The Wrestling Mat

December 30, 1993, The Bering Sea, Norton Bay, Western Alaska Coast, somewhere between Shaktoolik and Koyuk on the sea ice, thirty degrees below zero, Fahrenheit, wind chill -80°. 

My snow machine was screaming along at 65 miles per hour as full dark settled over the ice and the alpenglow faded from the hills to the east. Behind me a rickety, mostly rotten, cargo sled, held together with twine and duct tape, and overloaded with a one third section of Resilite wrestling mat was bouncing along over the ice and quickly disintegrating. Twenty miles behind me across frozen ocean and a snow and ice covered marsh lay the small Inupiaq village of Shaktoolik. To the west was the seemingly endless expanse of the winter pack ice of the Bering Sea. Up ahead was the rapidly vanishing taillight of another snowmobile driven by Boya Kavairlook, the Koyuk school custodian, my friend, and guide in this nutty expedition to provide a wrestling mat for my wrestlers in Koyuk. Boya had gotten hungry and decided to get home in a hurry. I, with my bouncing cargo, was quickly falling behind. Trying to see Boya’s snow machine tracks in the blowing snow, which skittered across the frozen sea, was becoming more and more difficult due to the fierce wind. I began to wonder just how it was I came to be in this situation.

Many small villages in Alaska have fewer than three hundred residents. The schools are small and their gymnasiums are too. Most wouldn’t hold a full size wrestling mat, even if the school had one. The wrestlers in Koyuk had always worked out on rough, foldable gymnastic mats that often left them with bruises, mat burns and a poor feel for competition on a regulation wrestling mat. When I found out the summer before that my coaching colleague in Shaktoolik had a wrestling mat but could only fit two sections of it in their small gym I asked him what they’d done with the other section. He said it had been stored under their gym for years.

The other coach and I made a deal. If he gave us the unused section of mat I’d come get it and at some point during the season my wrestlers and I would fly the fifty miles down to Shaktoolik and have a dual match with his wrestlers. So here we were between Christmas and the New Year hauling this beast of a mat across the frozen sea.

Suddenly I heard a loud whirring noise from the engine of my snow go. A snapping sound led to an immediate loss of power and my machine began to slow. I guessed that the drive belt had snapped and I braked the machine, while flashing my headlight several times in hopes that Boya might see it.

I left the machine running, got off the saddle, flipped on the headlamp strapped around my beaver hat, opened the hood and saw the remnants of the drive belt at the bottom of the engine housing. As I closed the hood in fear of the wind ripping it off, my curses were lost in the ever blowing maelstrom of snow and air. I tromped around to the cargo compartment in back of the snow machine and trying not to fumble with my heavy mitts on, pulled out my tool kit and spare drive belt. I thought about the sheer craziness of the situation. Here I was a Georgia boy, bundled up like an Eskimo, standing miles out on the Bering Sea ice beside my broken down snow go. I shut off the machine and figured Boya would see the glow of my headlamp, if he turned back.  As I began to thread the drive belt onto the engine I gratefully heard Boya’s snow machine drawing close.

His face broke out in a wide grin as he pulled up into the glow of my headlamp. I nodded and he asked, “Drive belt?”

“Yep,” I replied. “Got a spare, here.”

“Heard it in Shaktoolik,” muttered Boya.

I nodded and went back to attaching the belt.

“Good you got spare,” said Boya.

I chuckled and said, “You won’t have to tow me back.”

“Too far,” he grinned.

With the engine repaired I began to look over the sled. The old rotten wood was cracked pretty badly and Boya said, “Sled won’t last, maybe.”

I pulled some heavy-duty parachute cord out of the backpack tied to the rear of my snow go seat and cut off a couple of lengths. Boya and I began to lash the front of the sled runners to the frame. When we finished we looked at the job and I chuckled.

“Will it hold,” I asked?

“Maybe,” Boya shrugged.

“Go a little slower,” I suggested.

Boya grunted and said he was hungry.

As I remounted my snow go I noticed that the wind had died down to a stiff breeze and the blowing snow had settled a bit. The stars of the Milky Way seemed closer than I’d ever seen them. “What a place,” I thought!

Boya blasted off on his snow go, rocketing away toward dinner. I accelerated, hoping the sled would hold together and I could get the giant piece of rubber bouncing along a few feet behind me back to the village. Within a few moments I’d gotten up to fifty miles per hour. The wind out of the west had increased again and I doubted that Boya’s tracks would last long enough for me to follow them, which was not so good as his tail light was almost out of sight.

To the east I noticed an unusually bright light behind the mountains. There was no village or human settlement of any kind over that way, just the Ungalik River and some decrepit equipment from a turn of the century gold mining camp. As the light grew brighter a gigantic yellow moon slowly rose over the peaks and the icy world was bathed in the most beautiful, magical light.

Behind the balaclava covering my face I began to laugh. I laughed long and loud. Here I was whizzing along over the frozen ocean, on what some would say was a fool’s errand, yet I was at peace with life and was happy to be where I was, surrounded by the beauty of the sub arctic night. I lived in Alaska and life was good.