Flying to Nome

As I fly to Nome, the view is worth recording. We passed no visible cities, not like flying between Grand Rapids and New York or anywhere else in the lower 48, but instead a water inlet full of melting ice chunks that gave way to snow covered mountains as far as could be seen. The sharp peaks turned to something smaller – based on a 34,000 foot view – with ribbons of white winding their way through the valleys. No green, nothing that looked like trees, but rather trees that looked more like moss on a hillside. One ribbon, a mature river, snaked back and forth in a tight winding pattern, while others meandered seldom off the straighter path. Occasionally the land became one solid piece of white with few peaks and valleys – a glacier maybe? A very large smooth white surface comes into view…what must be ice on water. The edge of the land, some places with a great cliff (based on the shadows cast by the sun), marks the transition from land to water. Unalakleet, Norton Sound.

At the center of this great white vastness cracks can be seen. Giant chunks of ice make straight-lined cracks, like the state lines of the central United States, and separate themselves from the main mass. Like something from a puzzle, the many-pieced white ice floats gently on the water. As the plane approaches the other side of the Sound and the impending land, the pieces of ice become larger with fewer cracks. Shadows of small fluffy clouds are cast on the ice below. Some ice melts and refreezes creating patterns of white and grey until they run into the land. I strain to see life, a polar bear maybe, to no avail. Those fluffy clouds overtake the view. The giant pieces of ice crush together making wrinkles around the edges. The dark water appearing between the cracks is all that is distinguishable as the cloud/ice colors wash together.

Speck houses dot the indiscernible shoreline, the entire bush village of Nome comes into view. A cross shaped runway welcomes us.