lutrian dreams

We had an amazing amount of snow on Thursday. Twelve inches, the most snow in a single day since 1970. Driving was treacherous, between the unplowed roads; flat light that would not allow road features to be distinguished from one another readily (think: is that the road, or the snow bank on the side, or the ditch?); falling snow; swirling snow; and sticky suck-your-tires into the ditch soft, wet snow at the road's edge. I drove up the hill to my house in first and second, every muscle in my body paying attention to my tires moving on the road. Made if safely.


This twelve inches fell after a very recent six inches, which at the time it fell was the most snow in a single day in Fairbanks in over a decade. I hear snow totals had been slightly below normal, but we caught up all at once! Twelve and six inches might not sound like a lot of snow for someone living in the humid midwest or upstate New York areas, but... It's a heck of a lot of snow in the dry climate of Fairbanks. And it WILL get a car stuck. The neighbors were all out with plows and snow blowers. I took to the driveway with my shovel, and with my dog for entertainment.


Kaia is so much my Alaskan snow baby. She snuffled in the snow, covering her face, with frost building up around her lips and on her eye lashes. She belly slid, dove, bounded, rolled. She jumped into the piles building up on either side of my shoveled drive and tunneled through. Tossed snow over her back. Snuffled again, snorted snow into her nose, coughed, and started all over again. She made shoveling a great deal of fun (I normally don't mind it anyway).


Anyone getting tired of winter should get themselves a dog that adores it. Life is better this way!

Ken has said for the last couple of years now that if he ever got a tattoo, he thinks he would get one of the molecular structure of ATP. He says ATP is the one thing that has been constant in his life.




I have long been a star watcher. For as long as I can remember, oh, the joy of standing under a crisp night sky, the stars so brilliant that reaching out to touch one would likely find fingers on a hard-edged diamond or a white hot ember. In the magic of one such night, wind tangling through my hair and finding its way into the crevasse between my down and my woolies, I thought, "Here is my constant." Some hesitation held me, which perhaps might in part be explained by my lack of trips Outside to somewhere reputable. But perhaps it was a great deal more.




I stood under my night sky just now, waiting for Kaia to finish her visit to the spruce off the deck. And there she was, twinkling down overhead, the first night in a long while my eyes have sought her out of the chaos of the sky. Cassiopeia. Constant as ever. Constant as she may be, life has whirled and changed. Has her meaning?




For now, I remain ink free.

Lest one forgets that Alaska is no ordinary place to call home, she reminds us by sounding her barbaric yawp to the world. Temperatures hovering near the 50 below zero mark for over two weeks in January, twenty to thirty degrees below normal and -40F in the hills; a volcano threatening eruption continuously for over a month; the aurora visible in a crisp, starry sky from my bed, as I snuggle into my wool comforter... It has been an interesting year already. It's time to share the Alaskan yawp again... and mine.

Ken and I and our friends, Kristin and Ken, made plans to go snowshoeing at Granite Tors this weekend, after which we would treat ourselves to a soak in Chena Hot Springs.

We haven't had enough snow to justify strapping on snowshoes in Fairbanks this winter; but we threw them in the car and headed out late morning, to catch a couple hours of daylight. When a couple came off the Tors trail in just winter boots, we agreed that the snowshoes were overkill. So our snowshoeing trip turned into a Sunday afternoon walk, about four miles roundtrip. We had lots of fun, despite the cold temperature (I think it was only 10 below, but the wind was blowing. It felt colder.). I laughed that only Alaskans are crazy enough to find this enjoyable weather for a Sunday stroll!



I love our frozen eyelashes and the frost covering our clothing. The low, blue light in these pictures is about as bright as it gets in Fairbanks at this time of year. Those skinny, misshapen trees do qualify as a forest here in Fairbanks; and this one is probably a fairly old forest because those trees are decently sized.

We took the temperature from well below 0 Fahrenheit to over 108 Fahrenheit very quickly, with an hour-long soak in Chena Hot Springs. The stars were out as we soaked, when we could see them through the thick, swirling mist coming off the water in the rock pool. A great Sunday in Interior Alaska!

These days I take special delight in noticing, and then the realization that I have noticed, those moments that make me pause and think, "Only in Alaska." These are becoming more and more rare for me... I rue the day they no longer happen.

Posted on the bulletin board in the arctic entry of a local coffee shop (and paraphrased here from my recollection):

It happened so quickly...
You: Carhartts and Xtra Tuffs.
Me, exiting the men's bathroom, black hat, black fleece, beard.

Spark?

And a phone number. I laughed out loud. No, it wasn't me. But I guess it could have been...

But only in Alaska would this not be about two men. Although it could have been...