7. Back to Chodotka Autonomous Okrug

Journal, July 28, 1994, Puoten, 65.857, -170.53
Great day. We had rounded the peninsula, well past Mys Peek. Had been paddling steady for 8 hours. Heading east, the afternoon sun in our eyes, couldn’t make out what looked like a fuzzy rock. We were tired. So we pulled in. Straight in. Louise and I hit the beach first and then we saw what it was: a dead, beached whale with a huge Kodiak bear on top. It seemed to have eaten out a cavity in the whale, gorged itself, and then dozed off.
Startled, the bear heard us, stood on its hind legs, front paws up in the air and roared at us. It was massive. We had been so dumb, and now so vulnerable, maybe 20 feet away. We back-paddled as fast as we could.
The bear went back down on all four legs, turned, jumped off the whale and ran away. Tom managed to shoot a photo of the back of the bear heading over the nearest ridge. Wow.
We got out of there. Oh yah. Earlier we had seen a mother brown bear and three cubs scurrying up the ridge. We should have been more alert. We didn’t camp there.
 

65.86, -170.538
We ended up at a place that to our untrained eyes looked like an old homestead. But Gennady knew it for what it had been: an old military post. There were trenches for practice, and a sunken bomb shelter. A most beautiful place, with a lagoon out back and a nice stream. My topo map says it is, or was, Puoten.
I was just getting the cooking fire started when we heard a rifle shot, loud, close by. Men coming up the beach. Two close, two following. With the glasses I could see that they were not military, all had rifles. So, what next? Turned out they were Chuckchi locals, out fishing. They net migrating fish on the rivers to feed a fox farm out of Uelen. Yikes.
Out of view they had a tracked vehicle. The rifles were for the bears. Did they fire the shot to announce their arrival? Some had on skin jackets with fur lining. Asian faces. Good looking men. We served them tea. They talked in Russian to Gennady. The youngest, about 15, eyed us suspiciously. The other three were more relaxed. The youngest one was most interested in our gear and our kayaks. When they left we cooked up some pasta over a few bricks and a grate. And went to bed content. 37 nautical miles.
 

July 29, 1994, 65.627, -170.847
Headwind, misty, rain, a tough slog. We kept rounding point after point. Confusion as to our location. No visibility. Up to now I hadn’t been involved in navigation because Dick was doing that. But he didn’t know where we were. I started checking our headings. When we managed to get ashore through some surf at lunch, I borrowed Dick’s parallels and calipers and from our headings determined that we were not nearly as far along as we had thought. Now we are going to work out our times and headings each day in advance. We are dealing with a topo map that covers a huge region, including a good chunk of the Alaskan coast, Saint Lawrence Island, all of our route. No details. Further south we have better charts. (Of Arakamchechen) Camped just west of Mys Nunyamo, another abandoned military place.
 

July 30, 1994, Lavrentiya, 65.587, -171.0
Fog cleared, with glasses you could make out Lavrentiya.
The town seemed a little nicer than Provideniya, though it is smaller. Gennady looked in all four shops for things that we couldn’t get in Provideniya.
The shopkeepers were mostly Chinese. He bought a soldering gun. The kids were a lot of fun, they swarmed us. A little girl gave Louise a leather bracelet with beads that she had made. Her brother, Sasha, gave me one, which I will pass on to Evan. The kids made up their own games.
Of course, when we landed on the beach two military types drove up to check our passports. The stores were very sparse. Whole cupboards bare. The town again has big chunks of concrete and steel lying around, junk everywhere, dirt, no pavement. Large apartment buildings, plain, a bust of Lenin.
Yesterday at Nunyamo I had luck. Walking around the deserted village I felt a rusty nail go through the sole of my boots and right between my toes. Not a scratch!
 

