We're gaining over six minutes of daylight every day; our total is nearing seven hours in Fairbanks today. The sun is shining brightly, the sunrises and sunsets are gorgeous and have a noticeable beginning and end. In other words, they no longer blend together into a day-long phenomenon, which sounds amazing but means that the sun never rises fully above the horizon. As the sun rises and shines down on my cabin, I watch my thermometer creep up a couple of degrees. Soon the sun will be strong enough to warm life on the surface of this earth, here in Fairbanks. It's that time of year when we all start to feel spring fever. We have to remind each other that it's only nearly February, that cold snaps are likely right around the corner yet, that coats are still a necessity when walking farther than the outhouse. Still, it feels good, sun breathing life back into everything.

This past spring I moved into a cabin, in the sense of the term as it is used in Fairbanks. In other words, I moved into a house without running water and joined the community of cabin dwellers scattered throughout the larger Fairbanks populace. Being that this is my first winter in a dry cabin, I'm still largely getting my feet under me when it comes to the niceties that make daily life more efficient and more pleasant. I've been in my current dwelling for a little over a month, so I am also getting my feet under me in this locale during a time of year when everything is that much more difficult because of the extreme cold and the limited hours of daylight. Life in a dry cabin is so far from the suburban and urban life in which I grew up, the life I led before moving to Alaska. And it is so far from the lives of my friends Outside (and even some here in Alaska), I've been feeling inspired to document the interesting, the mundane, the difficult, and the surprisingly not-so-difficult aspects of my days.

I fired up my sauna for the first time two weeks ago, when a friend came over for some wine and a steam. At -10 Fahrenheit, it takes about two hours for the sauna to reach 130 degrees, perfect for a mid-length steam. The sauna is good sized, and the people who built this house and the sauna knew what they were doing. There is a drain in the floor, right next to the wood stove, and a bucket up above. A hose hangs down from the bucket, with a valve that turns the flow of water on and off, allowing for a gravity-fed shower of sorts. The heat from the stove is enough to keep one from feeling the chill of the winter air, despite the cool water trickling down from above. After my friend left, my first steam in my new sauna turned into my first sauna shower. I managed to wash and condition my hair and thoroughly soap up and wash off, using perhaps two gallons of water. It is surprising how clean I felt after the sauna shower, and I was impressed with how little water I had used. I have since fired up the sauna several times. It feels so cleansing to sweat out all of the toxins of the week; and combined with the good conversation of friends, a sauna during the Fairbanks winter can't be beat. I've steamed with friends to bring in Solstice and the New Year and enjoyed a rejuvenating sleep both nights.

I am finding that dry cabin life makes one part of a community to which locals living with running water don't have access. My gravity-fed sauna shower is a big perk of the cabin I live in, but sometimes I don't have two hours to stoke and tend the woodstove and get the sauna warm enough to stand wet and naked while I wash my hair and body. And sometimes, I desire the slightly higher water pressure that plumbing affords. I have joined the gym at the University, which gives me access to two locker rooms and the hot showers that go along with them. My morning routine, perhaps twice a week, includes getting ready for work in the company of perhaps a half-dozen other women. Is this what the great bath houses of ancient Greece and Rome must have been like? Like women in gym locker rooms anywhere, I am sure, we are careful to allow one another a sense of privacy. However one can still get a sense of the collective energy and attitude of the day, before people drink their coffee and put on their public face (and I don't mean in the sense of putting on make up). I've been realising with great interest that there is indeed a collective mood in this town. I wonder is it dictated by how cold the day is and whether the sun is out, whether it is slightly cloudy or Monday?

It is interesting to observe other women's morning routines. On particularly cold days, and perhaps some not-so-particularly-cold days, you can bet that several of the women you see running errands around town or sitting behind computers in their professional office buildings are wearing long underwear beneath their smart (and not-so-smart) business attire. There is something comforting in knowing that I am not the only one who feels like my pants are a little tighter when the thermometer reads -30F in town, that I am not the only one wearing lingerie that makes me feel extra feminine under my distinctly un-sexy woolies.

