When my nephew, Kael, was about 9 years old, that formative age where the world imprints itself upon you, he came to Anchorage from his home in Unalakleet, Alaska, with his auntie, Heidi. It was summer, and he was loving all the diversions of the big city. Movies, shopping at the mall, meals at restaurants, and chocolate donuts with sprinkles at the grocery store. During a moment in the car, I imagine when he was thoroughly appreciating all that city life can offer, he asked his auntie, “Do people go ugruk hunting here?”
“No, they don’t,” Heidi said.
Kael looked down. “Oh,” he said, his voice shallow and quiet. “Then I can’t live here.”
When I heard this story, my eyes and belly smiled and my auntie heart melted.
FOR SOME PEOPLE, like me, moving out of a community in rural Alaska was a choice. A difficult choice. A choice I don’t question or regret or second-guess, though it was still hard-won, because of the exact sentiment Kael expressed. I feel like it’s a redundant message in my writing. In my testimony to governing bodies. In conversations I have with people who’ve never left the road system. Our Indigenous way of life is beautiful. Living in relationship with the land and water is so rich and so life-filling that all the diversions in Western cultivated society cannot hold a candle to a calm day on the water. Feeling the kiss of the spring sun on your cheeks and hearing the water lap and laugh against the hull of the boat. Seeing the orange face of an ugruk and hauling it onto an ice floe, knowing your family will celebrate and be nourished.
Moving away from Unalakleet was an impossible decision full of heartbreak. The land and the water and the way we live and play are central to who we are. This is where our values are born. It’s where we teach our children to respect our plant and animal relatives and the living Earth that gives and gives. It’s where we stain our fingers with blueberry juice and plunge seal livers into the cold ocean water to wash. Where we haul moose hindquarters to the boat, our legs, belly, back and arms shaking with fatigue but our spirits buzzing and feeling as sweet and light as whipped akuutaq made by an auntie from St. Mary’s.
Living in relationship with the land and water is so rich and so life-filling that all the diversions in Western cultivated society cannot hold a candle to a calm day on the water.
With the changing of the seasons, I’m realizing that living away will always bring moments of heartbreak. The love I feel for the driftwood-lined beaches, the green tundra plants growing under the snow in the spring, the sight of the Whaleback Mountains to the east, and the ocean that gives, that loves, that shows its anger in the fall is like the feeling one has for one’s beloved. The ache in my chest when I witness the change of the seasons and acknowledge and listen to Her silent messages is the same ache I feel for my mother. For my grandma. I want to be with them. In moments of missing home, I remind myself to breathe.
In Unalakleet and so many communities throughout rural Alaska, if you want to take a short four-wheeler ride after work to go pick a gallon of blueberries in late summer, you can. If you want to go for a quick boat ride with a rifle to see what you can see during moose-hunting season, you can. If you’re tired of eating moose meal after meal after meal during those early spring days and you want to drive upriver on sno-go to ice fish for trout for a taste of something fresh, you can.
It’s not so in Anchorage.
This past March, when the sun returned and I once again welcomed its warmth on my cheeks, I felt it. My body was telling me it was time to go ice fishing. It was time for fresh trout. Except this spring, I was in Anchorage, where outdoor spring activity means switching from skis to running shoes. And I wanted more. I wanted to be fed from the water. I wanted to be fed from a day in the sun, to feel life literally tugging at the line on my jig stick.
The land and the water and the way we live and play are central to who we are. This is where our values are born.
The shock in the lack of dimension in activity and relationship here is like that feeling when you think there’s one last step on the staircase, but instead of your foot stepping down one more tread, it lands abruptly on the floor where you’re already standing and the force of it reverberates up your femur, thigh, spine and into your head. With the change of winter to spring, my body told me it was time for ice fishing. My body told me to get ready for ugruk hunting. As the season moves along, my body will tell me it’s time to eat grilled king salmon steaks at my dad’s and then check the tundra for ripe aqpiks. My body tells me when to be out, harvesting. Appreciating the gifts. Loving the giver.
With the change of the seasons this year, the last step wasn’t there. I simply switched out my studded winter car tires.
I am in Anchorage. The sun and the season give their signals. I still appreciate my walks among the trees. I look out my window for new birds arriving as they build nests and lay their eggs. One day soon, I’ll drive to Costco for a $5 chicken in a plastic bag. I’ll make a chicken pot pie and then the boil the carcass into broth for soup the next day. And I’ll think of Kael’s wisdom at 9 years old.
Lifeways is a column in which an Inuit woman explores living in direct relationship with the land, water and plant and animal relatives in Alaska.
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This article appeared in the May 2025 print edition of the magazine with the headline “I wish I was ice fishing.”
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