Illustration by Lance Lekander

Dazzling sunlight, reflecting off the snow, blinded me as I stepped from the nine-passenger Piper Navajo onto Tanana’s secluded airstrip. As my eyes adjusted to the shiny brilliance outside, a row of massive, 20-foot-tall fish wheels, perched on the riverbank, came into view.

It would be almost two months before house-sized chunks of ice pushed downriver and super-migrating Yukon salmon headed upstream into those nets. In the meantime, winter had a strong hold on this Interior village of 300 people, 130 air miles northwest of Fairbanks and three miles downriver from where the Tanana River meets the Yukon River. It was early April and, while most junior- and high-school skiers in the Lower 48 were putting away their gear for the summer, races in the Western Interior Ski Association were just getting started.

Behind me, a charter plane carrying students from Nenana landed and a gaggle of teenagers led by coach Chuck Hugny disembarked, creating a bucket-brigade line to unload ski bags, rifle cases and duffel bags from every crevice of the plane. Hugny, a loveable teacher with a Cyrano de Bergerac nose, had the Nenana kids hurrying—they knew their competition from Nome, White Mountain, Galena, Shishmaref and St. Michael had arrived and was checking out the trails, including the ominously named Suicide Hill. Anxious to preview the course for that afternoon’s race, Nenana skiers put on their ski boots, boarded the village school bus and headed straight to the venue.

Springtime in the villages of Alaska is a time of celebration. Bitter storms and winter darkness are gone and social schedules are filled with carnivals, dog sled racing and, for a select group of kids, WISA—the Western Interior Ski Association Ski and Biathlon Championships.

In 1986 a ski-crazy schoolteacher named John Miles began spreading the Nordic skiing bug around rural villages in Western and Interior Alaska.

Everyone who knows him will tell you that Miles is grumpy, stubborn and cantankerous. They will follow that with glowing praise for his selfless efforts to develop cross-country skiing across the state. Some people call Miles the Johnny Appleseed of rural-Alaska skiing. Miles and Eric Morris, a teacher from White Mountain, traveled from village to village, outfitting kids as young as 6 with skis, boots and poles. Miles, Morris and a cadre of volunteers have brought cross-country skiing to thousands of kids spanning three generations.

When I was growing up in Anchorage, my cross-country ski season started in November and the championship races were in February. In rural Alaska by late February it is just getting light enough and warm enough to start skiing. Miles knew that rural kids would be at a disadvantage competing against urban kids who had access to lighted, groomed trails, so he and other rural ski coaches started WISA, holding their school championships in early April. Though iPods and video games have replaced some cultural traditions in many rural communities, the high price of fuel and food keeps families in close touch with the subsistence lifestyle. Guns and hunting are part of life for rural Alaskans—making biathlon a natural addition to the WISA tournament and the only school-sanctioned biathlon event in the nation.

WISA athletes have a special challenge when it comes to competition. For them to race against each other, teams must fly from village to village, which is expensive and logistically difficult. Since 1986, 27 villages from an area as large as California have participated in WISA.

A few hours after my arrival, I hopped into Tanana coach Matthew Stark’s pickup for a ride to the trails. Stark, who also teaches at the school, explained my duties as a race volunteer as we bounced over ditchlike crossings and fishtailed up a gradual hill, trying to keep up with the school bus ahead. Plastic bags, tin and aluminum cans were strewn on both sides of the road as we passed through a set of gates. Two incinerators came into view and the reality of life in this village hit me: Tanana’s ski trails were at the city dump. Following the lead of unconcerned students coming off the school bus, I grabbed my skis and poles out of the truck bed and tried to look nonchalant. We skirted the rusty incinerators, and I looked into a cavernous pit filled with charred remnants of soda and beer cans, cardboard boxes and misshapen plastic. Behind the pit, a towering mound of windswept earth gave way to a sprawling, snow-covered field where corridors of cut alder branches tied with bright orange survey tape marked the course.

In the field, skiers warmed up, doing laps between the start and finish line. Other than the occasional unpleasant whiff of trash and a discarded moose leg near the finish chute, you could hardly tell we were at a landfill.

Race attire ranged from logo-covered spandex racing suits to jeans and sweatshirts. The range of skill levels was just as broad. Unlike the urban ski community I grew up in, these kids didn’t seem to care what they were wearing, how fast they skied or how many times they fell. Everyone was having a good time and cheering each other on, sharing war stories about their trip down the harrowing Suicide Hill.

The sun warmed my back and I chided myself for my initial reaction to the ski venue. I cheered on the racers as they pushed themselves, out of breath and with the last of their strength, toward the finish line. Almost every athlete would cross the finish line and stop for a few moments, bent over, trying to recover their lungs and muscles. When they finally raised their heads, they wore big smiles—looks of satisfaction and pride that reminded me how much I love to share skiing with others.

The next day, I went out to the venue early to help set up for the biathlon race. Hugny, the Nenana coach, had to be creative when it came time to anchor the tripodlike biathlon target legs in the soft, melting snow. After a few trips to the pit side of the landfill, we had an ironing board and three air vents to act as stabilizing platforms.

By the end of the day, the targets were pretty shot up, but there were some standout sharpshooters among the students. After hitting four of five targets, one junior high girl stopped on her way out of the range to exclaim, “I’m a regular Annie Oakley!”

Later, I volunteered to sweep the course, looking for stragglers on the wooded trails. The ski track was a ragtag series of snowmachine trails that were neither flat nor well groomed. Accustomed to endless kilometers of 10-foot-wide, corduroy-perfect snow in Anchorage, I struggled to keep my balance on the narrow, twisty loop. Tanana coach Stark showed me his grooming equipment: a snowmachine pulling three trailer tires tied together. I suggested he and Hugny look in the trash pit for replacement parts.

Back at the school, where the teams were staying, I watched athletes from Nome, White Mountain and Tanana chatting, sharing music and playing video games with each other. They knew each other from past WISA events and from being teammates at the 2010 Arctic Winter Games, a biennial international sports and cultural event for young athletes who live north of 55 degrees latitude.

Culturally, the WISA area encompasses regions inhabited by Yupik Eskimo, Inupiat Eskimo and Athabascan Indian—three distinct Native groups. Yet, watching these kids interact made it clear that cultural diversity and school allegiances were minor. There is a common bond in the challenge of growing up in rural Alaska, where alcohol abuse, obesity and domestic violence often overshadow great kids and programs like WISA.

At the awards ceremony you could see the pride in each athlete’s eyes as coaches handed out skimeister and team spirit awards. Their sense of accomplishment was about more than skiing a loop or shooting targets.

In a few weeks, the snow would melt and the ski season would end. But for a few kids, the satisfaction and exhilaration of competing at WISA would keep them dreaming of another winter.