Andrew Koenig

KIVALINA, Alaska — Long before the heart pounding fear of death began to keep him awake at night, Andrew Koenig was a lively hunter. His grandfather’s Eskimo name, the name given to him at birth, meant “point man.” He could travel 50 to 70 miles a day on the ocean in a boat the size of a pickup truck, in search of whales. He would head out across the ice and snow on his snowmobile, looking for animals whose meat his family could eat and whose fur he could trade for food and gas. He enjoyed flying in helicopters and airplanes.

And then, one day, sometime in his 40s, this fearless joy stopped. He and his wife, who’d had six kids together and their own whaling crew, divorced. Fear prevented him from going too far off shore. Fear came at him at all times, day and night.

“Everything seemed to fall down, you know, like the Book of Job in the Bible. My life is almost similar to that one,” said Andrew, sitting inside Kivalina Episcopal Church in the village he has lived in all his 53 years.

“What happened?” he asked. Somewhere along the way, he began, he said, to fear death.

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