Drip, drop, drip.

Drop.

It was warm today. Chunks of snow hurled themselves over the eaves and hurtled past my classroom windows at startling intervals all day long. Icicles drizzled melt water into the pitted snow below.

Yesterday, Shannon and Terri shanghaied me after school and took me to Big Lake on Shannon’s new snow-go. I was sandwiched between them, my cold face buried in the fur ruff on Shannon’s jacket. The narrow, icy trail slipped and skittered under the roaring snowmachine, and I felt my knees grip harder, skittish and too-cautious as always.

When we got there, I looked up and around at the expanse of white and blue and space in every direction. I could feel the mountains yarding on my heartstrings across the ice. I have to get up there, once at least, before I leave the village for good. I should have taken pictures of the mountains: If I had, you could probably see the words “come hither” stenciled in the sky by their ridges. I did, I think, or maybe it was just a whisper from inside the part of me that loves to want just for wanting’s sake, and lingers, grinning, on windy precipices, tasting salt.

I took only one ridiculous snow-go selfie with Terri, but in my defense, Shannon was in front of me, I was in awe, I had no gloves (abducted, remember?) and those machines can fly.

I opened the window over my sink wide today and let the sound of the ice and snow, first slipping and scraping on the metal roof, then falling in white sheets to smash on the ground in a snow-cone splash, slip into my kitchen over the log-deep sill.

It’s been an exhausting week. The shattering ice confused with the chattering of the girls and made a little white noise for me rummage in to find a smile. They mixed their own cookies while I made a pot of curry and arbitrated disputes over who would get to choose a cookie first. They laughed and left their wet snowpants in puddles on the floor and hung their grubby socks to dry on the ledge of my open window and tracked muddy prints all over the floor and made me happy.

Yesterday evening, C came by to tell me that her sister wouldn’t be able to make it to school today.  P would have to stay home and babysit the four-year-old so that their auntie could make it to work. We walked over to the school in the dusk light and got P’s math book and independent reading so that she wouldn’t fall behind. “I will never have kids” said C. “It isn’t fair”

The village is grieving and drinking and grieving. A young man passed away last weekend, and everyone is reeling. I knew the man, who used to cook for the school. He played country music too loud and grinned and danced along when I’d bop by in the middle of my crowd of kids, mouthing the words and playing mini air guitar. One of my boxes wound up at his house, and I met his newborn baby and his wife on one of my first days in the village.

The kids have been sullen and sleepless. No one is taking this well, and those whose families live hard have retreated into silence to bear the living harder.

Today, the body was returned to the village. Nearly everyone met the plane at the airport. My class chose to go, and we rode packed in the back of the red school pickup, bending our heads against the wind. We hopped out of the truck and joined the crowd of people standing in the melt-glittery white light of morning. Everyone looked up as the fat plane ripped the blue sky open overhead. When the long wooden box was lowered out of the plane, the young men lifted it and began to walk the mile or so back to the village. The rest of us followed on foot, the fourwheelers and snow-gos growling behind. As one man tired, another stepped in to take his place bearing the dead. A skin drum beat time all the way to the village, and a man’s husky singing voice rose above the footfalls and engines and quiet talk of the crowd. Halfway home, an obviously intoxicated man stumbled into M, a severely autistic high schooler. M looked at me with silent, confused, helpless big brown eyes and tried to step away. Another boy dodged behind me until the man fell behind us.

The men of the village carried Earl right up the steps of the church and through the front door. Everyone stood inside in winter coats. After a few short prayers, a murmured amen, everyone left. I took my students back to class.

Yesterday, one girl wrote in her writing journal that the brilliant, multicolored northern lights of this past week have comforted her. She feels like they’re a message from her uncle on his way to wherever he’s going, a silent promise that it will be okay.

For steel-eyed sixth grader, C, it’s not enough. She’s angry and righteous and pained. She blames alcohol. Drinking has been ripping up the village like a wrecking ball these past few weeks. She wants the council to get together and stop it. “They used to check planes and raid people’s houses that did it, but they don’t do nothing now.” I want so badly for her to have the voice to scream it all someday and be heard, but for now she can’t, and it’s ripping her apart. She is so small and her feelings are so big. This place puts awful burdens on children.

Tonight, Terri, the lower elementary teacher who lives next door, banged on my window. “Come look!” she shrieked, “it’s incredible!”. I gathered my robe around my legs and stepped barefoot onto the porch. It was warm today, and the night was bearable for a long moment.

I stood slackjawed until the cold bit too hard into my toes and my bare knees had goosebumps.

Moments later, I was flinging pants and a coat and a hat on.

Have you ever laid back in a spinning playground tire swing and watched the northern lights ripple and unspool from green to pink in the sky? They unwind across the velvet stars like skeins of acid yarn. They flutter and shimmer like handlebar ribbons in the summer. Night lights for people in the cold.