Western Alaska is where my story begins, along the banks of the Yukon River in a Yup'k Eskimo village. Its like many small towns in the US where kids play on the roads and ride bicycles. The differance is, here, sometimes they are doing it at two o'clock in the morning and the sun is still out.
I will be up at those hours myself sometimes doing what needs to be done. To make my living here I spend my time commercial fishing salmon or catching, cutting, and smoking fish for winter food. It's just one of the many chores that we must finish in the short summers we have this far north. It seems our summer is spent, in the most part, just prepairing for the winter that leaves snow on the ground for seven months out of the year.
The summers are filled with the sounds of birds singing. Millions of waterfowl inhabit this Yukon River Delta, along with moose, bears, and the occassional muskox. They fill the land along with the smaller creatures like mink, otter, fox, lynx, wolf, and wolverine.
It's truly a wilderness area with no roads leading in or out. So it remains untouched and in its natural state. To this day the only impact is from the occassional trapper and subsitance native hunters who inhabit the region in small villages. The villages sit beside the Yukon River banks and along the coast where it spills into the Bering sea.
This is where I call home and have for many years. I have been a commercial fisherman and fish buyer, as well as currently a hunter, trapper, and fur buyer. I'm also a jack of all trades. We have to be out here, or we will soon be faced with challenges that we can't overcome. Here there are no shops and garages that fix broken equipment. There are no hardware stores where you can just run down to and pick up a certain sized bolt that you desperatly need to fix your transportation. In most cases that will be a Honda four wheeler ATV, snowmobile (called snow machine), or boat. A few locals do have trucks here to drive on our short gravel inter-village road systems that dont really go anywhere but the neigboring village. The City of Anchorage is still 450 miles away and we can't get there except by flying in and out.
There are no tourists here. It's just too far out of the way and there is no real spectacular mountain scenerey or glaciers. It has the look of low-lieing tundra swamps to the south and rolling tundra mountains to the north. At first glance the country looks uninhabited and desolate. In fact it can be. But on closer examination you will see a bounty of life and much going on. All you have to do is slow down and watch and you shall be rewarded.
I like to capture these small images to be saved forever and shared with the people that have the same interest, but can not be here in person. Here are my pictures for all to enjoy, along with a brief story that goes with each image to be updated weekly for as long as I can.
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