October 16, 2002

• I love snow.

  
  

  I’m waiting for snow.  This time of year it’s too dark.  We are now trying to adapt to rapidly diminishing daylength.  A while ago, I glanced past the monitor and noticed that dawn was beginning to lighten the blackness out there.  I looked at the clock… after 8 AM, and barely beginning to dawn!

  
  

  I know that most of the reason for that is meaningless political shit.  In 1983 the powers that be decided that Alaska had too many time zones and was too far out of step with the rest of the U.S.  Hello!  We’re hanging ‘way out here west of the rest of North America.  The planet spins and sun lights us up a little later than the rest.  Earth’s natural reality is not good enough for powers that be.  Now Alaska has a single time zone across the entire mainland, and another one on the western end of the Aleutian Islands, which is in sync with Hawaii.

  
  

  This makes office hours in Juneau (our state capital, which is remote from the rest of the state and accessible only by water or air, no roads) coincide with office hours across virtually the whole state.  Noon comes in the middle of the day in Juneau, but for the rest of us out here west of the Juneau meridian it makes solar noon come later and later in the day as you proceed westward.  Here in the Su Valley, solar noon arrives a little after two PM.  Of course, it works the same way with midnight, so we really don’t lose any time, we’re just out of sync with nature in order to be in sync with Juneau and only an hour out of sync with Pacific time.

  
  

  What’s that got to do with snow, you may well be wondering.  It is just one reason I’ll be glad when the ground is finally covered with white stuff.  Snow increases ambient light.  Even on a moonless dark morning, if there’s snow on the ground I can find my way to the woodpile or the outhouse without a flashlight.  We all breathe a sigh of relief each year when the snow begins to stay between snowfalls.  We know the day is coming.  It’s like waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  
  

  My love for snow is not the unconditional kind I feel for the people in my life.  Snow is acceptable to me only when it stays where it belongs.  I wish it wouldn’t pile up on our flat roof, but it’s not too hard to push off the edge, especially when Doug does the pushing.  Where it goes over the line for me is when the stuff we push off the roof piles up so high we can’t see out the windows.  It has only been that way once in the years I’ve lived in this valley.

  
  

  

  
  

  That was the winter of ’89-’90, before Greyfox was here.  Doug and I smoothed the snow beside our living room into a ramp we could climb to the roof, where we could see over the snow berms to determine if we had a clear path, without threat of moose, to the school bus stop.  Snow that deep is deadly for moose.  Not only are they unable to reach the trees and bushes they browse on, but they become stranded in our plowed roads and on the train tracks, and are hurt or killed by impact with vehicles.  Starving, frightened moose are not their usual placid, shy selves.  They become aggressive and dangerous.  Sometime I will blog about that winter and the spring that followed.  For now, I’ll stick to my theme here.

  
  

  The other way I don’t like snow is when it comes into intimate contact with my body.  The exception to that is when I’m nude and just out of a hot sauna.  Snow in my boots or down my neck is unacceptable.  There are many ways snow can get where it doesn’t belong, besides as a result of youthful pranks.  A walk in the woods can be hazardous when snow that has accumulated on tree branches falls off.  It’s best to stay out of the woods when the wind blows, until it has blown all the snow down.  I’ve had some uncomfortable experiences with the stuff down my collar, but our neighbor Buddy had it worse.  He was knocked cold when a chunk of snow and ice dropped from the tree he was felling with a chainsaw.  Fortunately, someone heard the saw’s motor racing after he dropped it, and went to check on him.  They got him indoors before hypothermia hit.

  
  

  The other most common way for snow to stray from its proper place is when I’m wading in deep stuff and it works its way into my boot tops.  If its a little pleasure stroll (as in this spring shot, when I filled my boots with granular snow in a deep spot–the footprints only go halfway across that snowy patch), when that happens I’m on my way back into a warm house.  If it happens when I’m out there doing some urgent task, it means taking the boot off and dumping the snow while balancing on the booted foot.  Often in these situations, I end up on my butt in the snow, getting it down my waist and up my back as well.

  
  

  The visual effect of snow is one of the best things about life in Alaska.  Other than that, you can believe there is some irony in my statement, I love snow.

  • 2:02 pm
  • 11 Comments