Mother’s Day Snow

It snowed here in Girdwood yesterday. On Mother’s Day.

Mother Earth is not amused by climate change.

Whistlebird in spring

I do not know your name
but you sound like a coach’s whistle
at a soccer practice
somewhere across the valley.

Irritation at your constant calling
finds balance here:
among blackened snow piles,
your song promises green.

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.

We gotta lotta snow

Anchorage is three inches from breaking the winter snow record––and here in the Girdwood snow forest we have far more than they do. Alyeska Resort reports 768 inches of snow since October 1.

When I went out to clear off the car this afternoon, the snow in the parking lot around the car came up to my knees––and it was still snowing.