It's been a relatively mild winter in Fairbanks so far; but the day of the Fairbanks Christmas Bird Count was one of the coldest of the year at -38F. It seems that the coldest day almost always falls on the appointed CBC weekend. It takes dedication or a certain level of hardiness- both I think- to drag oneself out of bed on such a cold dark morning; dress in enough layers that you start to, at least mentally, resemble Randy Parker from A Christmas Story; and trundle out into air so frigid that exposed skin feels plasticized and breathing is painful. That or the promise of a thermos full of delicious hot toddy-like beverage and some very good company during the survey hours.

I cannot claim that dedication and hardiness were my main motivators, since I believe it was the warming company and rum mixed with ginger, nutmeg, honey, and lemon juice that drew me out of my warm cabin for the 49th Fairbanks CBC. I joined Brook and River for a very slow car-based survey of all of the side roads on Goldhill Road. It was a chilly drive indeed; this is one of the colder spots in town, and we had our windows rolled down for most of the drive so as to better see and hear our feathered friends. We started the count out with a hairy woodpecker, quickly followed by a small group of pine grosbeaks. We saw ravens and redpolls, and forty-five minutes into the count our first black-capped chickadees (one of the most common birds in Fairbanks). We totaled five species in the Goldhill area, and the reception that followed count day revealed twenty-four (I believe) for the Fairbanks area overall. Bird numbers in general were slightly down this year; the birds, perhaps displaying more sense than the counters, were laying low this chilly day.

Before moving to Alaska, I was a bit of a grasshopper in the summer: too busy enjoying the sun in mostly lazy ways to prepare for fall and winter. I think there were probably two reasons for this, both weather related. First, it was really too hot and humid to enjoy the summer in any way but a lazy way. And just as the summer on the East Coast is perhaps more severe than here in Fairbanks, the winters are more mild. What kind of preparation did a suburban/metropolitan girl really need to do? My winter preparation consisted generally of putting away the hammock, pulling out the hiking boots (as opposed to sandals), unpacking the sweaters, and finding a not-too-crowded leaf viewing spot.



Grasshopper I am not, here in Interior Alaska.



It is only July; and the temperatures have been so hot, I remember why I was so skinny before moving up here. In this kind of heat, who wants to eat? It's hot enough that I am hesitant to bike ride except in the evening, hot enough that I consider leaving my cardigan behind for outdoor shows at the Blue Loon, hot enough that stir fries and salads are the cuisine du jour rather than cheese-slathered casseroles... Yet I have begun to think of the imminent onset of darker days and cooler (understating it) temperatures.



It's nearly berry season, and perhaps this has prompted my slowly changing mind set. Summer solstice has long since passed, and this has certainly heightened my sense of the changing season. I find that in addition to enjoying a fresh pak choi and young onion stir fry, I am blanching extra turnip greens to freeze them for winter. I know I will appreciate the fresh, Vitamin C-packed, dark greens in a soup later on. I have scheduled an afternoon of canning with friends of an earlier generation, to learn a long-time Alaskan zucchini relish recipe that will be fabulous months after the last zucchini has been plucked from its vine. I am stockpiling recipes for good winter soups that will take advantage of my Calypso Farm share; and I am planning a soup-making weekend with my friend Katie, so that we can enjoy the bounty of the harvest on dark nights, when we only want to curl up on our couches and read with furry companions lounging nearby. Even as I buy fans to move around the hot air that is thick with wildfire smoke, I am thinking about lamps and lights for a new cabin, in a season when I rarely turn on a light even in the wee hours of the night.



Summer is on display in all her glory on my walks in the woods and the bogs nearby, and I have not given up on her. The blueberries are pale blue and soon-to-be-ripe, the cloudberries are just peaking, and orchids are peering shyly from beneath moss and shrubs. Low bush cranberries are just barely a thought. There are berry picking adventures yet to be planned, much local produce yet to enjoy, summer trips full of adventure yet to be taken, and my flowers are still blooming on the porch. Although this is a land of extremes- I find that I am always either recovering from winter or busily preparing for winter, like the fabeled ant- I am just as busy having fun as working hard.



Now I'm off to finish baking my cinnamon basil cookies, full of flavor from the cinnamon basil harvested from my porch. And I fully plan to enjoy them hot, rather than frozen.



