This ain't your Atlantic City boardwalk!

I live on the tundra now. Tundra is essentially a giant sponge on top of permafrost, soil that never completely thaws out. As you can imagine, this makes it difficult for trees to grow (which is why there are, sadly, no hottie lumberjacks). Tundra is very mushy, and as a result it is difficult to build roads and houses and buildings. Even lightweight off-road vehicles get stuck in the mud all the time. When I was in Dillingham, I remember laughing at the fact that it is actually easier to get around in the winter when things are frozen. It's easier to hop on your snow machine and drive 50 miles than to get on a plane. The people in remote villages use wintertime to stock up for summer!

In Bethel, as in many of the remote villages around here, they have built boardwalks as lightweight alternatives to paved roads. The boardwalks have become one of my favorite things up here. They cut across the tundra, forming shortcuts and links all across town. From certain parts of the boardwalk, you can see way out across the tundra. It's beautiful. I'm a fan.

Building on the tundra is a bit challenging, to say the least. Remember the permafrost? Well, if you build a house right on top of permafrost, the heat from the house will melt some of that ground. However, it melts unevenly, so the house will become unstable and fall down pretty quickly. The ingenious solution? All the buildings here are on stilts. Raising the house up also raises the heat up, so the permafrost below will stay frozen and stable. (I suppose it's a little more complicated than that, but that's as much as my non-engineering brain can comprehend.) A fun side effect is that the houses sway in the wind...and we get a lot of wind off the tundra! Lying in bed at night, you can feel everything swaying. It took some getting used to, but I like it!

And now please enjoy some Hipstamatically-enhanced photos from the boardwalk. I had a little too much fun photographing my shadow as it waved back at me.