It’s Good Living In Alaska Right Now!
The great thing about living in Alaska during these challenging times. I live in the bush, well away from the road system, with no direct flights from Anchorage.
We used to but the small regional airlines went belly up and into bankruptcy. The only way out is via a smaller airline to Nome before heading to Anchorage.
In order to travel through Nome to Anchorage, you have to fill out a travel form explaining why you are heading there and asks if you’ve experienced certain symptoms in the past few days. Furthermore, anyone flying into this village has to request permission to enter it and be prepared to undergo quarantine for 14 days. In addition, anyone flying into the state has to go through a 14 day quarantine. All of these things have kept the number of people infected by the coronavirus under 400 with only 10 deaths.
Although the village is under certain health regulations, we are able to get out to enjoy the outdoors. The ocean and the slough have thawed so people are heading out to hunt or fish, or they head off to the mountains to hunt birds. Most folks are keeping the numbers down to one or two people.
I regularly talk one to two hour walks out the road heading towards the elder center and then up the hill to the dump if I go far enough, I’ll end up at the bible church. Sometimes, I walk all the way down the ocean road to the local store, back around past the post office, up to the transfer station, over to the bridge and back home.
The kids are out enjoying the warmer weather. They are out playing on trampolines, shooting baskets, riding around on bikes and four wheelers, hanging at the school playground, running around with friends, and just being children.
In spite of the fact we’ve had no reported cases in this village and only one in Nome, we still have enough handmade masks for everyone and the local clinic. I think I have five or six at my house. Yes, I carry one with me but I don’t usually use it because everyone in the stores and post office practice social distancing.
We had a teacher leave the village just before everything hit to have a baby. When you live in a small village with no hospital, expecting women fly out to Nome, or Anchorage to have their baby. This teacher went all the way to Pennsylvania to have her’s and then she got stuck there.
She finally made it back about two weeks ago. She and her family immediately went into quarantine and today it ended. Their three year old daughter had trouble with it because she couldn’t understand why they had to isolate themselves. I’ve been listening to her playing with her friends.
Through this whole time, I have never felt threatened or in danger of getting the virus nor have I felt as if my rights have been infringed. Most of my coworkers and I do not understand people who are out demonstrating against something designed to keep them safe. We feel safe here in the village.
What scares us is the possibility of the virus coming into the village and killing a large proportion of the population. They remember the Spanish flu and do not want it to happen again thus the rules and isolating the villages from the world. Let me know what you think, I’d love to hear. Have a great weekend.
