Last night, I took an unexpected, lightning-fast trip through every village of the Arctic Slope at Facebook speed: how it happened

First, to my Facebook friends who expressed astonishment at how rapidly I visited every single village on the Arctic Slope last night, and to those who wondered why they saw me in their village on the Facebook map but not wandering about the community, here is how it happened:

You know that little map on Facebook that shows where you've been? Up until last night, I had not delved into that map as it pertained to me. I had noticed that it showed I had been to just a few places - Barrow, Wasilla, Anchorage, Seattle, London and Bangalore, India.

I was curious about this. I wondered how Facebook knew I had been to those places? I had never told it. I figured somehow, it must have taken note when I had logged onto Facebook via wifi in these places. But why did Facebook note these places, and none of the other places I had been?

And why did it note London at all? How did Facebook know about London? I was there in 1994. There was no Facebook then. How did it know?

I decided that if Facebook was going to show I had been in these very few places, I should see if I could fill the map in a little better. I could have those little balloons all over the state of Alaska, across much of the US, a bunch of places in Canada, some in Greenland, Russia, Denmark, Dubai, Mexico and lots more places in India than just Bangalore.

So I clicked into the map and found that, indeed, I could add places. I decided to start at the top, with the Arctic Slope, so that Barrow would not be sitting there marked all by itself. I would do just the Arctic Slope for that evening and then come back and start filling in the others later. I started in the east, with Kaktovik, then moved west to Nuiqsut and kept going, until finally I had every village marked.

Then I noticed that each time I had marked a village, it had showed up on my profile page as a status update. Some people had already clicked, "like," and I received a couple of greetings from people who thought I was really in their village, along with some quizzical inquiries as to how I could be traveling to so many villages so fast... who was I, anyway... Santa Claus?

So there you go, that's how I did it. Having done it, I figured I might as well take this blog on a quick tour of every village tonight. Barrow, of course, had already been on the map and I was just in Barrow two weeks ago - so I open my tour with a scene from my final evening on this trip, when I went to the Eskimo Dance and got a friendly greeting from Isabell Elavgak of the Taġiuġmiut Dancers.

As for the rest of the pictures in this tour, they are pretty much the ones that came up first when I typed a village name in my computer search engine:

Myrtle Soplu in Kaktovik with an Arctic Char she had just hooked and pulled out of the Beaufort Sea...

Abe Stein storing bowhead in the ice cellar of Billy Oyagak in Nuiqsut.

Brian Kippi jumping off a small cliff along the Meade River near Atqasuk.

Two children in Anaktuvuk Pass.

Jason Ahmaogak of Iceberg 14 directing constuction of a boat launching pad where he believes the spring ice will open up offshore from Wainwright.

Kuioqsik Curtis, Lloyd Pikok and Jerry Kaleak Jr. of the Nukapigak crew, running with the boat on the ice north of Point Lay.

Jesse Frankson Jr. walking home from school in Point Hope.

If all goes as I hope and plan, over the next few years I will be making repeated trips to each of the villages and I will take many photographs. I will make certain Facebook notes it on the map.

I will still wonder how Facebook knew about my other trips? Esepcially London, 1994. I never told it anything - it just knew.

I find this a little bit spooky...

Comments

[Gane]

This is terrific! Great mapping effort :)

[James Mason]

I was watching the posts as they appeared from each village and I thought you'd not only got the Running Dog back into the air but you'd added a turbine engine to the old beast!

[Jim X]

Here I was thinking you were Santa Claus out for a practice run.