This is a question I get asked a lot from people who live in the city or towns that are bigger than mine. I am never too sure how to answer this question. After living here during the pandemic I realized that we do a lot for fun here. The things we do for fun are a lot different than what people do in the city. We do things like take 4-wheeler rides down the beach and beach comb, hunt, gather and so on. We have community events like potlucks or game nights. We take skiff rides up the river. We go “down the coast” and swim in the lakes down there. We chase bears that come into town or that we run into on the beach until they run far enough away that we can’t chase them anymore. We have house parties for birthdays and holidays. We host gatherings for boxing and football events on TV.
We have plenty of fun and luckily for us we were able to have all that fun throughout this pandemic. Our community is so small that we know who travels, how long it’s been since someone traveled, who’s been vaccinated and so on. We were able to control the threat of COVID cases and as of today we still haven’t had one positive case in our community. So while the rest of the world was social distancing and staying home, we were all able to visit each other, hold community events, and HAVE FUN while being COVID free.
Now I always wonder what these people do for fun who ask me this question. What do you do in the city? You go to the store, go to the mall. You can go to a restaurant or a bar. But really, what does one think goes on in a village? Do these people think I just sit at home all day living in the boondocks wishing I was in the city? Do they think it’s so excruciatingly boring because we don’t have a store, we don’t have any access to roads outside of town that we just live in despair out here? I really don’t know what they think. I am sure its difficult to imagine what life is like for people like us, but for me, I love it and I wouldn’t trade this life for anything.
It is definitely different to live in a village. Every village is unique. Not everybody does what we do. Nelson Lagoon is one of the smallest communities that I know of in Alaska and the stories and perspectives I will talk about in this blog only reflects my personal experience living here and should not be assumed that everybody who lives in villages around Alaska are doing the same things as us.
