Author Archive | Ben Matheson

I’ve heard people in Nome say that there’s a rubber band effect when leaving town. You move out of Nome to venture far in the world, but soon the rubber band snaps you back to Nome. I left Nome in June of last year, but I’m lucky to be back volunteering at KNOM for a [...]

Well folks, it’s been a wild and very rewarding two years. I haven’t wrapped my mind around it, but I am finishing my time at KNOM the first week of June. I’ve heard radio people on several occasions say that you never know what’s going to happen on live radio, and I think the same [...]

When you’re in an urban area, you can scan the radio and stumble across dozens of stations. As a big radio fan, I love working the dial, and can fumble around for hours. But in a remote area like Nome with very few radio stations, it’s a bit more interesting (and thrilling) to pick up [...]

After a couple false starts, spring is in full swing. With light until midnight and temperatures hitting 40 degrees, the snow is rapidly disappearing. I took the opportunity to hike a nearby hill with my friend Wes. The hike is pretty straightforward: walk uphill and try to avoid the deep snowfields. That said, we were [...]

Maps are a hot commodity in Nome. It takes a little bit of work to get the information you need about a given trail, address, or mountain peak. You can try with Google Maps, but the information is pretty thin, and sometimes it will place Nome dozens of miles from where it is. That’s one [...]

As I’m sure you remember from geography class, the Alaska state capitol is in Juneau, a town of 30,000 people in the Alaska panhandle. You can only get there by plane or boat. Like most of the state, I follow the business of the legislature from a distance. From January to April I produce a [...]

It’s the first day of spring today. We’re in for a few glorious bright, clear, light months. It’s still cold, dipping to double digits below, so my mind often drifts to warm thoughts. I’m thinking specifically of a trip last summer to a remote hot springs area. Serpentine Hot Springs is as much about the [...]

I’m a big fan of books about Alaska. Here are a few that I’ve enjoyed. “In a Far Country” is about the Overland Relief Expedition of 1898.  It involved a 1,500 mile journey to ship up supplies and drive a herd of 500 reindeer from the Seward Peninsula to Barrow, where hundreds of whalers are [...]

We’ve been having a cold year so far.  The average temperature during the month of January was -16.6 degrees: the coldest since record keeping began over 100 years ago.   It hit -40 once, and -30 on 17 separate days.   I didn’t get a chance to think about the cold until just recently, I was busy [...]