Some residents skip out on homes altogether.  Norbert lives in a small blue tent on the beach between two gold miners.  “I’m retired now, but I donate my time helping the street people at the soup line.”

“The street people, in Nome, where do they live?” I ask.  During winter, days are dim, skies are gray, temperatures often reach negative twenty-five degrees.

“You know, when you have no other way, you find a way.  They find places.  They live under the sea rocks right out here.” 

“And in the winter?”

“Old cars, abandoned homes.  I used to live on the street too.  I drank just like the rest of them.  But I was just about out of oxygen, and I gave it up for good.”

Talking to Norbert is a joy, but I have already found that the disposition of the town is as cheery as Norbert himself.  Several people stop to ask me questions, making me feel welcome.  Hospitality is the great solace of solitary travel.

But I’m not hanging around long, I’m heading out along the coast, to find what I came for. 

South from Nome on Council Road are hundreds of fish camps.  These seasonal homes and workshops – painted in bright colors are adorned with Caribou horns and driftwood.  They are mostly closed up now.  Basketball hoops hang from many of the roofs. 

In town, a man told me that during the Iditarod in March, “Nome swells to double the size.  But half the people are here to watch the basketball games.”  Tribes come from across Alaska to the largest basketball event in the world, where over sixty teams compete at a single location.  When I asked a woman what people do during the winter in Nome, she said, “In Northern Alaska, there’s no football.  Very little baseball.  It’s all basketball.  People come to Nome by bush plane, dog sled and snowmobile to play!”