Or forever hold your PEACE.

Michele is an Introvert to the Nth degree. I’ve loved her for 15 years – maybe more if you count the tingly feeling I got when we were both in college and she was still outta my league. My introvert wife recharges her soul with Peace & Quiet. She thrives off of alone time. Time to decompress and think life through.

Me? I’m the Extrovert. I react to things quickly and usually with emotion. I do better with face-to-face interaction and personal touch. As far as opposites go, I think Michele and I are a perfect match.

It snowed yesterday here in Kivalina.. The children came to school with a different skip in their step. I snapped pictures out of the front Cunnychuck door. We’ve been bracing against another cold snap with high winds and overcast skies. The snow shouldn’t have come at a surprise but it did.

1st Snow. 9/11/15 - looking south out the Cunnychuck @ 8:00am

 

1st snow - looking North at the Playground's FINAL Day. 

It’s 12:37 on a Saturday. My roommate flew out early to coach his second cross-country meet. The house has been quiet. I woke at my own leisure and celebrated the first snow and making it through my 4^th week with a breakfast fit for a King.

A sausage, egg and cheese sandwich on a sourdough muffin, chased with Biscuits and Sausage Gravy and a glass of double filtered, ice cold water. 

My stay in KIVLs - captured in 1 perfect picture.

After barely escaping the perfect food coma, I got down to the nitty gritty of teaching in the Northwest Arctic Borough School District – weekend Lesson Plans. Back in Small Town, Minnesota my 14-year routine had become wrote memory. I was comfortable going in to each new day whether every minute was planned out or not. Here at McQueen School, and all across the Bush, we are required to submit detailed and specific weekly lesson plans, fully equipped with matching State Standards and enough BS to placate the egos of those with enough time on their hands to peruse them once submitted.  It’s a painstaking weekly ritual in busy work. So, I followed my biscuits with paperwork.

I typed up the beginnings of some Sub Plans for Monday and Tuesday because I will be leaving The Rock for Kotzebue for a couple of days. I get to attend a volleyball coaches workshop and hopefully run in to some old friends from C3. I’m excited for both. After the sub plans were sketched out, I even graded a grammar assignment. I was on a roll this morning.

Making sure that I didn’t have too much fun all at once, I decided to go for a walk. Since my Alaskan adventure has began, I have easily logged more miles on my feet than in a car. Here in KIVLs, the thing to keep my mind straight is to exercise, whether it be a run on the beach, a walk around the village or calisthenics in Senior Housing. I usually prefer a fast paced walk and am most times alone. Although I have been joined by Jon, Leah and the hounds, and Wild Bill from time to time. 

I try to keep the pace up in for a couple of reasons, One, I want to count it as exercise and the other, it’s easier to avoid a trailing posse of elementary students if I just give my hugs, say my “hellos” and keep the pace up.

This morning I hit the ocean side frontage road and headed north – my typical clockwise route. I drifted off in to thought and then it hit me…

It was approaching NOON on a beautiful Saturday on the northwest coast of Alaska and I HADN’T TALKED TO ANYONE!!!!   My extroverted self was healthy, relaxed, accomplished and happy and I had yet to physically speak a word. Don’t get me wrong, Facebook and emails had already been attended to. So, it’s not like I was locked up in my own little world. I just thought that it was interesting that I was taking so much pleasure from a quiet morning by myself – and that I wasn’t in a turkey blind or in a deer stand….just going about my morning routine without someone cheering me on or listening to my bullsh*t.

4 young Eskimo boys approached me, each carrying a puppy.

That was the first time I had talked to anyone on this beautiful day in the Arctic.

The snow and the playground are gone. The snow will be back. The playground won't.