With no explanation, a pilot dropped Gordon off in the middle of nowhere

Gordon Matumeak, brother of James "Matu" Matumeak who I often have breakfast with at Abby's Home Cooking in Wasilla, did not come to Nuiqsut with the original group when they came and pitched their tents. He was a high school student attending Mount Edgecumbe Boarding School in Sitka. After he finished at Mount Edgecumbe he returned to Barrow and later headed out to visit his mother and family members who had come to Nuiqsut and were still living in tents. He thought the pilot was flying him to Nuiqsut but instead he dropped him off at an empty airstrip built by the oil industry about 13 miles upriver from the village.

The pilot did not bother explaining any of this or even to speak to Gordon. He just dropped him off, along with a few boxes. No one else was there - just Gordon. He had no idea where he was or how he was going to get to Nuiqsut. After a couple of hours, a man, David Kasak Sr. came in a boat to pick up the boxes. He was surprised to find Gordon there but was happy to give him a ride to Nuiqsut, where the ice airstrip built on the river had melted. Gordon had not known Kasak had a young daughter. In a later year, he was hanging out with some friends in the community center. All had girl friends. Gordon did not. He told his friends that the next girl to come walking down the road is who he would choose to be his girlfriend. That girl was Alice Kasak, the boat driver's daughter.

I don't know exactly how long they have been married now, but their children are grown and their grandchildren are growing. When Gordon took that first flight he did not intend to make Nuiqsut his home, but the animals convinced him - the whales, the seals, the polar bears, the grizzly bears, the caribou, the moose, the wolverines, the fish, the geese... Pictured on the cup is Alice's grandmother Harriet Kasak, Patsy Tukle and Abe Simmonds, Jr. Before I left, Gordon handed me a cup just like it, still in the original packaging. "Merry Christmas!" he said. Instantly, I had a new favorite coffee cup. He also gave me some smoked salmon strips he got from a friend in Holy Cross.