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.

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.