Frozen Frames (Alaska 3)

December 2010

Dear friends and family,

If you read no other part of this message read this: I AM COMING TO THE MIDWEST FOR THE FIRST THREE WEEKS OF JANUARY.  During this time, I would love to see as many of you as I can possibly fit.  As a shameless plug, I am currently accepting reservations for dinners, walks, and drinks of all caliber!  And now for that question I know you want answers to: 

So How’s That Alaska Winter Treatin’ Ya?

Winter

is the time when Alaska really hits its essence.

The land looks silhouetted like

A silvertip drawing.

As if someone took construction paper

And cut out shapes:

Barns and smoke stacks,

Rising ---

All too tangibly,

Dyed orange by a glowing sun.

The Alaska Range and Denali stand out.

Like paper cut-outs in a pop-up card.

No longer mistakable for clouds.

The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner calls this

the “thirty below glow.”

                                                                                               

"the Thirty Below Glow" from the Daily News Miner

Dark.

(sun worshiping)

First off, I feel obligated to clear ups some rumors.  Alaskans do not live in darkness all winter.  The farther north you go, the less sunlight, but at minimum there are at least 2 hours of daylight just about anywhere in the state.  Fairbanks is the farthest north “large” (65,000) city and right now the run rises around 11:00 and sets around 3:00.  I like to think of this as a more democratic schedule for the sun to take: the magic of the sunrise is no longer reserved for early-risers.  Rumor number two: day and night does not mean black and white, the remaining 20 hours are filled with shades of gray.  The snow has an odd way of retaining the light, its ice crystals lock in up for safe keeping.  Hours after the sun “sets” in stages of sherbert sky, the world retains a purple sheen.  When the moon is small, I use a headlamp to light my trips to the outhouse.  Even the dullest of lamps illuminates about 3,000 sparkles, as if everything is constantly being blown with pixie dust.  With the aid of this little light, I watch as my breath crystallizes before my eyes. 



The sun stays low in Creamer's field (taken during a lunch break run)

I came across a quote on my tea bag the other day: “those who realize that all is light are enlightened.”  Along with reaffirming my faith in the writers of tea wisdom, this quote made me realize that I have become a pagan.  The sun seems to be the thing most worthy of worship.  It’s not just me. With such a limited and then overabundant supply, there is a reason why “Solstice” and “Aurura” are among the most popular Alaskan names.  I read that the sun is the daily bread for the eyes.  But “daily bread” seems too worn-down, too religious, too much about sustenance and necessity.  I prefer to savor the sun by drinking it.  And when you’ve only got four hours of day, you had better make time to sip.  My original Alaska-guide, Stacey, described winter as a time when everyone leaves during lunch break to poke their heads out of windows like little groundhogs and bask for a moment in their daily dose of sun.   I haven’t quite hit that stage yet, but I’ve certainly changed my schedule around it.  Since skijoring to work in the dark when its – 26 degrees is just short of miserable, I’ve been hitching rides and going for runs in the middle of the day.  While some people tote sun lamps, pills, and tanning, I prefer to harness my true power as a redhead (we can store vitamin D!) and just enjoy being outside.  Just like anywhere else, you adjust. 



You can almost feel the warm light

Cold.

(Ways of Warming)

            There really is no sunny way of getting around the fact that I now consider ten degrees below zero “balmy.”  Going outside generally involves hunching my shoulders and bracing, and approaching door knobs with caution, like a pan straight out of the oven (they bite!).  Northern animals have had years of evolution to come up with awesome adaptations.  Wood frogs spend winter frozen in suspended animation, arctic ground squirrels can get their core body temperatures as low as 27 degrees before freezing, and chicadees expand their hippocampus (the part of your brain that controls spatial memory) by 30% to help them find thousands of food caches.  Humans, on the other hand, with our opposable thumbs and all their glory, have come up with some awesome and hilarious ways of coping. 



The first I would like to flag is a contraption called “bunny boots.”  Think what clowns wear but large, white, and on the feet of everyone from Salvation Army bell-ringers to my “suave” date at a fancy restaurant.  Bunny boots work their magic by harnessing the excellent insulating power of air (think platform shoes).  Second, there are dogs- it turns out that they are good for more than pulling you around!  You’ve heard of a three dog night, right?  The band I went to see with my parents.  Well in Fairbanks it’s a standard of measure, as in: “ah, I slept with all three of my dogs tucked in last night, must’ve been negative forty.” 



Our pup for the winter, Chandalar

Finally,  I offer for your consideration: cookies.  The perfect combination of sugar and fat.  Sara and I spent a Sunday baking lots and lots of these fat satchels.  In the spirit of being good northern neighbors and distributing the survival goods, we then drove around Fairbanks for an hour and a half (in a car with no heat) delivering bags of them to our friends along with goofy, anonymous notes like: "keep your goals away from trolls."   We approached each cabin slowly (out of caution and slow car), cut the lights, hopped out, and did the best ninja moves possible for two people clad in full-body down and squeaky boots.  Time and time and again, we were foiled by those damn motion-sensor lights.  Blinded by the sudden light-shower, we panicked, hurriedly dropped the bag of goodies by the door, and ran.  Blindly, giggling and shivering ferociously, over the ice back to the car.  Its harder to be sneaky when its -30.  Everything goes a bit slower than you plan.  .

