Featured Yalie: Reid Magdanz

This is perhaps the most epic blog post of all time.

The other day, I was sitting in my room with Mike, Jake, and Max, and there's a knock on the door. In pops Reid, with a zip drive. He plugs it into my laptop and shows us a video. We're stunned.

Over Thanksgiving, Reid decided to make a video about his life in the wilderness. For those of us who don't know, Reid comes from Kotzebue, Alaska, which is above the Arctic Circle. It's point A on this Google Map:


I tried to find the distance from Kotzebue to here. Google said sorry. "We could not calculate directions between Kotzebue, Alaska and New Haven, CT."

Well, Reid decided to make a video about his life in Alaska, giving a great vision of what it's like to live there and the adventures he goes through on a regular basis. All pictures were taken by him and his family, and some close friends. It's probably the most amazing thing I've ever seen. Here's Reid himself:

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My mom was a city girl from Southern California. She always knew she wanted to leave the city, and after her time at UC-Santa Cruz she took the little money in her pocket and took off for Alaska.

My Dad grew up in Omaha. He was working as a photo-journalist with the Des Moines Register when he was given an assignment to photograph a school group from Northwest Alaska. He fell in love with them and soon found a grant that would take him to 250-resident Shungnak, Alaska for a yearlong photo assignment. Upon his return to the Midwest, he realized he couldn’t live in the Lower 48 anymore and was soon back in Alaska to stay.

I have lived my whole life in Northwest Alaska – 14 years in the town of Kotzebue, 4 in Nome long ago. Each has about 3,000 residents and neither is connected to the outside world by road, but only Kotzebue lies 30 miles above the Arctic Circle, and only Kotzebue is 70% Alaska Native. Kotzebue is the regional hub of the Northwest Arctic Borough, an area the size of Indiana with a population density of 0.177 people per square mile.

Now, less than a week after our first snow here in New Haven, Connecticut, I would like to take you on a 6 ½ minute journey to northern Alaska.

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[UPDATE: The audio was unfortunately blocked on Youtube. I guess the pictures will have to suffice :)]

We start with Kotzebue itself. An aerial shot and one of our two main streets. The Miss Arctic Circle competition. Front Street at freezeup and 20 below. My house, its front door buried on Christmas day, its back wall bright in spring.

Next we go into the country. I am regularly asked why I live in Alaska and why I want to go back. It isn’t for Kotzebue. My parents don’t live there for Kotzebue. We live there for the country. We live there for trips to the Duck Blind, padding a canoe along the shore, preparing for a hunt, building fires on clear, warm autumn days. We live there for the tundra, picnics on the beaches, freely migrating herds of caribou half a million strong. We live there for driving on the frozen ocean, ice fishing, the pink light of winter afternoons, and the beauty of freezup.

I live in Kotzebue, but Maniilaq River is my favorite place on the face of this Earth, although I only get to enjoy it for three weeks each spring. I talk with old Iñupiaq ladies born in sod houses in the wilderness, whose parents told first-hand stories of the coming of the white man. I read the history of Alaska in our log cabin, bought by my parents in 1989. I take walks through the trees and across the tundra near the cabin. I boat into the snow-capped mountains of the central Brooks Range and up other rivers leading into the Interior of the state. I climb some of those mountains and create a tarp lean-to to dry out gear after a wet hike.

Then we return to Kotzebue or, more specifically, to the Iten’s camp, 25 miles away and accessible only by boat and foot in summer or snowmobile in winter. Ed Iten is one of the world’s top dog mushers and a perennial contender in the Iditarod, the premier sled dog race in the world. His son Quinn grew tired of being homeschooled at camp and now lives in my room, going to school in town. While at the Iten’s we make runs to the woodlot at 40 below, admiring the pink light of high noon in the Arctic. We feed dogs a foul-smelling concoction of meat and oil. We collect our own wood and help Ed prepare for local races.

Next we go to one of Alaska’s tourist traps. While taken from a road, the pictures of Denali National Park are still spectacular, including a moose and the mountain itself.

Finally, we take a backpacking trip in some of the world’s most remote country. A Cessna 206 flies my family 150 miles from Kotzebue, crossing not more than half a dozen cabins on the way. We hike 25 miles up a stunning remote river valley and into a pass. At our final camp, the GPS says we are 50 miles from the closest village and therefore 50 miles from the closest road.

And absolutely last, we climb aboard Alaska Airlines for the return flight to Anchorage.

I hope you enjoyed this short trip to the Last Frontier, to the Land of the Midnight Sun. Please come find me in the dining hall, in my room (H-20), in the courtyard, or anywhere else if you want to chat about Alaska or anything else.

As for the current world, both Josh and I have higher resolution versions of this movie if you’re interested (I used huge pictures). Also, a good reading week to everyone. For better or worse, we’ll be home soon.

Reid



[BONUS: Here's a video interview you might enjoy that I did with Reid. Check it out!]