March 31, 2007

• Where’s Breakup?

  Down at Greyfox’s end of the Susitna Valley, there are some signs of breakup:  some slush and mud, but still more snow and ice than is usual this time of year.  Here, the seasonal change isn’t that far along  All of the rivers and creeks I crossed on my way to town this week are still frozen.  I know it isn’t odd at all for people to talk about the weather, but this year we are talking about it in tones of wonder and astonishment.  Where’s Breakup!?!

  For the past month or more, nighttime temperatures have been from ten to fifteen degrees colder than normal.  As the days have lengthened and this end of the earth turns toward the sun, daytime temperatures have been getting up to highs that are near normal, but the lows are definitely lower than we usually expect this time of year, the days warm up slowly, and high temps last only briefly.

  That had nothing to do with my choice of the book I’m reading now, however.  I picked it up at the library just because I enjoy Dana Stabenow’s Kate Shugak mystery series, and I hadn’t read this one before.  It starts with some words about the season that every Alaskan will find familiar:

  Kate surveyed the yard in front of her cabin and uttered one word.  “Breakup.”

  Affection for the season was lacking in the tone of her voice.

  Ah, yes, breakup, that halcyon season including but not necessarily limited to March and April, when all of Alaska melts into a 586,412-square-mile pile of slush.  The temperature reaches the double digits and for a miracle stays there, daylight increases by five minutes and forty-four seconds every twenty-four hours, and after a winter’s worth of five-hour days all you want to do is go outside and stay there for the rest of your natural life.  But it’s too late for the snow machine and too early for the truck, and meltoff is swelling the rivers until flooding threatens banks, bars, and all downstream communities–muskrat, beaver, and man.  The meat cache is almost empty and the salmon aren’t up the creek yet.  All you can do is sit and watch your yard reappear, along with a winter’s worth of debris until now hidden by an artistic layer of snow, all of which used to be frozen so it didn’t smell.

  “The best thing about breakup,” Kate said, “is that it’s after winter and before summer.”

  Breakup can be more than simply unpleasant.  It gets inconvenient, hard to get around when the driveway and the roads turn to muck and slush.  But there’s the discomfort of the unnatural about this year’s winter hanging on the way it is.  Nights up here at my end of the valley are still sub-zero.  I never thought I’d be missing breakup.  If it ever comes, I know I’ll be looking forward to its end.  Right now, though, I just want it to get started.  I’m ready for winter to end.

  

  • 12:41 pm
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