A Walk North of Anaktuvuk Pass, Alaska

Eleanor Lake, to the North of Anaktuvuk Pass is a short walk. The lake, when I lived in AKP, was a good place to get ice to melt in the winter when the village water well was frozen up. I remember one time, during a cold white-out, I was bringing two large ice-filled buckets on my dog sled back to my cabin. As I mushed through some hills over the hard pack, I realized that I had lost my depth perception when my sled was suddenly following the 5-dog team over the edge of a steep hill that looked in the whiteout as though it was more gently rolling tundra. The line of dogs, sled and myself were all rolled over and over as ice and axe were thrown from the open sled and my hands were wrenched from the sled handlebar. I watched the dog team and sled roll over to the bottom of the hill, with nary a tangle of gangline and tugs the dogs and sled went upright in unison and keep running toward the Contact Creek bridge . I picked up the axe and started to follow the sled tracks back to the village through the ice fog of tiny ice crystals. At the bridge some of the kids had stopped the team, the dogs tails lazily wagging as I walked up. I turned the dogs back to Eleanor Lake, buckets still to be filled - off for a second round of chopping ice for water to drink.
The community permafrost meat storage cellars were also here above Eleanor Lakehere (now flooded and not used with the electrification of the village and freezer use). I was awarded a section of the ice cellars by Village Chief Bob Ahgook after I took 2 caribou during my first year in AKP.
The cemetary is on a knoll above the lake. I spent some solitary time there last summer at the graves of friends there who passed on since the 1970's when I lived in AKP as the first high school teacher.