Journal: July 31, 1994, Akani, 65.492, -171.176
We left Lavrentiya, still on the 30th about 6:15 PM, arrived here at Akani at 10 P.M. Another long day.
As we approached the beach of what we thought was another deserted village a couple of people came down near shore and waved us around the point to a more sheltered beach. We were invited to stay in a little portable cabin with a coal fire last night, had tea and dinner and talked until 1:30 am.
Alexander, an old man, and Nina, an old woman, live here full time. Alexander told us that a storm is coming and that we will be here for three days.
The whole village of 50 families had been moved to Lorino about a decade ago. Displacement has been government policy. Alexander and Nina couldn’t stand city life and moved back here three years ago. Their two children are here for the summer. Tatiana went to high school in Leningrad. Rusylan attends school in Lorino, has worked for a while in Provideniya. She teaches school somewhere. Maybe she said Vladivostok. Mom looks wonderful, has a big broad face. They look handsome in their leather and fur. The portable cabin we are in is sometimes hauled overland and used by reindeer herders.
At 6 AM two guards came and demanded passports. Gennady is now walking back to Lavrentiya to pay some fee for passing through this area. Passing through fiefdoms. Three hours each way. It’s blowing south and we are comfortable (except for Gennady) and can use some rest. We are four in the cabin right now. Tom, who, like a predatory animal, is either full on or off, is asleep. I feel I’m more like an herbivore. I need to forage. Dick is writing, Louise cutting off some of the neck of her dry suit (it ripped, was repaired in Lavrentiya by a guy with a motorcycle, but the patch material was too heavy, and it tore again beside the patch).
Tom and Louise spar quite a bit. It turns out that maybe they have some history. Now he wants her to paddle harder. Says she’s lily-dipping. She claims she needs to conserve some energy for the next day. Perhaps her racing skills with light weight crafts did not prepare her for our heavily loaded doubles. I’m paddling very hard. As far as I’m concerned, though, she’s my paddling partner, we’re at least keeping up with Gennady and she’s good company. No problem.
Everyone has aches and pains. Dick: quite a blister on his palm, Tom: a swollen wrist from impact during Gennady’s rescue, Louise aches all over. My arms are good. My fingers are tired. They feel aflame, especially in the morning. On my right wrist are several open pus sores. No Band-Aid is possible, so they are not healing. I’m not sure but maybe the dry suit neoprene cuff wore into it. The pain in my neck and shoulder blades stops as soon as the paddling stops. The right wet suit boot has worn off the skin on my foot, so now I wear a sock on that foot. I cut off the end of the other sock and wear the rest of it over my wrist, to cover it and keep the cuff off it. Considering how hard I am paddling, and for how long each day, I think that my body is holding up well. I am in good spirits. Because I am a little faster, I am doing the cooking, morning, and evening. Tom takes down the tent and often washes dishes, as does Dick. Louise takes down the other tent. She’s good at that now. I don’t think that she had tented from kayaks before. Dick and I handle the cooking tarp it if is required. Gennady does fire.
 

Aug. 1, 1994: 3 PM and still wind-bound at Akani
Blowing 30–40 knots from north. Walked today. You cannot see the wind much because there are no trees or large plants to bend over. Just short grass and flowers. If you kneel, you notice that there is much less wind. In this country it is windier if you are a human than if you are a ground squirrel. Most of the land is soggy but some of the higher ground dries well. This is ground squirrel country — light brown, quite large animals with a call like a squirrel, except louder, and more aggressive. The tops of most of the hills are rocky.
Through the mist I could sometimes make out the hook extending out around the next bay. Sometimes I could see no more than 10 meters. This encourages you to observe close in. There is a surprising variety of small flowers. My favorite is a small cupped blue flower, like a hooded face. Camas? The most common flower is dark pink, five petals, open like a daisy. There is a stem with a white fluff puff on the top. An interesting purple snap-dragon-style flower with fern-like leaves alternating down the stock (many flowers per stalk). Small yellow daisies, some with blue stamens. Tiny pink, 6-petal flowers. More. Very common: stocks with many pink parts.
Down in the valleys you can watch water ooze out of the moss and head downhill; the beginnings of creeks and rivers. Further down the creek spreads out, reeds indicate more depth than my gumboots can handle. A short distance later the river has become swollen, the water, now brown, flows very quickly. A pile of rocks offers me shelter from the wind. I crouch down and ponder this land and my own ignorance of it. Lots of caribou poo and antlers. Spongy footing. Small flowers. How do the huge brown bears survive? Rusylan says ground squirrels, any dead animals, fish. Those bears looked enormous, healthy, successful. The caribou antlers were old but the droppings fairly fresh. There were a few small kill deer-like birds with brown back, yellow belly, black line above eye, white line below, forked black/white tail feathers.
On a hill were three coffins lying on the land with sides filled in with rocks. A beautifully preserved skull lay beside one. At another, just some bones and an Orthodox cross, written: 1923–1962. I couldn’t read the Russian, of course. Yesterday on another hill I came across several mounds. Curved bones and wood curved up over pits dug about 1 ½ to 2 meters deep. Up to 2 meters in length, maybe 1 meter across. I asked Rusylan- these were used by his Chuchchi people to store meat on the permafrost. They covered these pits with sod during summer, dug them up for food in winter. The bones supported the sod.