A look Around Eek
I called Eek home for seven years.
The Yup’ik Eskimo village of Eek is 415 miles west of Anchorage, Alaska, on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. The delta is about the size of the state of Louisiana, but within that delta roads are rare and people are few.
The Eek post office in winter
Eek, with a population of 300, is a small village that sits on one bank of the Eek River. That river flows into the Kuskokwim and out to the Bering Sea.
For seven years I taught in the village school. I left at the end of the 2013-2014 school year to write full time, but the students asked me back for graduation.
While I stood on the play deck in front of the school to make this short video, happiness and sadness mixed together. I was happy to be back and be a part of the graduation, but sad that this would be my last afternoon in the village. My speech was done, the graduation complete. The next morning I would leave for home. A chapter of my life was complete.