Nome bids farewell to longtime pillar of the community

By Anna Lionas

Last Thursday afternoon Kirsten Bey’s fabric and yarn shop Sew Far North was swamped with customers.
Sun blazing outside, she had the door to her store wide open; customers entered in a steady stream hoping to catch the end of her 25 percent off sale.
Has it set yet in that this was her last day as owner? “It might at 6 p.m. when I don’t have anything else to do,” Bey said measuring yards of fabric.
But until then she took phone orders, planned village deliveries through Bering Air and mused scrubbing the floors the next day when the store closed for two weeks.
Sew Far North isn’t going anywhere, but Bey is.
After 31 years in Nome, she’s relocating to Portland, Oregon, where she grew up.
Right now, she’s looking at a November move, just after High School swim season wraps up.
“It’s sort of like there’s so much to do that, I don’t even think about it,” Bey said.
Sew Far North
Buttoning up a life in a place can be difficult, especially when embedded in the community the way Bey has become. But at least she knows the store is in good hands with new owner and long-time clerk, Sarah Savage.
“She’s super, super humble and quiet about how she gives and is generous to the community in a lot of different ways that I don’t think anybody will know until she’s gone,” Savage said of Bey.
Both are happy the store will continue as a resource and gathering place for the community. With a large culture of crafters in the region it’s grown from when Bey first took over the business in 2014 from a mostly curio shop with yarn into a vibrant crafter’s paradise.
The shop is a passion project for Bey. Her husband Bob Lewis said she’s always enjoyed the people it would bring in. He fondly recalls bringing bundles to Bering Air, sending it off to someone in a village to make wedding attire.
“It was a very interesting way for her to keep, kind of, her finger on the pulse of friends and people who she dealt with when you know she was a lawyer,” Lewis said. 

Public defender and musher
Bey came to Nome in October of 1994, taking a job at the Public Defender’s office. By the time she got here, she already had three years of dog handling for Vern Halter and one run of the Iditarod under her belt. When she saw the chance to get into mushing full time, she jumped on it.
“I just wanted to have dogs,” Bey said.
And so with the help of friends fellow mushing friends Margaret and Conner Thomas, Bey started her own dog team. And she settled in fast to the cold, crediting her Nordic constitution.
In awe of the access to the great outdoors, she spent as much time outside as she could when she wasn’t working “the best job she ever had.”
Before Nome, Bey was a public defender in Portland, Oregon. Back then she never would have chosen to work in a small community, thinking that anonymity made things fair.
It was a surprise to find that in a place where most everyone knows each other, her job was still just, and sometimes made easier.
“The judge knew who your client was, so you didn’t have to convince… especially Judge [Ben] Esch,” Bey said. “I mean, he’d say ‘You bag my groceries at the AC store,’ you know, and so, everybody knew that the crime was not the whole of the person.”
Bey met Lewis though her work when he was contracted on a case, he said he remembers how effortlessly Bey was able to make people believe what she said.
“Many times lawyers have to say things that are unclear and unfocused and not precise, and she was just absolutely firm and confident. And, a true believer and a righteous advocate,” Lewis said.
Lewis moved to Nome with Bey right around the time she began building up her dog team. Mushing was the great adventure that changed the course of her life. It remained an outlet of peace for her, especially in contrast to her career.
Bey said the challenge of the environment and the mental aspect of the very physical act is what always drew her to mushing, and of course the dogs.
“You’re just dealing with nature and the environment. That was a really good I needed that break,” she said.

Left her mark at the Nome Kennel Club
For many years she served on the board of the Nome Kennel Club, and most recently as the treasurer. According to fellow musher, NKC member and former Nomeite Stephanie Johnson, “for so many years was the stable force in the club.”
Even now that she’s no longer in a board position, the club often defers to Bey for her institutional knowledge. Johnson said Bey was instrumental in getting the tripods set up along the Iditarod Trail in 2022 and following typhoon Merbok spearheaded the rehabilitation of the Topkok cabin.
Johnson has gone on many great, dog-led adventures with Bey, including mushing the Serum Run trail from Nenana to Nome in 2020. Through the experience of training for that Johnson said she came to understand Bey and her calm more than ever.
“She is one who just does it without bringing any attention to herself, and she’s an amazing dog person,” Johnson said.
Though Bey didn’t finish the run due to an injury incurred from a snowmachine driving into her and her team, Johnson did finish because of the encouragement of Bey.
“She looks at me and says, ‘Don’t, don’t stop. You keep going and take my lead dog Molly.’ And you know that was true friendship right there. Because I wanted to, I felt like I needed to quit,” Johnson said.
The two also serve on the board of the Iditarod Historic Trail Alliance, overseeing the original mail trail that runs from Seward to Nome. The Alliance connects with communities on the route and facilitates projects like rebuilding of shelter cabins, including one that was put in between White Mountain and Topkok.
Bey retired from the public defender position after 15 years. This freed her up to run the Sew Far North shop, coach the high school swim team, lifeguard at the pool and be the treasurer for Our Savior’s Lutheran Church, and, of course, caring for her dog team. Bey also organized for years the famous Nome triathlon Stroke-N-Croak, a fundraiser for the High School swim team.
“There’s just an incredible number of what someone once described as ‘pro-social activities’ she participates in,” Lewis said.
It’s been understood that Bey would leave Nome. Lewis already winters in Portland, but she wouldn’t go until her dogs were all passed. Now with two left —going to live with Johnson— it seems it’s finally time to go, bringing to mind all the gaps she’ll leave behind.
“When I moved up here, I wasn’t as entrenched in anything. I mean, I had been working as a lawyer for six years in Oregon. But I wasn’t leaving a lifetime of something, you know, but this, I’ve actually been here, been in Alaska, exactly half my life,” Bey said.
Hours into a busy day at the shop, she cuts and folds the fabric with the natural flow of someone who’s practiced the motion countless times.
“I love coming here,” customer Josie Bourdon said, gathering her bundle of fabric, promising to come back before the day was over. “We’ll have to stay in touch.”
“I’ll be back,” Bey told her.
If not to Nome, to Talkeetna where Johnson will be caring for her dogs. But she won’t rule out a trip back home either.