Perhaps grasshopper, I still am.

I had lunch with Melissa today. We met on the corner by the bridge, as we often do spur-of-the-moment now that we both work downtown. After our standard greetings and pleasantries, Melissa said, "Did you cut your hair again?" I replied in the negative, and Melissa noted that it had a lot of body, more flounce than usual. It's the humidity. My usually fine, straight hair takes on a life of its own in the humidity. I'd forgotten.



Photos of me from the summer my family moved to Northern Virginia sport a distinctly different 'do than previous or later photos. I had long chalked it up to my hair being quite a bit shorter than normal and having quite a bit more volume to go with the loss of length. But my hair was still below my shoulders; and the truth of the matter is that having newly encountered NoVa humidity in the range of 80 percent, my hair reacted in a BIG WAY. After a month or so, my hair adjusted. Such hair volume without the help of curlers and hair spray (for strictly theatrical purposes) I did not again encounter until Lauren's wedding in Montgomery, Alabama. Dealing with super-saturated air for over a week, my hair took on a life of its own. Each successive picture from the week I spent down there shows more hair, less Megan.



This week in Fairbanks, our temperatures have been hovering around 85 degrees Fahrenheit, give or take a few degrees. Humidity has been climbing as high pressure and wildlfire smoke seem to have combined forces to keep moisture trapped low. Humidity currently sits around 33 percent. I feel like I am melting or wilting or some combination of both. I think most Fairbanksans feel much the same way. Temperatures right now are a full 135 degrees (F) higher than they were for chunks of the winter. As a former East Coaster, I tend to scoff at calling anything less than 80 percent humid; but as a Fairbanksan, my hair is betraying me! We're used to percentages closer to 3 or 7 most of the year.



I do declare that it's humid and hot; and since there isn't air conditioning to be found in the majority of Fairbanks, I'm using this as an excuse to drink gin and tonic or mint juleps or some other ice-cold summertime drink. Cheers!



5:00 update... 91 degrees. I think this may be the first time we broke 90 in Fairbanks since I moved here...

Another hiatus, more temporary this time, from my blog, while my content switched over to a new domain name. Thanks to everyone who made that happen.






It's a hot and sunny day in Fairbanks, and I've hardly been outside to enjoy the weather; exhausted from spending a week out in the weather until yesterday evening. Exhausted but content. Field work is hard physically but mentally rejuvenating.



This trip took me across the Tanana River to identify wetlands on the south side, where I had not been before. The area is not accessible via road; we commuted out in the morning and back in the evenings in an R-44 helicopter, with a few hops during the day. In between hops, there was plenty of bush-whacking through black spruce scrub forests and slogging through boggy wetlands, swatting away mosquitoes and flies, and searching for the next LZ (landing zone). A few tight LZs required my field partner and I to "step" out of the helicopter from eight feet in the air and load from a hover.



Unlike the last time I went out into the field, all too long ago last September!, the vegetation was nearing its prime. Flowers were blooming and many of the sedges had spikes. It was a week-long treasure hunt to see what new species we would identify at each site. Amongst our findings were fragile fern, shy maiden, green-flowered wintergreen, rattlesnake orchid, and the rare moonwort and Calypso orchid. Miles back from the mighty Tanana, we also found thick sediment deposits in some of our sites, deposited during the major flood of July 2008. The ground was still sopping wet, even in deciduous tree uplands; the silty sediment is slow to drain, and perhaps the ground froze last fall before the flat terrain could dry out. Heavier-than-usual winter snows piled on top of the saturated but frozen ground, melting suddenly in May's hot weather. These sites, flooded one year ago, have yet to dry out. Water marks can be found three feet high on the trunks of large trees, vegetative debris caught in the forks of high branches.



Wildlife were out in full force, although we saw mostly signs of animals passing rather than animals themselves. Moose scat, hare scat, grouse droppings, bear scat and tracks, wolf scat. An upset mama grouse feigning injury, trying to distract us from her brood. Gray jays and juncos, a northern harrier, bald eagles, a common loon, a myriad of diving ducks, red-tailed hawks, ravens. Moose- cows with calves and bulls growing antlers- seen from the air. And a black bear. Not from the air.



