Another Reason I Like the Alaskan Bush...

On most plane flights, you can't even bring knitting needles. On our flight from Bethel to Quinhagak today, the pilot (think quintessential bush pilot character, scruffy beard and all), after giving us the "In case we crash on the tundra, survival gear is under the seat" schpeel, added "And there's a gun under there... take that, because survival food sucks." After the flight, debate ensued... was he implying that we could actually shoot and cook some game (giving our marksmanship and survival culinary skills far more credit than probably due), or was he implying that we'd have to go all ape-shit and survival-of-the-fittest-and-most-ruthless on each other? One can only imagine...

Anyway, it is nice here. Touching down on the runway in Bethel and seeing PAVED roads for the first time in a month was interesting. I found, however, that gravel is in many ways superior around here. Because of the frozen ground conditions, ALL of the paved roads in Bethel are hopelessly bumpy and in constant need of repairs. Gravel just seems like a much more viable option in a lot of ways, although I realize that it wouldn't work in Bethel because of the size of the town. Landing on a gravel runway for the first time is a little odd, but it's amazing how fast our minds adapt to a new state of "normal." Lots of things were odd to me when I got here, but now the reverse is almost true. When I return to the Lower 48, will I be able to squelch the urge to walk down the middle of the road without a care? Will the fact that kids there don't regularly run from teacher house to teacher house to "visit" seem as weird as the practice first seemed when I arrived?

Normal is totally a matter of perspective.