Spring Breaking

Spring Breaking

Ice on the Tanana just after break up

Spring is something Alaskans bet on.  Literally.  Each spring, thousands of itchy Alaskans pay $2.50/ticket to guess the precise second that the ice on the Tanana river will break. The Nenana Ice Classic (http://www.nenanaakiceclassic.com/)  is the state’s longest-running and most profitable (last year’s jackpot was $279,030) game.  It is so popular that this year the Ice Classic’s manager is lobbying the Alaska state legislature to change the statute governing charitable gaming so that they can sell tickets using broadcasting (aka: on the internet!) instead of in little red and white striped jars at local retailers.

After seven months of solid snow, it is hard to avoid the fanfare associated with seeing dirt again.  At first the idea of bare ground felt like an affront to my winter wonderland.  I had come to covet my well-worn trails, their simple pathways to my vital places.  I had just mastered my wardrobe, just put on my studded bike tires.  All of this warming temperatures and increasing sun was literally causing rain to fall on my parade.

the UAF Polar Bear (students get pics riding it in bathing suits in -40)

In protest, Sara and I tried to get the most out of the last bits of our winter.  We played a frisbee tournament called "No sand on the Chena"  (the Chena is a river)

We competed in a race called the Infamous Ivory quest.  Since we were dog-less, we human jor'd it.  

And we did a nice last minute ski-to-cabin trip in the white mountains....

...to soak it all in.  Nothing like spring skiing with a pack!

Protest * Cramp * Flex * Submit

I remember the first time my feet touched the actual dirt.  It felt disorienting, like when you first set foot on a skating rink.  My arches protested, flexed, cramped, and finally submitted.  This is how spring came to me.

But there is no fighting it.  It happens in an instant.  The combined inertia of a winter’s weight of snow. Seeping overflow, building tension.  Until something cracks, slowly unearthing a chain reaction.  Blue butterflies signal, reindeer are born, the sun graces midnight, miniature violets follow Lapland rosebay follows anemone follows birch buds, follows green-bean bluebells, all following the lead of pussywillows, greeting the world, fuzzy side out.

Alaskan spring has captured the creative powers of writers much more articulate than I, so in stead of waxing poetic about the return of smells (like the outhouse and compost) and the necessity of Fairbanks’s full-on clean-up day for all the litter we find as the snow melts, I will share some reflections from the writers that have served as my guides to seasonal change:

History 

A path goes to the outhouse over the wooden bridge,

and one to where the slop bucket's dumped. 

Down to the truck, behind the cabin for firewood. 

In winter they pack hard as if they'd Last forever

any good map would show them. 

There's history under the bird feeder,

fallen seed pressed between snows,

a geology voles tunnel through.

My boots mutter along the trail as I listen in. 

Thoughts come and go,

though I've forgotten now,

worries punctuated by clouds of breath. 

Two thousand pounds of wood cut I winter's narrow light,

there's my conclusion.

Then history softens in the sun. 

Where I walked is runoff now and cold black earth. 

Here's a photograph of those paths,

only a month ago,

That's what the world was like,

a few ways of going. 

They're only where a man once walked,

what he needed for a little while.

April is amnesia,

a green Assumption. 

There's a soft hiss off new leaves,

unlike autumn's sound of tin. 

The forest returns as it has always been,

washed of the steps of man.”

- Joe Enzweiler, A Winter on Earth

“Spring was my favorite time of year, and it took extra energy to stay in a bad mood.  The sun came home to the Arctic and shone tirelessly on the shimmering world of snow.  Midwinter diminished into memory and the darkness of next winter seemed inconceivable.  Warm smells rose form the black soil of exposed cutbanks, birds shrieked and carelessly tossed leftover seedsdown out of the birches.  It was a season of adventure calling from melting out mountains, of geese honking after a continent-crossing journey, of caribou herds parading thousands long on their way north to the calving grounds, sap running and every arctic plant set to burst into frenzied procreation.  Spring was the land smiling, and I couldn’t imagine my life without that smile.” –Seth Kanter, Ordinary Wolves (70).

“One afternoon, silently at first, the whole river began moving.  Inside we felt something in the air, maybe a dog pacing around his chain, maybe geese honking and lifting off as ice pressed in, or that other sense we have never learned enough to name.” –Seth Kanter, Ordinary Wolves, 92.

“We can’t all live that pitch.  But every so often, something shatters like ice, and we are in the river of our existence.  We are aware.” –Louise Erdrich