Downhill, and up again

It happens every year. And every year I forget.

After summer solstice, I begin a leisurely walk downhill. The slope is gradual. Not something I notice at all.  Feels like level ground. So easy.

But after winter solstice, something happens.

I wake up, and look behind me. I see how far, how deep into the valley I’ve walked.

I look ahead, and the path out of the valley seems long, and somehow steeper.

Some people say, “Get out more.  Be more social. Use a happy lamp. Get more exercise.”

There’s some truth there. Particularly here in Alaska, it’s dangerous to be naïve about the darkness of winter. Valleys can become seemingly inescapable canyons.

But there’s also something to be said for following the terrain of the seasons, for living like a bear—gorging on summer’s abundance, sleeping through winter’s deprivation.

I really, truly don’t know.

I do know that right now I’m on the uphill path, walking out of the valley into the light.

How about you?

 

Photo by Gretchen Fitzenrider

 

We’re melting…

It’s break-up season in Girdwood. We had record snowfalls this winter, and now it all has to melt (well, except for the snow that will add to the glaciers, I guess).

Gravel blackens the shrinking piles, creating starkly beautiful patterns.

Melting isn’t an even process. Weird shapes protrude, like ice monsters.

When I walk past some of the more interesting shapes, I wish I had a melting expert with me, someone to explain these physical processes.

Some of what I see is easier to understand: snowfall, dirt and gravel, snowfall, dirt and gravel, all becoming spring’s striations.

The piles are still very big. Many of them are at least twice my height.

As the snow melts, lost items emerge––including a dog’s tennis ball.

What also emerges is a winter’s worth of dog poop, some of it crushed by the weight of so many snowfalls––and footfalls.

Alaskans get real excited about even just this amount of green, this sign of life, this promise of spring.

Some paths are clear enough to walk.

Others are impassable, melting snow turning them into small lakes.

It’s a messy, ugly time of year. But it means that summer is coming––and summer in Alaska is spectacular.

Going to the P.O., and back again

Girdwood doesn’t have home mail delivery, so we all have to stop by the post office to get our mail.

It makes package delivery extra complicated.

If a delivery comes via the USPS, we use our mailing address––a P.O. Box. Packages via UPS or Fedex come to our physical address––which means one of us has to be home.

We always use the extra four digits on our zip code, because sometimes lost UPS & Fedex packages find their way to our P.O. Box.

 

We live right across the street from the post office.

It’s one of Brady’s jobs to come with me when we “get the mail” (he knows those words, and his ears perk up when I say it, usually mid-afternoon).

The shortcut to the back deck of the post office has become a tunnel through the snowbanks. The lowest part of these berms is about shoulder height.

 

Brady hangs out on the deck at the post office while I get our mail, and the mail for the hangar.

We’ve been doing this six days a week for almost three years, and he’s still not convinced that I’ll come back out. Once I pass the first window, and he can’t see me any more, he starts barking. He doesn’t stop until I come back within sight. Hard habit to break, since every time I come back to say “Quiet!” only reinforces the behavior.

 

On our way back home, we saw that the cool kids have their tanning booth up and running again. They’ve shoveled off half the roof––the side that faces the sun––leaving snow behind them to reflect the light.

Living in Alaska changes your sense of hot and cold temperatures. It was fifteen degrees this morning. The high was 34 this afternoon. Tonight it’s supposed to get down to -4.

At the post office our friend Scott was wearing short sleeves and Chacos––and he seemed dressed for the weather.

A rose in the wintertime

Tonight I feel profoundly discouraged.

My life stretches out in front of me, never different, never better, just longer.

Sometimes colliding events steal the joy of living. Tonight disappointment swirls into biochemistry and the increasing darkness of early winter. Snow and freezing rain coat the Seward Highway from Girdwood to Anchorage, pushing my driving phobia into panic mode, cutting me off from UU friends in town.

During this first part of Alaskan winter, when each day get darker and shorter, the walls close in, and “hope is hard to find” (as the song says).

Then winter solstice comes, a misleading moment of joy in the return of the light.

There’s still a lot more winter on the other side of solstice. Yes, there’s more light every day, and increasing energy comes with more light. But snow and ice keep building, and we don’t see anything green and growing until mid-to-late May. In their own way, the long months of lingering winter after solstice are just as dispiriting as the darkening days before solstice.

People who have never lived in Alaska often ask us, “How can you stand the winters?”

I have a stock answer––I talk about having hobbies, staying busy, getting outdoors when the sun’s out.

But there’s a deeper answer. Winter teaches perseverance. It teaches the hard-won skills of endurance and persistence, of doing what you don’t feel like doing, because the alternative feels worse.

So on nights like tonight, I move the laundry along, pay the bills, and take Brady with me on a short walk across the street to the post office. I write a post like this one, to get the toxic feelings out of my system, and I make dinner for Liesl and me.

