Inside The Rainbow. Sandy Sinclair

our return flight we stopped off in Juneau. After all, we had never met our boss. We were offered the job by mail, communicated by written reports each month, and our paychecks were sent to the bank. We didn't even know who we were working for.

      When we met face to face with the Commissioner of Education, Mr. Erickson, we found him to be a typical Alaskan, full of enthusiasm for the challenges inherent in The Last Frontier. Mrs. Novotney, who was our immediate supervisor, said, "When you've successfully served at Pauloff Harbor, admittedly a problem school, you can have any school you want that's open next year." We learned that the Federal Government was slowly surrendering all the BIA schools to the Territory. For our next Alaskan year, we chose Copper Center, a former BIA school along the Valdez highway.

      The first thing we did when we hit civilization was head for a good restaurant and order some fresh vegetables and finish that bite of steak that was taken away from me on the Garland. When the waitress came with our meal I looked at Marie and summed up the whole year by saying, “I think it was worth waiting a year for this steak.” The surprised waitress was little upset then said, apologetically, “Yes, I guess our cooks here are kind'a slow, aren’t they."

      “ It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,”

      (fromThe Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens 1850)

      EPILOGUE

      During our first year of marriage we were marooned, so to speak, on an isolated island with no way for either of us to bail out or go home to mother. With no outside support from family, friends or institutions, Marie and I found that there was no all-knowing super problem solver out there to lean on. We had to support each other and that molded us into a self-contained, self-reliant team. We had no fights between the male and female way of doing things as in some first year marriages of urban society. Our battle was against the world in which we found ourselves trapped. We, of course, had volunteered to go there, yet it was a bit like being trapped intellectually without any outlet to others. In the long run, that was the best thing that ever happened to us. We created our own ways to fight off loneliness and despair, while 100 mile-an-hour winds whistled over our bit of the Wild West.

      Most residents came to Sanak in an attempt to find Shangri La, a place away from the problems of civilization. Each wanted a refuge away from the law, crowded cities, government regulations, church and the approval of organized society. Inadvertently however, each brought their own set of problems to Shangri La. Without an agreed upon mandate, there was disunity. Without restraint, there was murder. Without an accepted leader, there were times of chaos. Without faith, there was a lack of life purpose. However, if there was ever a crisis that threatened the island they would always bond together to battle against it.

      That era of the one room little red schoolhouse, as we knew it, is gone now. That breed of teachers who forfeited modern living to teach in those rural schools is gone. Alas the wilderness, as we knew it, is also gone, but the lawlessness, as we knew it, is gone too. Good riddance to that!

      After we left, the State of Alaska built a better schoolhouse for Pauloff Harbor. In 1981 a church missionary was sent there, yet by the 1990 all the people had deserted the island. A small herd of beef cattle was imported to graze on the tundra among a few wild horses. Sanak is now an uninhabited open rangeland just as in the Old Wild West.

      WHAT IF-------What if we had taken that other job offer of King Island? It’s seldom in life one gets an accurate account of what would have been the result if one had taken the opposite of two choices in a life decision. Marie and I discovered, while reading a current copy of the ALASKA MAGAZINE, the story of the very couple who took that teaching job offered to us, so their story became part of our story. Rie and Juan Munoz took the King Island position teaching in Ukivok village that year. They did what we would have done. Rie taught the beginning grades and Juan taught the older Eskimo kids even though neither were trained educators. They got along well using the teacher manuals combined with common sense. They were totally isolated after the BIA supply ship, North Star, dropped them off in the fall. The King Islanders of those pre-statehood years actually relished that existence, although the BIA stopped supporting their lifestyle a decade later. As the island is totally surrounded by ice, the Eskimos go out to hunt the walrus for their meat supply, the walrus hides for their boat hulls as well as the walrus ivory, which is the main stuff of their livelihood. King Island ivory carvings are envious collector items. Juan went out on several walrus hunts, as I would have done. With that complete isolation from the mainland, it seemed their year was even more primitive than ours on Sanak. However they had radio contact with other teachers. They had a resident Catholic Priest who maintained a well attended church. There was an authority in the form of a village chief but most important of all, there was no alcohol allowed.

      Juan Jr. the son of Juan and Rie Munoz, wrote the book, THE KING ISLAND JOURNAL telling of his parent’s adventures. I wrote to Rie explaining our connection to her story. She immediately wrote back and wanted to hear our Sanak story and we became good pen pals, though I knew nothing of her present life. When I mentioned to an acquaintance about the interesting contact I’d made with a former Alaskan bush teacher then told them her name, I got an immediate response. “Why didn’t you know that Rie Munoz is a very famous artist? Her water color prints are collector items throughout Alaska and all the Puget Sound.” I immediately went out, found one of the many outlets of Rie’s artwork and bought the one that reminded me of her year on King Island.

      After that year, Rie went on to become a noted artist famous for her Alaskan watercolors. Marie and I went on to become Alaskan bush teachers.

      “King Island” copyright 1974 Rie Munoz Juneau Alaska