As you know, there is nothing like being home for the holidays.  But if that means a $1,000 ticket and enough greenhouse gas emissions to completely negate all the biking, running, and skiing you have been doing for the past six months, then having a castaway thanksgiving dinner with 13 of your closest friends is a good alternative.  Being young, silly, and a bit poor, we arranged our day around the idea that we needed to eat twice, and exercise in between to revitalize our appetites.  The “exercise” of sledding on fragments of plastic over pure ice (this was right after ICEPOCALYPSE!!!) was pretty much negated by the fact that we made six different types of pie for dessert.  In order to get the full family experience, we came dressed as stereotypical family members and kept up the roles.  Since this was more of a party than thanksgiving, we did it again the next day, with Sara’s family.  Here I discovered the joys of Sog (soy egg nog) and helped to put up their Christmas tree.

As for my own holiday it actually dovetailed nicely with my newfound paganism.  Channuakh is, at root, a celebration of light.  It is an especially fitting holiday for Alaskans in December.  Seizing this opportunity, I put on a Chanukkah themed gourmet club night.  We made 3 loaves of my mom’s recipe challah, incredible gluten and dairy-free apricot noodle kugle, matzo ball soup, salad, homemade applesauce, latkes galore, and a “snora” (menorah made by putting snow in a bowl and inserting candles). 



My favorite spot, a little lake accessible from the trails in our backyard.  Note: the lake has chairs, our cabin does not.





Misery.

(Life on top of the world)

This heading seems to be a good place to insert a sentence about my trip to Hawaii.  I went there for a tournament called Hopu Ka Lewa, which means “catch the sky.”  A more literal translation would be: an incredible display of an organized dedication to the pursuit of silliness.  Highlights included eating Indian food off of Frisbees, parties with smoke machines and Taiko drummers, an actual pirate ship to conduct boat races on, daily costumes, and body surfing between games.  I spent almost a week before and after the tourney exploring the island and paid a grand total of $8.50 for one night of a campsite the entire time.  The rest of the time I resided in tents, Honalulu houses, a north shore surfer dude’s backyard, and a penthouse.  It was enough to renew my wanderlust. 



I returned from my magnificent tropical fruit binge on O’ahu to find Fairbanks in a state of ICEPOCALYPSE!   In a freak weather pattern unheard of by the sourdoughs (old-timers), it rained for four days straight at the end of November.  Schools, businesses, and even the Northern Center (where I work), shut down for the week and it was possible to ice skate on the streets!  This did a number on what appeared to be a very promising ski season.  As the temperatures dropped again to a sane -20, ice set in and made a very hard base under the trails and on the roads.  



Sara cleans the snow off her trusty car, Telulah



But then the snow came back.  And I’ve never been so happy to see snow.  The Inupiaq have (this is heavily debated by linguists at the Alaska Native Lanuage center) between 12-24 words for snow.  My favorite so far is the large rectangular flakes that look exactly like the Christmas display snow in malls.  Snow flakes are fractals- geometric patters that are repeated at every scale and defy being represented by classical geometry.  This repetition seems to be the key to their magic.

The snow is like a giant layer of padding.  It makes driving an adventure, getting up into our outhouse easier, countless marshy paths accessible, and falling a lot more fun.  Thirty some inches of the stuff has made the valleys and domes of Fairbanks into my personal winter wonderland.  When I first came here I understood the omnipresence of thermometers to be a way that Alaskans showed off the spectacle of their legendary cold.   Now I realize that the thermometer is a necessary tool in every day life.  It determines where you can go, what you can do, what you must wear, and how long you have to plug your car in or how much to feed your dog.  To run in the 20 below zone, I have to wear a gaiter that makes me look like a star-wars character.  Our executive director showed me how to drill screws into my running shoes and Jon found me a pair of brand new skis in the dumpster.  Still, no amount of star wars gear prevents you from looking like the abominable snow monster after more than 15 minutes outside.  At about five minutes in, my eyelashes frost in the most extraordinary manner.  Both top and bottom lashes collect small ice chunks and slowly, they freeze together. 



Mushing with Adele and Sara, those are my snowy mucklucks.

Aren’t you supposed to be working or something?

Ah yes, and on that front there is much going on  Our annual fund-raising auction that I spent much of October working on was a smashing, chaotic, success.  I made a cheesecake that sold for $120!  On December 6, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge turned 50 years old and we gave it a party, a movie (America’s Wildest Refuge), a play (Wild Legacy), and an art opening (Jeff Jones Photography).   I am doing a bunch of grassrootsy organizing for an upcoming comment period and putting together a panel on environmental justice in the arctic for April’s powershift conference in DC.  We have two new faces at the office including the former head of the Fairbanks Chamber of Commerce, and a guy.  Pete is a bold man for agreeing to a position fighting mines in a mining town and working with seven women.  He is taking to the task in typical mountaineer fashion and livening things up a bit.  Last week he challenged me to a push up competition between staff meetings.  What is most exciting is that I am beginning a self-pioneered community history project to celebrate the 40^th anniversary of NAEC.  So far this means that I get to do what I love most- listen to stories and find a way to communicate them to a broader audience. 



Hannah, me, and Stacey as Caribou in the Golden Days Parade this summer.

So how’s that Alaska winter treatin’ ya?

Good.  Its teaching me to see things in all sorts of light.





Frost lashes.