Wave Goodbye

Dan Barry: AKIACHAK, Alaska

The bush plane glides over the tundra in autumn, descending slowly into the green and orange with avian grace. Soon its wheels kiss a spit of an airstrip in a western Alaska place where senators and governors rarely visit, a Yup'ik Eskimo village called Akiachak.

Its tribal police chief, John Snyder, waits in a white pickup at the end of the gravel runway, wrapped in a maturity beyond his 23 years. He introduces himself with a gentle joke, then begins down the rutted road to his community of 700.