kasigluk

Kasigluk
(student teaching, spring 1998)

Kasigluk from the air

Honey Bucket	Kasigluk stands out on the open tundra like a lone raven in a clear sky. Officially, it holds about 500 Yup'ik Eskimos. In reality, there are two Kasigluks, each with around 250 people. Neither has running water. Instead of toilets, people use "honey-buckets" (see top picture). Basically, you did your thing in a bucket and hauled it to a way-station when it got full. As with everything, you can get used to it. The two villages are about a mile and a half apart. This came to be because of the eroding banks of the Johnson River, which the village sits on. As families expanded the dry land was used up in the original village site, and existing land began to wash away at increasing rates. So some people moved to the next bit of dry land and considered themselves part of the village they had left. And indeed, there is only one post office for the two, and one gas station. The tundra is a desert. Very little precipitation falls, though snow can be piled up into such huge drifts it doesn't seem like an arid environment. And the lakes, ponds, sloughs, streams, rivers, and puddles belie the geography book's assertion. Yet, it is true. The explanation lies with permafrost. Not many inches below exposed ground lies a layer of ground which never thaws, called permafrost. The entire Lower Kuskokwim region is under laid by this stuff. If you sink a post into the ground, it transmits heat, thawing the ground, creating either the sinking or the heaving of the post. This makes for hell on door frames. The school's foundation is actually specially cooled to prevent this sort of reaction. The permafrost also doesn't let water through. Therefore, the few inches that do fall stay right there. This makes for a fantastic wetland in the middle of a desert, breeding ground for many species of waterfowl. In summer, which we didn't see, this makes for the multitude of shallow waterways that characterize the place. In winter, it all looks the same: flat and white, starkly beautiful.
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site designed February 1999 by Robbin Garber-Slaght