Winter Thoughts

I'm determined that this blog won't just be about how cute my son is. He is almost always the biggest news going on at our house, what with how quickly he grows and learns, but he's not the ONLY news or the only thing I think about. So here's a thoughtful entry about winter. (WARNING - this entry is really boring and wordy - I won't blame you if you skip it. It's my feeble first attempt to blog about something other than Tallis. With some practice, I'll get better at it!)

It's been bitterly cold, one of the longest sub-zero cold spells in Anchorage history. Yesterday morning the Campbell Creek Science Center, not far from our neighborhood, registered -31 F! It would be foolish to go out for longer than a few moments in this cold, but it has created a spell-binding loveliness. There are no clouds and the light is pastel and dazzling both. The snow and frost have formed large crystals, and the stars twinkle more brightly and colorfully than I've ever seen them do. I didn't know that was an effect of cold! I'm anxious for a day when we get to 15 F, because that's the day we will bundle up, Tallis included, and go see this winter wonderland on a trail through the woods. Until then, I just stay inside as much as is reasonable and think about winter (and the summer that must unevitably follow!).

The following is my transcription of a writing assignment I was given in a nature writing class more than 2 years ago. It was a free-write, done quickly and unplanned, and is completely unedited, but I remember the thrill going through my fingers as I scribbled it down and I don't mind sharing. The topic was "solstice":

"I live on top of the world!" This was my exclamation every time people asked, "So how is your first winter in Alaska?" The scientist, big-picture-composed-of-linked-concepts part of my brain was enthralled with the waning light and low angle of the sun, each day rising and then setting closer to the south. After three summers in Denali Park mesmerized by the horseshoe-shaped sun path, the tiny-sliver-of-southern-sky sun path completed my big picture -- I really did live on top of the world! I felt like I could sit with superiority of experience to all the Lower-48 friends who skipped on home after the tourists and their money left. I sat ABOVE them, literally, spinning slower than them perhaps, on my tiny slice of this oddly tilted Earth, but thus able to soak in every minute more completely. The bottom of winter, mid-December, was this pinnacle of discovery and the maximum experience of seasonal planet life. How would aliens on non-tilted planets feel? They would have no Alaska -- no place of unspoken, hidden-treasure summers and deep, ancient, pastel-daylight winters. They would not have equinoxes either, the tipping point into blossoming life or quiet death and hibernation -- the expressive moment on the teeter-totter when the sun sinks above or below the horizon, creating an intense suspension, an excitement, a heart-pounding wait for the next phase of life on top of the world. I once lived near the equator -- Guatemala -- and oh, how I missed Alaska's slow, slow sunsets and sunrises, gradually warming and then waning in the sky, the long orbiting path of the sun over peaked mountaintops, and then the short, delightful, heart-touching appearances of the sun that sink soul-deep in the midst of December. Top of the world, indeed.

I just found another free-write from that same class, that I had forgotten about. This one's topic was "cold":

Cold -- it's a killer, but it makes you feel alive. It tingles your toes and bites your nose, and makes you distinctly aware of your environment. Unignorable, it makes its presence known unmistakably, and will never let you forget. The miners and mushers, the hikers and climbers, the Art Davidsons and others of the frigid adventure type have indelible marks left on body, capacity and spirit, etched in their souls by cold. But I, naive perhaps, relish the vigor it necessarily creates. A need grows profoundly to MOVE and breathe and sweat and feel. At what other point in life is a person so hell-bent on avoiding numbing influences? We so often try to numb ourselves -- TV, alcohol, cigarettes, video games -- but when we are in the cold we spend all our thought and energy on being ALIVE, not numb. Full of sensation and energy and heat, not complacent and negligent. We cannot forget that we are alive, or we may lose our lives. The frozen nostril hairs and pink, hard cheeks and thick, heavy, white eyelashes are at the same time both fighting against us and keeping us aware and observant and participating in our world. A world of thick, dead whiteness and gnashing, biting winds. A world of unparalleled clarity and brightness, and world unlike any green and growing paradise, but also paradisiacal.

So, winter can be inspiring at the same time it is tiring, don't you think? :)