Book explores Corbin's adventures in Alaska among the Eskimos

By Rose Hooper

When it snowed so deep in the tiny isolated village of 128 Eskimos, families had to depend on others to dig them out.

When Wilford Corbin brought his wife, Virginia, and 3-year-old son, Tommy, with him to teach in a remote Alaska village school in the late 1950s, he did not realize how he would be stepping back in time.

Corbin does it again. Now, 40 years later, he has set those memories to paper in "A World Apart: My Life Among the Eskimos of Alaska."

The book- Corbin's first- began as a project of the Jackson County Golden Age Center's writing club.

"My fellow writers in the class helped me by their encouragement," said Corbin, who began the book four years ago. "I started out writing the story in longhand on legal pads, and I had many of them full before I finally got a computer."

Dog sledding dogs have to be taught to obey commands, otherwise they will aggressively attack and fight passing dog teams. "There's nothing like traveling in complete wilderness with nothing around you except the sight of whiteness and the swishing sound of sled runners over smooth snow," said Wilford Corbin.

His story unfolds in a little Eskimo village called Wales on the Bering Straight- just 50 miles from Russia.

"And that was at a time when Russia and the United State were racing to see who could make the most atomic bombs," he said.

Employed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Corbin's duty was to teach all grades at the Indian Service School in the village of 128 full-blooded Eskimos who mainly spoke their native tongue.

As Corbin and his young wife and son landed in Alaska, he surveyed the snow-covered Eskimo village isolated by steep, ice-capped mountains rising 8,000 feet from sea level.

"The pilot told us that several teachers who had come there to teach got right back on the plane when they saw how cold and barren the place was," said Corbin.

"The only real sign of modern living in our Alaskan village was the schoolhouse with its generators and radio," Wilford Corbin said of his adventures there in the 1950s. "Radio and once-a-week mail was our only contact with the outside world."

In the late 1950s, Alaska village life went on much the same as it had for centuries. Peoples' lives centered around the seasons and the gathering of food. Dog sleds, not snowmobiles, took people where they needed to go, and hunters took to the sea in skin boats made from walrus. True, they used rifles and bullets instead of arrow and lances, but for the most part they followed the ways of their ancestors.

"The only real sign of modern living was the schoolhouse with its generators and radio," he said. "But even at the school we had to melt ice for bathing water and contend with a bucket for a commode."

In Alaska, Wilford Corbin learned from the Eskimos that what's best for the animals to wear is also best for the people. Here Corbin is on the hunt for a 3,000-pound walrus, every part of which the Eskimos used. The skin of the female walrus was used to make boats, the meat provided food for families and dogs, the tusks could be carved into jewelry and the male organ, called ooziks, brought a good price in the trade market.

Fascinated by the Eskimos' ability to deal with some of the harshest conditions faced by humans anywhere, Corbin became almost as much student as teacher. He went along on walrus hunts, seal hunts, river diversion excursions and other chilling adventures the reader will enjoy experiencing on a hot July day. In the process, Corbin made lifelong friends and gathered a treasury of lifelong memories.

"I really didn't know what I was going to run into when I got there," said Corbin, whose open heart and open mind enabled him to thrive in the new environment. "The only communication we had with the outside world was radio and once-a-week mail."

Each village, said Corbin, who moved from Wales to Scammon Bay, "was isolated and like a different tribe. Now with the Internet and bush flights in and out, they socialize much more. The Alaskan oil line is responsible for a lot of that."

Back when Corbin was a student at Western Carolina University in 1949, Mabel Crum, head of the English department, told him he should take up writing. "I just never got around to it until four years ago."

From Crum, and the instructors at the Golden Age Center, Corbin learned to "write what you know. If you don't know anything, just don't write."

Corbin knew a lot from his Alaskan experiences and for the past 50 years has been regaling friends with his stories.

"I've shown slides at school programs and to other groups, but in 35 minutes or so, I never could tell the whole story," he said. "But then I decided a book could, so I started going to the writing class. Each week as I would write a chapter, the other writers in the class would encourage me and help me pull the chapters together."

"A World Apart: My Life Among the Eskimos of Alaska" is published by Wizard Books and available at bookstores, including City Lights of Sylva. Corbin will autograph copies during a special book signing at City Lights at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, July 20.

Book explores Corbin's adventures in Alaska among the Eskimos

By Rose Hooper

When it snowed so deep in the tiny isolated village of 128 Eskimos, families had to depend on others to dig them out.

"The only real sign of modern living in our Alaskan village was the schoolhouse with its generators and radio," Wilford Corbin said of his adventures there in the 1950s. "Radio and once-a-week mail was our only contact with the outside world."

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