We were not flying long when the plane made a big loop. Below I saw Golovin. "Don't eat the food, don't drink the water and sleep with one eye open," were some of the things the man in Nome said about Golovin.... and lots of other things that I can't even print. I looked down on the village. I sure hoped he was wrong.

I got off the plane and looked around. No one was there to meet me yet. I thought about the information I'd received about Golovin- Golovin was settled by the Kauweramuit Eskimos, who later mixed with the Unaligmiut Eskimos. The village was named after a Russian navy captain.The ecomomy is based on subsistence living, reindeer herding and fishing. No roads connect Golovin to other areas. Most residents haul their own water to their homes. I looked down on the village, worried. I still did not know how I was going to approach my tale. And I knew this village was my last chance. It HAD to come to me here. Golovin was an important village in my story. My hero's part in the adventure ended here. I heard a truck coming. My ride was here.

A man with a truck drove me to town. He didn't say a word the whole time he drove. He left me and my gear on the snowy road in front of the high school and took off. "Now what?" I wondered, "Where do I go?" I walked into the high school and found the front office and the principal. Soon the principal was walking me over to the elementary school. "You'll be staying in there," he told me. I was to be an ITINERANT again, sleeping in a classroom. We walked through the front door, right into a small classroom. Then through the cafeteria- a smaller room with only two tables to eat at. Two kids sat at the tables. At the end of the room were wooden shelves holding giant tins of canned goods. The principal took me to the only other clasroom, in the back, and told me that is where I would stay. Then he left. I felt weird- the village felt....it felt...I guess SULLEN is the word. Sullen.

Soon more kids started coming in. Once they saw me in the back a marathon peeking session began. Finally a woman came in and introduced herself to me. She explained to me that the kids had come because between six and seven in the evening the school held a reading hour. She invited me to dinner at the apartment she shared with other teachers and I accepted. Finally, someone to talk to.

At dinner I asked the teachers if any of them knew anything about the character I was researching in Golovin- a dog named Togo. None had, but none of them were native to the area. They told me to visit with Maggie who ran the village store, she knew just about everybody and everything.

Back in my classroom, I was unsettled. I had been to Nome, Unalakleet, Koyuk, Elim and now Golovin, drawing and taking notes, and all I had was a big jumbled mess, really. A bunch of stuff, that's all. What was I going to say? I looked around the room, desperate for a clue. Moose antlers sat atop a filing cabinet. There was a shelf with lots of different kinds of bones. A hawk feather. Three children's drawings of the Iditarod Race. Here's one....

There were many hand drawn posters on the wall. They looked like this: QIKSIKRAUTIQAGNIQ: RESPECT UTUQQANAANUN: ELDERS INUUNIAGVIGMUN: NATIVE There was a bilingual calendar: QILGICHTATQIAT: MARCH. I saw a drawing dedicated to musher Martin Buser and I started thinking about the race- last night had been the Musher's Ball in Anchorage... a big party where the public can meet and dine with the mushers. Tomorrow the great race would start. The action is peaking in Anchorage. But here, as I looked out the window into the darkness.... here it was just quiet and windy and cold. In just over a week this little village would be full of strangers- television people, newspaper folk, pilots, tourists and mushers- all here to observe the Iditarod Race that would be rushing through. But right now, it was quiet. I tried to sleep. I couldn't sleep. Tomorrow was my last day in the bush country. Staying in the villages, I knew how it felt, I had the FEELING for my story, but how could I, would I, should I communicate it? TOGO- what is it that I need to say about you?