Sea lions are neat.

Here is just one more reason why National Geographic is phenomenal.

Octopus vs. sea lion


Shark vs. octopus


So if octopus > shark and sea lion > octopus, what is the relationship between sea lion and shark?

All videos taken from National Geographic's website

The baby seal that almost wasn't and how I missed it

"There's a baby seal in the hall." This is the first thing out of my tardy student's mouth as he enters a room full of studious writers silently pecking away. "We should go see it."

"Sit down Ken. What are you going to work on?" This is the first thing out of my mouth in response to this interruption. My initial reaction is that there is no way a baby seal is in the hall of the school. In my teacher mind I am analyzing the credibility of this student against an attempt at getting me to lead a class of twelve high school students into the hall in search of a non-existent baby seal. I take the safe route. I convince myself there is no seal, most of my class seems to be okay with that decision, and class proceeds as normal.

Only later in the morning do I find out that there was indeed a baby seal in the school. A living, breathing baby seal. The story of its arrival is quite amazing. With the coming of spring comes the beginning of seal hunting. The warmer (a relative measurement) weather and longer days make traveling out to open water more desirable and the prospect of bringing home a seal (dead all cases but this) is an opportunity thats siren's call is impossible to ignore for many of the males in the village. This story starts on a day like this: The day before Ken's interruption in my class. His grandpa had gone out hunting and shot an adult seal. Upon the butchering of the seal they found that she was pregnant, and more importantly, that the seal in the womb was alive. Removing the baby from its mother they found that it was mature enough to survive outside the womb and that in all likelihood it would be able to survive into adulthood with proper care. It was this baby that found itself miles from open ocean, worlds away from its mother, and in the hallway of a school surrounded by large-eyed children.

And I missed it. By the time Ken's story was corroborated to my satisfaction the seal was on a plane headed to a rehabilitation center in Southern Alaska. Man...

Spring is in the air

The blizzard warning expired this morning but not before it could unleash its power.  As the wind picked up yesterday afternoon the snow started to fall.  I fell asleep to the sound of wind ripping across the tundra, pounding on the walls and windows of the BIA.

The dance festival that Tununak is hosting started yesterday as well.  Dancers from the surrounding villages began arriving by snowmachine throughout the afternoon and evening, eventually filling the gym at the school with traditional song and dance and the subtle smell of dried fish and seal oil.  Dances usually go late into the night, sometimes ending well after midnight.  I arrived slightly after nine and was told that what I was seeing was the last song of the evening.  Apparently the worsening weather had delayed the arrival of some of the dance groups.  As I helped usher people out of the school for the night I noticed that many of the men in the village were suiting up in their winter gear.  A group coming south from Newtok had not arrived.  With near white-out conditions and night approaching, things could quickly become very dangerous.  A search and rescue group was organizing.  Living in my isolated bubble, rarely leaving teacher housing or the school, let alone the village allows me forget the harsh realities and danger that lurk just beneath the surface of tundra life .  When that danger makes itself present my stomach flips and I get a guilty feeling from forgetting my surroundings- a cardinal sin of living up here.  I went home to my house, the thought of what dying of exposure on the tundra would be like.    

Today, Saturday, when I woke up the wind had died down.  The lost party from Newtok was found. There was an unmeasurable amount of snow spread across the tundra making Tununak look like a cake frosted in white by an amateur baker.  Bare spots showing next to drifts five, even ten feet tall.  The stairs leading up to the school are completely blown over with the railing on the bottom half of the flight completely covered with fresh snow.  Wind lips and cornices have grown on the hill itself drawing my adrenaline-fueled high school boys with their snowmachines.  As the morning wore on, the clouds cleared exposing blue skies and a spring sun growing stronger everyday.

How beautiful it is, spring in Tununak.