I don’t feel like doing any of those things. I’d rather just curl up under a blanket in the dark. But I know from long experience that the blanket is false comfort. Sometimes you just have to grit your teeth, and keep moving, keep doing the right thing.

There’s also some self-nurture involved in surviving Alaskan winters. We’ll probably watch a movie tonight, one that will take me out of myself, distracting me until the mood passes.

And it will pass. That’s the lesson of the turning wheel of Alaskan seasons. Long as the winters are, spring does come, and glorious summer, full of light and Sitka roses.

Photo by Gretchen Fitzenrider.

Sharing the Liebster

You can’t always get what you want
But if you try sometimes you might find
You get what you need  ––The Rolling Stones

It was one of those days––nothing tragic, just stressful, hectic, tiresome. I was cranky.

And then I opened my email. Waiting for me was a comment notice from a new blogging friend, Tele from Hooked. Her email said, “I wrote about Nagoonberry over on Hooked today, passing the Liebster Blog Award torch onto you (and a few other Alaskan blogs). Hope that’s okay; you immediately came to mind as a site that makes my days more thoughtful.”

We all have writers we admire, and secretly envy. Tele is on that list for me. Her writing is clear, vivid, full of detail, shared from the heart. She has thrown herself into life’s adventure––and as a result, she has something worth writing about. If you want to meet the person who might have caught the salmon you’re eating, she’s writing great stuff at Hooked: One Woman at Sea, Trolling for Truth.

It means a great deal to me that such an amazing person likes my writing. Thank you, Tele.

Blogging is one of those keep-showing-up activities. Maybe it’s no accident that blogging rhymes with slogging. It’s hard work to keep writing, particularly when we don’t feel inspired.

But here’s the thing: as the song says, if you try, sometimes you might find you get what you need.  It might be a new gig, it might be interesting friendships, and it might be an award.

In that spirit, I’m excited to pass along the Liebster award to a few bloggers I enjoy. Liebster’s rules are few: simply thank the person who gave you the award, link back to them, and choose five nominees, commenting on their sites to let them know about their award.

I’ve added another rule for myself––no UU bloggers, except for the two Alaskan UU bloggers I know in real life.

I first “met” Strange Attractor in the blogosphere, when I was searching for other Alaskan UU bloggers. Since then we’ve met and become friends in real life, and that adds to my enjoyment of her writing. Strange Attractor describes herself as, “a recovering fundamentalist turned agnostic who is now on a mission to discover a meaningful way of being.” The spiritual journey we share––from fundamentalism to UUism––is a real joy; it’s helpful to have a friend who understands, because she’s walked the same path.  Strange Attractor’s writing is smart, incisive and kind––an uncommon combination, and one that I love.

Bridget Rainey, who writes at Twinisms, is another Anchorage UU buddy.  Bridget has not just one, but two sets of twins––teenagers and four-year-olds. Phew. Makes me tired just thinking about it. And did I mention that her husband’s in the military, which means he’s away quite often? And will be deployed soon? It’s no wonder that the second “i” in Twinisms is a wineglass in which Bridget is hiding. I love Twinisms because it’s hilarious, and it teaches me about military families.

A while back, a story in the Anchorage Daily News featured Alaskan blogs, and one of them was Finnskimo. Blogger Maija Katak Lukin, who calls herself “Finnskimo” because she is half Inupiat Eskimo and half Finnish, lives in Kotzebue, Alaska. As a resident of the Municipality of Los Anchorage, it’s a real privilege to catch glimpses of life in “real Alaska” through her blog. Finnskimo comes with a warning: “If you didn’t already know, Eskimos kill animals and then take care of them and then eat them. . . . If you don’t like that kind of stuff, go buy your meat from Costco or something.”

Patrick Flynn, who serves on the Anchorage Assembly, writes a blog about his work with the municipality’s legislature. I like his blog, not just for its content, but for the way he uses blogging to connect with his constituents. When an issue comes before the assembly, he presents the facts and his position clearly on his blog, and responds to constituents’ comments in a direct and civil manner. The blogosphere is a diverse place, and people use blogging in all kinds of ways. I’m glad that Patrick is using this no-longer-new technology to give us an insider’s view of Anchorage government.

My last Liebster award goes to Ira Edwards, a.k.a “Rooster Skier,” who experienced a spinal cord injury while clearing Nordic ski trails for the Alaska State Parks. Ira’s passion is ski racing, and his blog chronicles his transition to adaptive skiing and other sports. One of my favorite recent posts was the story of how Ira and his friend Moe stocked Ira’s freezer full of fish.

So there you have it––five blogs I love following. I hope you’ll check them out.

Congratulations, Liebsters! Pass the love along. . .