Winter 2006

Far Away — Or Maybe Not

A visit to hte westernmost reaches of the country
St. Lawrence Island, Alaska

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“YOU’RE LOOKING AT TOMORROW, you know,” a Siberian Yupik Eskimo told me. He had just ridden his all-terrain vehicle across the baseball-sized gravel to where we were standing, gazing at distant snow-covered cliffs.

He’s right.The International Date Line sits between where we were standing on St. Lawrence Island’s airport landing strip and the cliffs in Siberia. St. Lawrence Island, Alaska, is the westernmost point in the United States, west even of Hawaii.

We flew on a two-propeller plane from Nome to Gambell, the island’s one town, to spend the day experiencing this community. The flight lasted about an hour. “What do we do when we want to return to Nome?” I shouted up to the pilot from the runway. There was no terminal, no airport employees — only a runway. And I had been told there were no overnight accommodations. “Oh, just come hang out on the runway about three p.m.,” he replied.With this assurance, we began our day of walking.

After chatting with the man on the ATV, we walked off toward what appeared to be the town. Our memories of the Iron Curtain and the global Cold War conflicted with the sudden realization that in this place, the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. were so close that Siberian Yupiks could visit relatives by rowing their walrus-skin kayaks between the two superpowers.

Trudging through the gravel wasn’t easy.We moved slowly and tried not to turn an ankle. The sky was clear blue. It was a warm, sunny July day, not long after the snow had melted. It was the time of year when nighttime never comes.

At every turn, contradictions pushed us past the usual tourist superficialities, requiring adjustments to customary assumptions. Directly before us was an enormous whale jaw, stretching into the sky. Strips of baleen still hung from the bone, flapping in the breeze.We were told that Siberian Yupiks are still allowed to harpoon two whales a year for subsistence living — a foreign concept to those of us who run to the supermarket for a carton of milk. There is no supermarket on St. Lawrence Island. Past the whale bones was a clothesline hung with drying fish and animal skins. Beyond the clothesline was the huge community satellite dish! It was like being in two centuries at the same time.

The next day, in another small Alaskan town, I did a radio interview about a book I was writing. I was very tired.When answering a question (fortunately, “off-air”) I said, “In America, we….” The reporter interrupted, “We are in America.” Indeed! She was right. I’d traveled very far away — or maybe not.

Carla Brooks Johnston ’61 is the mayor of Sanibel, Florida. She has traveled to more than forty countries lecturing, consulting, and researching for books on media and policy. A religion major at Wooster, she holds a master’s degree from Andover Newton Theological School and was awarded three post-graduate fellowships at Harvard University.