My field partner, Jeff, and I left our first site of the morning, in an open meadow, and entered a spruce forest. Mid conversation, I heard a twig snap. A very small twig; and, thinking it was a squirrel, I casually looked up and to my right. There, fifteen feet from me with no vegetation in between us, stood a black bear. A small (probably 250 to 300-lb), dark bear with a tawny face. The bear had its head low and was staring me down. "Bear," I said loudly, warning my partner. "Seriously?" he asked, as I began to back up steadily, hands in the air, saying, "Hey, bear. Hey, bear," over and over. Jeff, realising I was serious, began to scan far into the forest for the bear, following me backward with his hands in the air, joining me in my mantra. "Hey, bear. Hey, bear." We stayed side by side as we backed up, trying to appear larger than we were. The bear charged at us several times, leaping forward at us. Silently. No teeth clacking, no jaw popping, no grunts or growls or roars. No rearing up on its hind legs to intimidate us. Jeff and I both realised this bear meant business- it wanted us gone. And we wanted to be gone just as badly. As we backed up, Jeff got caught up more than once on thickets of willow in the understory, and I had visions of this bear leaping onto him as he fell backward. I called out more than once, "Jeff! This way! You have willow behind you!"



We were both certain that an attack was imminent, so we stuck close together to better our chances of fighting back. I had our soil shovel in my hand and was sure I would have to use it. We had left our bear spray back at our lodge because the safety clips had fallen off, and we didn't want to endanger ourselves and our pilot with unsecured bear spray in the helicopter. This was our first day without the spray, and we both realised the implications of having left it behind. One less line of defense. We don't carry fire arms in the field because of corporate policy.



We paused behind a thick growth of willow after about three minutes of the pursuit, not having seen the bear in several seconds. The bear had been backing up to charge repeatedly, so we were not sure that the pursuit was over. After a short period of time, we realised it was not, seeing the light brown of the bear's face coming forward through the trees. We continued to put distance between ourselves and the bear, passing our first LZ around the edge to avoid the opening, finally arriving at the edge of thick, stunted spruce. Positioned behind thick trees but with good line of sight, we had found a safe place to stand our ground while we called our pilot. It had been a full five minutes of pursuit by the bear.



I had been radioing our pilot repeatedly, but our air band radios don't work without line of sight. Fortunately, our cell phones were receiving intermittent signals; we were able to send the pilot a text message: "Need pick up now." Followed by a second message, "Aggressive bear, need pick up same LZ." Within twenty minutes, our pilot called out on the radio; and we were soon in the air, moving to a new site miles from the bear.



Neither Jeff nor I had ever experienced a bear encounter like this one. Most bears will ignore people or run away; but this bear persistently followed us, essentially stalking us. Black bears can be predatory; but Jeff and I think that this was not likely the case here. This was a young bear, probably just kicked out by mama, confused and scared and defending its ground after having found some not occupied by other, higher-ranking bears. Maybe the bear was on a kill. Perhaps that was why it didn't see, hear, or smell us before we were almost on top of it.



It ended well for us and for the bear. As the trip continued, I ate my first blueberry of the season, tart but delicious; enjoyed a lunch-time delivery of curly fries by helicopter while sitting in a sea of tussocks; took a swim in Blair Lake and enjoyed its relatively warm water and sandy bottom, serenaded by a loon; and saw my first lynx, from a low hover in the helicopter.

... and Interior Alaska in particular. How many places are there in the world where you can enjoy good friends, pudgie pie pizzas, beer and vodka tonics, and the warmth of a bonfire underneath the watchful aurora?

It was a chilly night, with temperatures dropping to -10F in the hills. Our beers froze solid, and our vodka tonics turned to vodka tonic slushies. Despite cold noses and the need to act like rotisserie hot dogs to keep our backsides from freezing solid, there was no denying that this was a spring night in Fairbanks!

The aurora danced across the expanse of starry sky, bending and spiraling in vivid green. Red tinged the bottom edge. This was the best display I've seen in a couple of years.

Thanks, Tom and Melissa, for hosting a wonderful night! Kelly, Jonathan, and Kristen, it was wonderful to catch up! And Ken, thanks for driving me home so I could enjoy my slushy!

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...