BARROW — On the weekends, Lisa Sobieniak and David Ongley often ski over the flat, dim snow at the edge of town to a bend in the natural gas pipeline beyond the airport and stop there for a romantic kiss.
It's the spot where they were married last April.
Not many outdoor weddings happen in Barrow, on the shore of the Arctic Ocean, and even fewer happen when the temperature is below zero with a 16-mile-per-hour wind. But then, the popularity of skiing is relatively new in Barrow, and Sobieniak and Ongley's wedding needed to be about skiing.
More Alaskans are learning to stay active so we can have fun and stay healthy during winter. Rural Alaska is evolving too, opening to good ideas from Outside. Sobieniak's story is about that, and about her own renewal.
She moved to Barrow by herself five years ago, her three kids fully grown, to be a librarian for the North Slope Borough School District. She had grown up skiing in upstate New York and had lived many years in Colorado, where she telemarked the vast peaks of Rocky Mountain National Park right outside her door.
"I had been to Alaska a couple of times on big adventures," she said. "A motorcycle trip and heliskiing, and always loved Alaska and wanted to see what the 24-hour dark was all about. I was recently divorced and had reached a point where I could retire, and wanted to branch out, start a new life. So I took this job."
The district has only one librarian for its eight communities. Sobieniak works in the elementary, middle and high schools in Barrow and flies out to the villages for a week at a time. That was part of the adventure, but also part of the challenge, especially after incidents like the plane crash in Anaktuvuk Pass earlier this month, which injured traveling teachers and left the school desperate for staff.
Each village school library becomes a public library in the evening, and that put Sobieniak regularly in touch with Ongley, director of the Tuzzy Consortium Library in Barrow, which serves the entire borough. Ongley moved to Barrow from Copper Center in 1995.
Ongley is smart and dignified and wears his graying hair in a trim little ponytail. The first thing Sobieniak noticed about him when they met was the mountain bike in his office. Skiing was one of the first things they did together.
I joined them on an outing to the bend in the gas pipe on an early January day. Sunrise was weeks away. The midday twilight in thick clouds was too weak to pick out bumps and dips in the snow. Even in bright sunshine, winter snows hide the difference between flat tundra, lake or ocean. On gloomy days like this one, skiing feels like floating through a spacy gray-white limbo.
But Sobieniak loves skiing here. Where the landscape denies variety, she sees it in the sky. And it's true, for all but a couple of weeks of total darkness around the winter solstice, Barrow's sky usually puts up some kind show, often with a spectacular failed sunrise that lasts through the day.
"We have to go from 24 hours of dark to 24 hours of light in six months, so it's always changing," she said. "It's just a peaceful beauty when you're skiing out on the tundra. It just seems like everything is calm and beautiful. Even when it's cold and blowing, it seems like everything is doing what it's supposed to do, without human impact."
When they decided to get married on skis, there were plenty of friends to come along. Skiing isn't taking Barrow by storm, but plenty of people are doing it. Skis rent for $5 a day at the town recreation center.
The biggest push to bring skiing to Arctic communities has come from the NANA nordic program founded by former Olympian Lars Flora, who takes elite skiers from Alaska Pacific University and other teams to teach village children. Started with funding from the NANA regional Native corporation, the program spread with other sponsors to serve 40 villages in 2015.
Costs are for flights and for skis left behind in each village. The athletes volunteer their time, using up vacation days to attend.
Calisa Kastning, a team administrator at APU, took one of these trips to Kiana with her 1-year-old, Sylvie, who was already skiing and charmed the kids.
"It's really a great experience to bring something and see such joy on their faces, something we may take for granted," she said. "There's usually a line out the door waiting for skis."
Last year, international competitor Rosie Brennan taught skiing in Barrow.
On the Friday before their Saturday wedding, Lisa and David considered going to the courthouse for an indoor wedding, but the forecast didn't look bad. Overnight the temperature dropped and the wind kicked up, but they decided to go ahead.
Skiing in this climate involves a lot of preparation. I met someone skiing whom I didn't recognize hours later because no part of her had been visible.
Guests on skis and two snowmachines made it to the point in the gas line where it arches upward to allow people and animals to pass underneath, like an extraordinarily sturdy arbor. As a surprise, a friend had decorated the pipe with streamers and paper flowers the day before. They whipped in the wind. Fortunately, they had been attached with wire.
The group formed a circle around the bride and groom to protect them from the wind. The ceremony was brief.
On departure, one of the snowmachines wouldn't start. Everyone waited. Sobieniak worried about the guests' safety in the cold. Finally, they had to start back, and a little later the snowmachine started. Friends gathered for a reception indoors.
Sobieniak expects she and Ongley will move back to her rural home in Colorado in a year or so. She's just become a grandmother. Her skiing-crazy son already took the baby out in the snow.
But the couple will keep Ongley's cabin in Copper Center and maintain their Alaska connections.
Sobieniak will leave Alaska with more than she came with.
"Coming someplace that is so different makes every day a fresh experience," Sobieniak said. "It really helps you live in the moment. That is something I've learned up here. It is to take each day for its own lesson and its own beauty."
Charles Wohlforth's column appears three times weekly. An avid cross-country skier, he hosts Outdoor Explorer on Thursday on Alaska Public Media.
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