Flight to Kotz

As Gordon drove us out to the airport we passed tens of ptarmigan perched in the willows along side the road. Their round white bodies stuck out against the brown thin trees. The plane flew in just as we drove past the cemetery. We packed up the airplane as a few people unloaded.
We passed over the dump (pictured below) which is about a mile from the airport outside town. We were off to Kiana, about 20 miles east of here. We flew along the Kobuk River which, as we neared Kiana closed in on the Mountains. In Kiana we dropped off a few packages and picked up a few passengers. People were quite friendly as they helped unload the boxes. Kiana is about half the size of Noorvik- we were wondering what Lena & Tim were up to in Kiana as we waited on the well scraped runway admiring the other small aircraft parked on the edge. From the plane we could see moose all over- some following the river and the sno-go tracks, other bedded down.You could also see tracks converging in areas- usually in the middle of lakes. The pilot noticed my camera and said he spotted caribou on some of the hills the other day- so he circled around and buzzed a few of the treeless tops but no luck; many tracks though- "must have grew wings" he said as we straightened our flight path toward Kotz.
The land flattened as we left the hills for the coastal plain.

Kotzebue appeared out of the whiteness- the hub of the northwest.