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- BETHEL - In villages along
the Kuskokwim River and in this hub city, scores of people have reported
catching sight of Richard Pavilla, a 38-year-old man who disappeared in
December while on a snowmachine trip from his home village of Atmautluak.
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- Pavilla, they say, is still alive but he is in a rare
condition in which he is feather-light and as wary as a wild bird.
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- "It has happened in the past, but it's kind of long
and in between," said 77-year-old Peter Jacobs, through a Yup'ik translator.
"That person is not dead. The spirit is still with the body, but he's
in a different state."
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- The Alaska State Troopers ended their search for Pavilla
more than three months ago, 12 days after they found the body of Pavilla's
companion and the snowmachine the two were riding. The troopers presume
Pavilla is dead, too. But day after day, Bethel's search and rescue coordinator
keeps taking the reports of people who say they've seen the lost man.
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- Pavilla and Richard Tikiun, 27, left Christmas Eve on
a snowmachine for Bethel, about 30 miles away across the frozen tundra.
People in the village told troopers the men had been drinking and may have
been planning to pick up Tikiun's stash of alcohol on the way. Searchers
found Tikiun's body Dec. 28, four miles from Atmautluak and just north
of the main trail to Bethel. He lay face down on the ground next to his
snowmachine and an empty vodka bottle, troopers said.
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- Pavilla, troopers said, obviously stayed alive for a
while, despite fierce winds and temperatures that dropped to minus 30 degrees.
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- Searchers found a series of windbreaks made of snow blocks
and tree branches, snow caves dug into drifts and even a hastily made igloo,
as well as several sets of tracks thought to be Pavilla's.
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- It was shortly after New Year's when the first sighting
of the lost man was reported, said Peter Atchak, Bethel's volunteer search
and rescue coordinator. Five of the searchers, Pavilla's cousins, reported
seeing a solitary figure on foot about eight miles southwest of Bethel.
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- "They thought it was a searcher, but when they were
approaching close he took off running," Atchak said. The person crossed
the frozen river and was gone, the cousins reported.
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- The next report came a couple of days later. A group
of youngsters were driving a truck from Napakiak upriver to Bethel when
someone came out of the brush toward them. They got frightened and drove
off, Atchak said.
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- The troopers ended their search Jan. 9, figuring no one
could survive so long in such severe weather.
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- The volunteer search and rescue group kept looking, and
Atchak kept track of the reported sightings. They came from up and down
the Kuskokwim and from villages on the coast. In all, there were more than
50 reports from 10 villages. People also reported seeing Pavilla in Bethel
- near the high school, at the hospital and crouched under a woman's house.
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- Atchak said he has repeatedly investigated reports of
boot prints and found they were made by size 7 Sorels, just like Pavilla's.
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- "I wouldn't have believed it myself if I hadn't
seen his tracks, his footprints and the way they disappeared," he
said.
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- To learn more, Atchak convened meetings of elders in
Bethel. More than 100 came.
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- Pavilla is stuck between two worlds, some of the old
people told him. It happens sometimes: People get lost, become very frightened
and fall into these states. Their senses sharpen so that they can hear
rabbits and foxes running in the woods. They don't feel the cold. They
are not ghosts, but their bodies become so light they can walk on top of
trees and cross wide rivers like the Kuskokwim in a hop or two.
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- The Yup'ik term for it, Atchak said, is cillem quellra.
Roughly translated: "made cold by the universe."
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- "I've been hearing (about) that since I was a little
girl," said Neva Rivers, a Hooper Bay elder.
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- Martha Larson, of Napakiak, said her family had a brief
brush with this phenomenon. In the late 1950s, her teenage sister got lost
at their summer fish camp. She was missing only about half a day. When
the sister came back she told them that she could hear her family calling
her but she was too afraid to show herself.
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- "Something happens to you when you get lost like
that. Your mind - you start to panic," Larson said.
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- Some in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, such as Rivers and
Peter Jacobs, remember the case of Gabriel Fox. Thirty years ago, Gabriel
walked away from a children's home upriver to avoid punishment for some
trouble he was in. Searchers chased the boy on their snowmachines but he
was too fast for them. As he ran, his feet didn't touch the ground, Jacobs
said, holding one hand about 10 inches above the other as he recounted
the story.
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- Gabriel's body was never found, Atchak said.
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- To bring back a person who is in limbo like that, you
have to touch him, some of the old people told Atchak, or spit on him.
He will be skittish and afraid of people, but he will also be terribly
thirsty. You might be able to lure him closer by pulling out a water bottle
and drinking from it, Atchak learned.
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- Whoever rescues him should try to keep him isolated for
about two weeks, Peter Jacobs told him. Give him only a sip of water at
first, and a trace of dried fish. As he recovers he will gradually be able
to tolerate more.
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- Atchak said he talked to a Napakiak man who said he had
such an experience after he was left for dead in minus 30 degree weather.
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- "He got touched by somebody," Atchak said.
"He said he felt so heavy when he fell down. Then he woke up in the
hospital."
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- Apanguluk Kairaiuak, who is documenting the stories of
Southwestern Alaska elders, said these experiences are consistent with
his understanding of Yup'ik creation mythology. According to this ancient
belief, he said, people were created by animal, bird and fish spirits.
Before they become people, the pre-humans pass through three other phases,
gradually growing more connected to the earth and less connected to their
creators, he said. When a crisis strikes, a person sometimes reverts to
an earlier phase, he said.
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- "Without that kind of spiritual memory, our people
would not be able to do this," he said.
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- Atchak said he now understands the stories he would hear
old people tell.
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- "They used to talk about some time in the future
when our world would get thin," he said. "Like between our world
and the next world, they become closer together."
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- He isn't dispatching searchers to look for Pavilla these
days, but he held a meeting Thursday in Atmautluak to ask locals to be
alert for Pavilla as they go out bird hunting, ice fishing and gathering
wood. About 50 people came, he said.
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- "In the event anybody should have an encounter with
him, we should approach him carefully and try not to frighten him,"
said Atchak.
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- After talking to the Napakiak man again, Atchak is also
advising people to look for a body.
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- "From his experience, it sounded like he was able
to leave his body and go into a different body," Atchak said.
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- Jacobs' son, Peter Jacobs Jr., said he thinks he saw
Pavilla just last week, as he was riding from Atmautluak to Napakiak.
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- "I saw someone up on a tree, standing up in a tree,"
Jacobs said. "I got kind of spooked."
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- He stayed a long distance away but he figures it was
Pavilla because it was miles from any village and the person standing on
the branch had no snowmachine.
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- In other recent reports, people have said Pavilla's face
is dark and his hair is long, Atchak said.
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- "He's been outside for a heck of a long time,"
Atchak said.
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- In Atmautluak, Pavilla's father looks for his missing
son every day.
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- Moses Pavilla said he has believed from the start that
his son is alive. Soon after he went missing, the elder Pavilla went to
the trail he disappeared from. He believes he heard his son in the bushes.
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- "He was close by me but I couldn't see him,"
the father said in a recent telephone interview.
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- A few weeks later, in Atmautluak, Moses Pavilla says
he saw Richard heading into his sister's house. She was inside but said
she hadn't seen anyone.
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- So Moses Pavilla keeps looking, riding his snowmachine
back and forth between the village, his fish camp and a neighboring village.
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- "I never stay home much this winter, because I really
need him," Moses Pavilla said by telephone last week.
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