Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Kachemak Camino — Nanwalek, Alaska

In the spirit of making the Camino a continuous way of living, not a one-stop adventure, I am going to keep writing this blog. It may describe the adventures and quests surrounding everyday life, or those that take me far from home. 

Today, those wanderings take me to the public school in Nanwalek. Nanwalek is a village on the outer coast of Alaska's Kenai Peninsula. It is about 20 or 25 minutes (or one long held breath) via bush plane from Homer. Homer is where I was born and raised and now live, and despite this fact I have never been to Nanwalek. Because the only way to get there is by boat or plane and it is very, very small. But it also happens to be smack-you-upside-the-face beautiful. 

This is the view from my classroom, where I'm substitute teaching the rest of the week. I think a lightly falling snow, onto a quaint lagoon village, on one's first day in a very unique and wild place, is sort of like nature or the powers that be showing off. It's almost TOO MUCH pretty. "Uh, yeah, you're welcome for this glorious frosty sunset. Mystical snowfall? DONE. Next. I've got all day. Actually, I have all the days. And guess what else? Swans. How about some gorgeous swans just passing through on their way to the magical forest of love and everything-is-great-always."
(For the record the students told me they were swans, and while I didn't verify it, these kids tend to be right about nature things. The magical forest part was my addition.) 

But despite its natural beauty, awe was not the first feeling I experienced upon making my way to Nanwalek. No, that emotion would be fear. Because arriving in this village is unlike any bush plane experience I've ever had. And I've had some interesting ones. I've flown along the pitch black coast of the Arctic Ocean in winter, on my way to the village of Wainwright with only a stack of 20 fragrant pizzas as my fellow passengers. I've riden through the narrow and notoriously windy mountain pass that leads to King Cove on the Alaska Peninsula, to meet my father and our fishing boat for a long run to homeport. I've landed on the island of Adak, near the end of the Aleutian Chain, where you can't see anything but waves until the wheels are actually on the ground. 

But this was something new. You can actually see most of the runway in the above photo, but let me slide over to the right here and give you the full picture.


Yes that is my iPhone you can see in the window reflection...but the point is, that small strip of gravel with water on both sides is the runway. It's gorgeous really, waves crashing on one side, skiffs tied off on the other. But it doesn't just have water flanking it. It has a mountain on each end too. There's the one you can see ahead of me, and there's the one that's behind the school in which I am standing. So basically this is what's going on:


So the plane comes in, from the "left" if you will, passes by the runway on one end, then makes an abrupt 180-degree, sharp downward turn across the face of the far mountain. You can actually see a whole section where they've cut down a swath of trees so that there's room for the plane to bank in without scraping spruce. And then, before the plane has a chance to come back to center, it lands on the strip of runway on ONE FUCKING WHEEL. And that's not a sketchy landing, that was the plan. One wheel is the PLAN. So you have a hard about face, a flyby of imposing hillside, then a single-wheel landing on a strip of gravel in the middle of the ocean. Now, I've got a lot of plane-flying, wilderness-hopping, Alaskan friends that will probably just nod along like this is all par for the course because you're a bunch of wild things. And it is. But I think we can all admit, even just to ourselves, that this is sheer awesome madness. Even if it is just the way business gets done in Nanwalek. Also, these planes tend to be about the size of my Subaru. 

Which is why I was able to take this up close picture of the controls. Because I called front seat/window seat/wing seat/emergency exit seat/best seat. 

Here is a more accurate, though summertime, photo of the real thing that I took from the Interweb. 


Needless to say, I am happy to be here. I stepped off the plane at 9:15 and popped up the hill to the school, only missing the first few minutes of class. While I was a special needs aid for almost five years, this was my first time in charge of a classroom. With a late start, no less. But the school and the kids and the other adults working around me were wonderful and forgiving, and now I am camped out for the night on a mattress down the hall from the classroom. It was odd and lovely to be once again packing my backpack, filling it with a few days worth of food and a sleeping bag, all the necessary things. And a few not. 

And those white splotches on the window are indeed from children throwing snowballs at the school, because they know someone is in here, and that's a good enough reason to through snowballs in anyone's book.