwood for washed up treasures!

 My first ever salmonberry find! Yippee! Too bad the mosquitoes were so thick... Couldn't pick much. Salmonberries are related to raspberries, but have a very distinctive taste. Their juice is thicker than most berries I know. It is commonly made into jams and spreads, baked into pies and other treats, or frozen and eaten with mixed berries or ice cream.

 A sunset in Unalakleet. The island out on the horizon is large enough it can also be seen by the village of Shaktoolik some 40 miles away.

Beach bonfire during teacher in-service! Good times, great memories! :)

I am still terrible at actually naming the types of planes I go out in, but here is an example of one I traveled in, pre-loading. They usually seat up to ten and some cargo, which goes at the back of the plane, underneath the plane, at the nose of the plane, and even in the wings! Probably my most exciting loading yet was getting in and having the plane nose tip up. Funny enough, that is normal for some of the planes, and there are springs which prevent the plane from fully tipping backwards.

 Here is a few from inside the cabin, coming up on the landing strip in White Mountain. Pretty intense! I have gotten to fly co-pilot two or three times now (no, they do not let me fly the plane :P). Getting to actually see the view out in front of you and all around as you fly relatively low to the ground is an experience I will not soon forget. I am so fortunate! My most exciting flight involved flying blindly over mountains through a thick fog, in constant prayer. One of the kids with me on board filmed it as visual evidence in case we went down!! Oh, brother! I am glad these pilots are so experienced.

 Here is one of my fellow teachers in White Mountain, in the K-1 classroom. This photo is pretty old, probably from September? We went hiking to pick berries and caught some pleasant photos.

Just following the sun setting in town on a day with fairly clear skies, the horizon simply explodes with the most brilliant oranges and pinks. The pictures never do it any justice! This is something I am so grateful for- that I can still catch beautiful sunsets outside of Iowa. :)

 Here is a just-for-fun view looking up the hill to my house after a light snow. Temperatures are finally dropping around here and we have snow that has been hanging around, compacting with our everyday excursions so that we may travel by snowmachine, go sledding behind one, or do some cross-country skiing. I drove a snowmachine for the first time yesterday! So proud of myself. :') The path to our neighboring town Golovin is finally stable enough for travel by snowmachine between the two towns so people have been visiting back and forth as of late.

 Here is a random photo from way back in Anchorage at the Welcome Wagon (the first week of August). I was enjoying some of the raspberries that can be found randomly dispersed. My first subsistence activity in Alaska! ;) I have done quite a bit of berry-gathering, but haven't done much else. I don't know the native greens quite yet, although I have purchased a guide that should help me this summer!

I think I ought to post this before it gets too much fuller, just to be on the safe side. To put into my perspective how annoying it can be uploading photos and why my blogs became a chore, I had to select the files to upload them in groups no larger than three, then once I had no more than ten uploaded, I could add them to the blog. I thought I had the system down, but after uploading and captioning more than fifty photos one day, my blog crashed, and it didn't even save a draft! So I had spent three hours uploading for nothing. It was discouraging to say the least.

But alas, I am now more committed to making this work for the benefit of preserving my experience and sharing it with others!! LET'S DO THIS! :) Thanks, all.

Namaste,

Kelly Rae