Scanning My Life

Umiak: Up Close

2009-06-30T20:00:02Z

Sorry about the gap. Work and life has made continued scanning of the slides a lower priority. I do need to get this done however because the damned slides are taking up too much space in my living room!

Walrus Butchering

2009-06-13T20:01:48Z

One evening, news spread around town that someone had brought a walrus in. One aspect of life in Barrow is that there was a strong movement to preserve native Eskimo customs in the face of rampant westernization. Don't quiz me on the details, but as I recall the native Eskimo groups were allowed to take a limited number of whales and walrus from the sea...not sure there were any limits on seal. Anyway, the butchering became quite a town event. The walrus was laid out on an iceberg right by the beach so it was easily accessible to one and all.

Ice Formations

2009-06-09T19:23:26Z

This was the summer of 1981. There was still a good bit of ice on the ocean. The wind and currents would move it around a good bit, but usually there was a sizable pack up near the shore. I think I read recently that there is no more summer ice around Barrow.

Owlets Close Up

2009-06-04T22:05:56Z

This is a bit more of a close up shot of the Snowy owl chicks - I believe called owlets?? I thought there were two, but it appears there are three in this shot. Not sure if they survived, but I'm pretty sure that all were still living when we last saw them after determining that the mother was still hunting and feeding them.

Bluff Edge Erosion

2009-06-01T20:06:21Z

The steep bluff along portions of the Arctic Ocean in Barrow is subject to a great deal of erosion. This often comes as the winds and currents push the arctic ice sheet hard against bluff, and the ice buckles and pushes up over the edge. Evidence was found on the site we were working on that the impact of this ice build up could be sudden and catastrophic. The year after I was there, archaeologists on this site found an earth lodge that had been crushed by ice a few hundred years ago. Several occupants of the lodge were found, extremely well preserved by the permafrost. This was written up in National Geographic in either 1983 or 1984, but I was unable to find an index of old issues.

Umiak on Beach

2009-05-30T00:00:00Z

The umiak, or 'woman's boat,' was used traditionally for moving to summer hunting camps. I'm not sure exactly how this particular one was used, but it made a nice prop for the beach on the Arctic Ocean.

Snowy Owl and Chicks

2009-05-29T21:46:35Z

Part of the time we were in Barrow there was a group of British ornithologists in town doing a survey of birds on the tundra. They had found this female nesting with a couple of chicks. According to them, because the male had been killed (somehow, I don't recall the details of the story) she would not leave the nest to go hunting. They were going to the nest with meat to feed the chicks. My fiance and I took over this task when they left, but after doing it for a couple of days, one day we discovered several lemming carcasses next the nest and realized that she was, in fact, hunting.

Polar Bear Theater

2009-05-28T21:34:18Z

I don't have a clear memory of this theater. By 1981, most everyone in Barrow was already connected to satellite TV and had VCR's that were readily available at the local 'Big Market' call (phonetically) 'stuck puck.' So I am not sure this theater was even open, but it could have been. Basically, Barrow included a few key elements. There were the office headquarters of the North Slope Borough, there was the Big Store, there was the Top of the World Hotel with it Pepe's North of Border Mexican Restaurant, a school (where we went for showers), the airport, the weather station, a smaller market (names slips my mind now), and a little diner. And of course, several hundred homes. Ashort distance away, maybe a mile, was a companion community of Browerville, of which I will have more to say in later posts.

Our Camp, Smack Dab in the Middle of Town

2009-05-27T20:45:31Z

Just wanted to finish the aerial overview. This shot shows the heart of Barrow, Alaska as it was in the summer of 1981. I suspect it looks a lot different today. The tower structure left center is the US Weather Service's weather station. The line of Quonset hut shaped tents stretching to the right (one is collapsed at the far left of the series) was the camp where we archaeologists were billeted for the summer. I have a series of 'camp life' pictures to share. We arrived mid June and stayed until early September. This and yesterday's pictures were actually taken on our departure at the end of the summer, but I thought a couple of aerial shots would give some context to the rest of the pictures. We arrived during the midnight sun, and didn't see an actual sun set until late August, and never saw it get much darker than twilight/dawn, two times that simply merged to one. While not much to look at, Barrow, as the government center for the North Slope Burough and the Inupiat Eskimos, was in fact a fairly wealthy community. The proceeds from the north slope oil wells (tapped at Prudhoe Bay, some many hundred miles to the east) filtered through this town, with every Eskimo resident earning a fairly nice royalty from the oil.

Barrow Alaska Site

2009-05-26T19:02:21Z

I finally unearthed some long lost slides taken in the summer of 1981 when my fiance, Cindy, and I joined with a group of archaeologists to spend a summer living in Barrow Alaska to excavate a 'protohistoric' Eskimo villages site on the edges of the modern town. In this picture, taken from a departing Wein Airlines jet, the archaeological site is the large open area with the town to the right and bottom. The site, which consisted of a number of old earth lodges was most likely occupied about 200 to 300 years ago. My personal recollection of the site is quite vague after all these years. I have a lot of slides to get through, so I suspect this is the beginning of a fairly long series of pictures with shots of the modern town, modern Eskimo life, camp life for us archaeologists, some shots during excavation of the site, and more. Some of these slides are really very very dusty. I have brushed them before scanning, but I've still had to do a lot of touchup work on them.