Tropical island paradise

Well, maybe not tropical. Temperatures have been cool, but more bearable than Bethel’s bugs. Nash Harbor is an impressive place, and our 11 students have been busy here.

The camp stirs early and students head to breakfast before spending the mornings in lecture. In the afternoons they participate in labs related to their course content. The 1.1 million acres of Nunivak Island make an ideal lab space despite dismally low populations of bunsen burners and microscopes per square mile. In this week’s natural history labs the students have unearthed thousand-year-old artifacts, cozied up to a dead humpback whale, chipped blades and bowls from local stone, and observed wildlife ranging in size from muskoxen to Lapland Longspur chicks. In the evenings they log and edit video footage from the day’s activities for use in the short films each will produce.

Outside of class, the landscape offers lots of distractions. Camp sits alongside a short stream between the ocean and a tidal lagoon, and each high tide flushes in new schools of Dolly Varden, arctic char, and the occasional salmon and flounder. The cliffs up the hill offer great hiking, views, birdwatching, and opportunities to find qiviut, or muskox wool. Some of the students have started a small grinding factory to powder uiteq, the red ochre stone pigment found nearby that served as a valuable local trade item. Several afternoons have offered the opportunity to qayaq in the lagoon, and tonight students will cut the chill in the men’s and women’s maqivik (steambaths). And after the staff declares tent time, the students stay up talking and laughing in their WeatherPorts longer than even their superhuman teenage endurance should allow.
As soon as the weather gets reasonably nice the big boat will take us around Cape Mohican to a spike camp near the bird cliffs at Tacirrarmiut (marked on most maps as Dooksook Lagoon). From there the students will backpack back to Nash Harbor.

Watch out for more student videos and pictures to be posted soon.

Ben