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Sections Home Page Local News AP News Archives Business Classifieds Event Calendar Forums Life Opinion Obituaries Photo Gallery Since We Asked Sports Tempo Weather Special Coverage 2006 Britt Festivals --> Shop Our Valley AutoFinder HomeFinder JobFinder Search Our Valley Special Sections Homelife Magazine Joy Magazine Readers Choice 2006 Oregon Golf Info Oregon Wine Info Our Valley Other Publications Local Links Ashland News eSouthernOregon Newspapers In Education Personals Moving Here Movie Listings TV Listings Volunteer Customer Service Advertise With Us Media Kit Place Classified Ad Contact Us FAQ's Home Delivery Site Map --> Email Story to a Friend August 6, 2006 Shortcut to nowhere By Paul Fattig An Associated Press story out of Alaska this past week reminded me of one of the most bone-headed shortcuts I've ever taken. And that's from a life of notoriously dummkopf shortcuts. The article reported the sun set at 2:04 a.m. Wednesday at Barrow, ending nearly three months of midnight sun, according to the National Weather Service office there. June 1984 found me in the Eskimo village of Wainwright on the edge of the Chukchi Sea some 650 air miles northwest of Anchorage. It's about 70 miles southwest of Barrow and some 300 miles north of the Arctic Circle. It was 24-7 sunlight. Advertisement As an Alaskan life feature writer for a newspaper in Anchorage, I was doing articles on the changing Arctic culture. I flew to Barrow, then hitched a ride with a bush pilot who dropped me off at the Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line radar station airstrip half a dozen miles east of Wainwright. I caught a ride with a snowmobiler over the still-frozen Chukchi Sea bay to the village. I spent the week, having arranged to stay at the home of a teacher who had left on vacation. Breaking the ice with the Inupiat villagers proved difficult. No one seemed much interested in talking to an outsider. That all changed after I met a kindly elderly gentleman named Waldo Bodfish. The son of a whaling captain from Martha's Vineyard and an Eskimo woman, Bodfish was born in 1902. He told me he was once the village dentist by virtue of owning a pair of pliers. He wasn't kidding. "I've lived in the old times and the new times," Bodfish said. "I like the new times. You could die from the flu in the old times." Bodfish, who would write a book about his life, "Kusiq: An Eskimo Life History from the Arctic Coast of Alaska," suggested a few folks I should interview. He told me to drop his name when I knocked at their doors. I did. They all invited me in. At the end of the week I had to catch the bush plane at the DEW Line airstrip. Since I could see the radar dome like a giant golf ball on the horizon, I decided to walk across the tundra. It was pleasant, like walking on a mattress. When you stopped, lemmings would pop up around your feet. They resemble large mice with stubby tails and tiny ears. But I kept running into unfrozen sea inlets that forced me to detour. Finally, I ran into a mini-fjord that went for miles. I was going to miss my noon rendezvous. That's when I saw the roughly 30-foot long ice bridge across the narrow inlet. The top, submerged under half a foot of water, was scarcely a foot wide. Farther under the surface I could see icy blue slopes on each side of the bridge disappearing down into the dark depths. It was as though a watery grave beckoned on each side of the ice. But I ignored my common sense, mustered my scant courage and edged forward. The ice was solid. But slippery. I stopped several times to mutter to myself that I would never, ever do anything this foolhardy again. I was halfway across now. Perhaps it was a sense of victory, that I was actually going to make it. Or it may have been a panic attack and the urgent desire to have my feet on solid land again. In any event, I stopped taking baby steps. I stepped out. That's when both feet shot out from under me. Fortunately for my life, I landed astride the ice bridge. Unfortunately for the male anatomy, l landed astride the ice bridge. But the intensely cold ice water dulled the pain. That and the horrifying fear of sliding off into the abyss, never to be seen again. Clinging to the sides of my icy steed with wool mittens, I inched forward until the bridge emerged from the water. Wet, freezing and mightily relieved, I crawled up on the tundra. No doubt leaving the lemmings guffawing, I stumbled to my feet, wrung my clothes out as best I could and staggered onward to the DEW Line airstrip. That's where I was informed the plane was still at Barrow because of mechanical problems and wouldn't arrive for another 24 hours. Reach reporter Paul Fattig at 776-4496 or at [email protected] . 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