My Story My grandfather is a great dreamer and a hunter. My father is a mailman and an alcoholic. My mother went outside to answer nature's call when I was six, and never returned. We found her frozen body twenty years later, in an icey deathgrip with the corpse of a polar bear. My mother and the bear had died together, their teeth sunk in each other's throats. And me? I travel south in the summer to work the Alkan highway, filling potholes. I enjoy the hard work, and the camaraderie, I enjoy the drinking, I enjoy the strong women who work the road with me, I enjoy the loud singing and dancing late into the Yukon summer nights. I enjoy reading Ken Wilber on my lunch breaks. In the winter I work as a dog catcher, in my native village, near the Arctic Circle. The sled dogs have gotten mean in later years, since they were replaced by the Inuit's new best friend, the sleek and powerful snowmobile. My little seven-year-old daughter was bitten by a wild stray on her way to school. She managed to kill the dog, with her hunting knife, but she suffered permanent scarring of her left arm, and the rabies shots were no fun. When the job of dog catcher came open, I took it. I am not popular in this town, for many people who remember the old days still love the dogs. And people who hate the dogs hate me too, when one of their loved ones gets bitten by a stray. Sometimes people spit on me, when I pass them in the street. Ah, it is a good thing I am a Buddhist. I have a high speed modem, on a 455kbps Direct-PC satellite downlink. The Internet has opened my people's eyes to the great world, far more than the television. With two friends I have started an online fur auction site. A venture capitalist from Chicago has joined us. We hope to do an IPO sometime next year, if the market improves. My name, given me by my grandfather, means "long ago person found." My grandfather said that I am the reincarnation of an ancient Thule chieftain, who crossed the Bering Strait 1000 years ago. Ironically, it was the Thule who brought the dogs to these territories, and bred them to pull heavy sleds across the frozen wastes. And now it is my job to catch the dogs, and even kill them, when they are no longer wanted by the very people they were born to serve. Such is life, and the great joy of my ever-expanding Buddha-heart is mixed with the sadness of my ancestors. KDS