November 5, 2002

• My First Alaskan Winter

  
  

  I knew that the winter gear I had brought from Colorado wasn’t adequate for Alaska.  It hadn’t been adequate for the high Rockies.  At Salvation Army I found a U.S.Army parka, OD green with plush lined hood, the texture of teddy bear fur.  I loved turning my head around in the hood and feeling the caress of the plush on my cheek.  I bought a pair of black knee-high boots, man-made materials, 2″ heels, with plush lining.  My toes never felt anything that good.  I didn’t want to wear socks, the plush was so soft.  I could wiggle my toes down into it.  With parka and boots, and doeskin gloves lined with rabbit fur, I felt ready for the Alaskan winter.

  
  

  The clothes I’d worn on the road had been good enough for Open Door Klinic, but I needed better rags to work in the parole office.  Mike made that clear when he interviewed me.  The other secretaries wore mini-skirts and pantsuits.  Vicki, the female parole officer, wore similar styles, in more conservative colors and combos.  I picked up, from Penney’s, Northern Commercial, and Salvation Army, a piece at a time as I could, a sexily conservative wardrobe.

  
  

  One day, there was a sharp nip in the air, the temp just below freezing, around 25°F, as I walked home from work after dark.  It had been trippy, watching the daylength diminish so fast, day by day.  The sunsets over Cook Inlet and Mount Susitna (Sleeping Lady), that I saw from those third-floor windows in the parole department typing pool, were fantastic.  I was comfortable in parka, boots and gloves, and dawdled through the business district, window shopping on my way home.  It was cloudy, and had snowed earlier in the day.  Everything was sparkling and beautiful as I crossed the Park Strip, an east/west slice of the Anchorage bowl that had once been the town’s airstrip.

  
  

  That night as I slept, the clouds moved out as a high pressure system moved in, and the temperature dropped to about ten degrees below zero Fahrenheit.  I didn’t notice, never looked at a thermometer.  Walking to work the next morning, still in the dark, I could feel the cold biting my cheeks and stinging my nostrils.  My bottom was cold in my mini skirt and panty hose, even with the army parka over it.  I was wishing I’d worn pants before I was halfway there.  By the time I got to the office, my knees were numb and white from cold.  Then they turned red and burned like fire, along with the fronts of both thighs.  They were “frosted”, the Alaskanese term for not-quite-frostbite.

  
  

  Frostbitten flesh, according to the local lore, wouldn’t have just peeled like a sunburn the way my knees did; it would have turned black and rotted away.  The people who saw me that day reassured me that I’d been lucky not to get frostbitten, but I was uncomfortable enough not to fully appreciate the difference.  When I bent my knees, I felt like screaming, but made do with a few whimpers.  I rode home that night in a cab, and couldn’t rip those panty hose off my burning legs fast enough once I was inside my snug little basement lair.  I bought myself a few pairs of tights to wear under pants, and a warm bodysuit to wear under skirts, bought two midis, and put the minis away for spring.

  
  

  I heard about my cheechako blunder (a cheechako is a newcomer, a tenderfoot, greenhorn, a babe in the woods) from everyone who knew me.  They asked me, “Don’t you have a THERMOMETER at your place?”  Actually, there was one hanging in a tree in my landlady’s yard, right outside her kitchen window.  I passed it coming and going to my place, in the side door and down the stairs.  Not ever in my life until that day had the temperature been more than a matter of curiosity, unless it was over 100F.  In my experience, cool was COOL, y’know?  Cool’s still cool, kiddies, but cold is something else.

  
  

  Every winter, just about the time that the Earth tilts back over enough so you can actually feel the warmth on your face at midday, when the sun becomes more than just a source of light and hope, Fur Rendezvous comes to Anchorage.  My first Rondy came like the Cavalry, right in the nick of time for me.  If Rondy and Steve hadn’t come to my rescue, my first case of cabin fever could have gone critical.

  
  

  Rondy got me out of the house.  I rode carnival rides.  I went to the gem and mineral show, the crafts competitions and trade shows.  I watched the World Championship Sled Dog Race and the Rondy Grand Prix.  I learned that it is a sled DOG race not a dog SLED race.  And I learned, to my lasting delight, that huskies love to run.  Except for work, I had been hibernating, curled in my den, in my warm jammies, in a big fringed shawl, under an afghan, wrapped in a blanket, bleak and depressed.  Work was getting to me, what with a lot of spinning of wheels trying to help the helpless and motivate the hopeless, and advocate for them among the more functional parts of society.

  
  

  We talked about these feelings a lot at Open Door staff meetings, and over coffee with Mike and our volunteers at New Start.  They told me these feelings had a name, a nice jargony label:  social service burnout.  Steve told me about a new therapy group, called Family Rap, a community outreach service for high-stress professions by the graduates and staff of Family House residential heroin rehab center.  Family Rap turned my life around.  Or… Rap came into my life at the time my life was turning around and contributed its own twist to the spin, or something like that.  Now life REALLY starts getting interesting.

  
  

  To be continued….

  
  

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  • 10:51 am
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