Teaching in the Dark

CHAPTER ONE ~ THE SURPRISE   Our small plane shuddered unexpectedly, bumped up in altitude, then dropped again. My stomach was empty but growing increasingly queasy with every creak of the fuselage as the wings dipped this way and that. Far below, glimpses of Arctic tundra came and went as we flew through cloud banks and fog. Our departure from the Nome Airport was less than an hour ago. Our pilot, Steve, acted like this bucking bronco ride was typical travel. I, on the other hand, didn’t know how much longer I’d be able to maintain composure before letting out a primal scream. With every jolt, I instinctively grabbed the back of his seat. It was low, like an old Chevy car seat, and so close that my knees pressed into it. I hadn’t been to church in a while but was making up for my absences with some serious turbo-charged prayer. The prayers started innocently, but within half an hour, my well-intentioned pleas for safe passage devolved into a surprising matrix of devotion and rather unladylike swearing between clenched teeth. Lots of sweet jeee-sus and oh-my-god-effing-help-me!  The precariousness of our situation wasn’t aided by the fact that our pilot called his passengers “souls” when confirming our status with the control tower. He said something like, “Flight x-er 9-er ready for takeoff. Three souls on board.” The word had the discomforting effect of describing us in a rather ethereal manner, as if we had already perished in a plane wreck. I found it odd that he didn’t include himself in his soul count, so I had watched him closely as he taxied us down Nome’s runway, turned sharply to face us into the wind, and increased power to the engines until everything, including my head, buzzed like a swarm of angry bees.  The intimacy of the small vessel amazed me—the passengers were squished in with the cargo, nets, and straps. I had never been seated so close to a pilot, within an arm’s reach of his dashboard of dials. Steve’s hands flashed through a series of well-practiced motions, flipping a switch here, turning a knob there, lining everything up to launch us into the heavy gray sky. I felt everything about the plane inside of my body: the wheels grabbing the tarmac, the shimmy and shake of the aircraft, the disconcerting squeaks as if the plane (and me by extension) had second thoughts about getting off the ground. Steve was a quintessential Alaskan guy, sporting a heavy-duty Carhartt jacket and steel-toed boots. He looked content but tired, and probably hadn’t seen a shower in days. Stubble outlined his strong jaw, and his scraggly brown hair had a deep crease in back, marked by the edges of his battered baseball cap. The other two passengers, Carl and Ned, were returning to their native village after a short visit to Nome. The men had similar Alaska-Guy attire, complete with worn baseball caps. Carl’s had an Alaska flag patch, and Ned’s read CAT. I had no idea what that meant but was too shy to ask.  Before boarding, I had stood with the two men on the tarmac, watching Steve as he dipped in and out of the aircraft loading supplies. Judging by their breath, Carl and Ned had enjoyed their own share of dipping, but in a saloon. Carl was especially tipsy and kept leaning into Ned’s shoulder, forcing Ned to shrug him upright again. Then there was me, the third soul and only female on board, a recent college graduate newly minted for the teaching profession. Job prospects for high school English teachers weren’t good that year, so I’d settled on bussing tables at a café in Seattle and fussing over the lack of more rewarding work. But one sunny morning in mid-July, I spied the following words in the newspaper: “WANTED. TEACHERS IN ALASKA. Full Time. Call to apply.” I’d nearly choked on my coffee. It hadn’t occurred to me to look for a teaching job out of state, and certainly not in Alaska. Would they accept a Washington State teaching certificate? Alaska was a huge place. A wild place. A place impossibly far away. Yet there was something unmistakably alluring about it. Images of polar bears on ice floats came to mind. Vast stretches of wilderness with untouched, sparkling freshwater streams. Glaciers, forests, and snowcapped Denali, the tallest mountain in North America. The power of those places spoke to me. They whispered in my heart like a lover I didn’t know I had. But the implications of my chosen career terrified me. I had no real experience, and I knew that I didn’t know anything. Adding this venture into unknown territory terrified me even more. Yet here I was, hurtling in a tin can with wings to a small village on the north-facing coast of the Seward Peninsula. When I announced my new job to friends and family, their initial congratulatory sentiments were quickly followed by, “Wait a minute. Where are you going?” Pronouncing Shishmaref was challenging to the untrained tongue, and I grew weary having to spell it out, so I started replying with North of Nome. Most people had heard of Nome—something about a gold rush in the 1800s and an annual dogsled race. I had to admit, that’s about all I knew, too. When the job offer came, I said a hasty yes, even though I had no clue where that yes would be taking me. My only comfort was knowing that I’d be teaching high school English, a class called Consumer Math, and one titled Graphic Communications. I understood English, but the other two were a mystery.