What Anchorage is to Nome, Nome seems to be to the surrounding communities: A hub, a city, a veritable Metropolis–with all the perks and drawbacks of any urban center.
People from outside of Nome talk about “the city” as I might talk about Los Angeles. They complain about traffic, marvel at the nightlife and produce selection, sigh wistfully about the anonymity of living in a place so large.
This has been a challenging thing for me to put in perspective–after all, Nome has about 3,500 residents (on a good day), and the population of Los Angeles is closer to that of Alaska as a state. But Western Alaska is constantly shifting my concepts of home and place and family.
Last weekend, through some logistical voodoo on Jenn’s part, four-fifths of our volunteer house was able to attend the Kingikmiut dance festival in Wales–just a hop, skip and jump across the Seward Peninsula by bush plane.
On my flight to Wales, I sat next to a woman who was performing with the King Island dance troupe at the festival. At risk of oversimplifying the history she shared about her homeland: King Island is an island northwest of Nome that was once inhabited, but now stands vacant–its people scattered around the region, after travel to and from the community became prohibitively expensive and infrequent.
Though she was unable to set foot in her mother’s village on King Island, my seat mate’s eyes lit up as we flew over the now-empty community. Her connection to a place that she had never been–but that held so much history for her family–left me awestruck, imagining how I would feel if my home in the Lower 48 was permanently closed to me.
Similarly, once we arrived in Wales, I was amazed by the connections to home and family that people maintain across seemingly impossible distances in this part of the world. Drummers and dancers flew from all over Western Alaska to attend the festival, which had an air more reminiscent of a family reunion than a concert performance.
And that’s because it was a reunion, I suppose–for many, the festival seemed to be their once-a-year opportunity to catch up with family and friends who live in areas too far or too remote to visit on a regular basis.
For three days and nights, performers gathered in Wales to dance and sing in front of their relatives–sharing stories and time with one another. Even as I appreciated watching the expressive body movements and listening to the powerful drum music, it was hard not to feel like an interloper on something intimate–like the guest at another family’s Thanksgiving table. Not unwelcome, but not fully included either.
In a strange way, seeing the strength of those bonds in a place as geographically harsh as Wales (the only place in Alaska where you can actually see Russia) made me appreciate–and miss–my own family and homeland, which are now more than 3,000 miles away.
Funny how an absence of material things pushes the importance of human connection and relationships into relief. That, it seems, is the trade implicit in living at the edge of the world: As natural resources dwindle, emotional resources grow stronger and more abundant.
By that same coin, as we returned to Nome, I caught myself making some of the same criticisms of “city life” that had seemed so absurd to me just days before: There’s so much distraction here. People are less connected. For goodness sake–there are cars! Stop signs! Subway!
Thankfully, I doubt the hustle and bustle of Nome will ever grate in quite the same way as even five minutes on the 101. (At least, a girl can dream.) But I still hope that glimpse of clarity, and the shift in priorities, that I found in Wales will trickle forward into my remaining time here at the top of the world.
