Heading out across Kobuk Sound, thanks to the Arctic's most trusty method of wintertime travel: snow machine. (There's an argument here to be made for dog teams, but since those are fewer and farther in between than they used to be, we'll let it slide). Hundreds of miles of snow machine trails run across the sea ice on the Sound, the Baldwin Peninsula, the Noatak Delta, and off towards all the surrounding camps and villages, marked by tracks and stakes. In the summer, you can still tell where they run, because the vegetation underneath the snow has been crushed. The sky is just one big woolly blanket. And not seeing direct sunlight for three weeks has an effect on morale.
For instance: "Berett, come over here!"
I couldn't see him, but I heard him calling from the outside the culvert.
"Why?" I asked, walking over.
"It's snowing!" he yelled.
Then he dropped two fistfuls of snow on my head.
Turns out the main effect on morale is just an uptick in total goofiness.
