Tag Archives: life in Alaska

Tonight Will Be a Stormy Night

12 Thursday Jan 2012

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To-night will be a stormy night
You to the Town must go,
And take a lantern with you, dear,
To light you through the snow
—Adapted from “Lucy Gray” by William Wordsworth

These words come to me as I step outdoors. My mother had memorized “Lucy Gray” as a schoolgirl and my siblings will remember how she used these lines — just a bit changed from the original — to tell us to take care as we headed out in bad weather. We were in Southern California; bad weather meant rain.

It’s snowing. The wind has been howling for the last twenty-four hours. We had thirty-degree weather last night; the mercury is plummeting and we expect to wake up to thirty below tomorrow. The bang of shutters against the wall unnerves Ella when she’s alone at night, and she tries to climb the loft stairs to join us.

Red sky at morning, mushers take warning

Cordova, on the coast, has fifteen feet of snow with no sign of relief. Once they dig out the town they’ll start digging out the ski lifts. We hear coastal forecasts calling for “frozen spray,” so bad this year that eagles with ice-laden wings have been seen, unable to fly. Our local NPR station is based at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks; weather reports include a listing of which campus parking lots have lost power to the headbolts, outlets to plug in the essential engine blankets.

We’ve been lucky so far. The snow has come in polite little batches, an inch or two at a time just when it was wanted for skiing or to provide a fresh slate for viewing animal tracks or, well, to cover up the yellow snow. But we’ve had several inches of snow today, and it’s still going strong.

The river is changing as the ice buckles and the snow drifts

So far it hasn’t caused us any real inconvenience. I did have to dig about four feet of it off my watering hole, which was so filled with drifted snow that I had to be careful not to step anywhere near the hole itself as I shoveled out, in case I guessed wrong about its exact placement. As it turns out, I wouldn’t have gone far: ice on the river bottom is so thick that the water is barely deep enough to accommodate my bucket.

But even without huge amounts of snow, drifts can become dangerous. Sunday was windy, too, so we stayed indoors and took the opportunity to go online while our wind turbine hummed busily. An email from our friend Jayne put us on alert — friends of hers were stranded on the road twenty miles from us. The couple was traveling by dog team and snowmachine when the snowmachine got stuck in drifting snow. Late in the day a second email arrived, letting us know they were safely settled for the night under a tarp. By then the wind had died down and the sky was clear. The temperature fell steadily as Gary split wood late that afternoon.

We checked email Monday morning, getting word that some folks from town were heading out. By then it was thirty-two below, and we were thirty miles closer to the stranded travelers. I hurried breakfast and filled a thermos with coffee for Gary to take, along with some food and a week’s supply of Ella’s dog food, a mere snack for a team of fourteen dogs. Gary packed snowshoes, a shovel and axe, the come-along, a sleeping bag, fire starter, extra warm clothes, and packages of handwarmers.

He was gone two or three hours before Ella heard our snowmachine and trotted out to meet him and Mark, who followed right behind. Mark was exhausted, his cheeks red and his hands cold and cramped. I quickly made coffee. While we sat around the fire, Gary told how he had gotten stuck twice on the way, once within 100 yards of reaching Mark.

“I got stuck because I slowed down when I saw him,” Gary said.
—It’s easy to get stuck

“I was so happy to see someone else get stuck too,” Mark laughed. “It wasn’t just me! I am so tired of shoveling.”

Lawrence and Will, the folks who’d come in from town, soon joined us; they had reached Mark and Gary just as they had finished shoveling out. I made more coffee.

Gary had come upon Debbie, Mark’s wife, before he reached Mark. Her dog team was in a tangle, so Gary helped sort them out. Drifts can leave dogs — not to mention people — up to their eyeballs, or worse. Without a trail packed by snowmachine, mushers sometimes resort to snowshoeing in front of their dogs. As we talked, we heard Debbie’s dogs; she wouldn’t stop in but did take a break to feed the dogs nearby, comforted perhaps to be near people. Her day would be a long one, so Mark stayed on awhile, knowing he would pass her on the way to town.

Jayne looks on as Anitra gets ready to go.

Mark and Debbie got home safely Monday. By Tuesday the weather had warmed above zero, and Jayne came up by snowmachine. Her dog team followed shortly, run by her young friend Anitra, who was enjoying the last day of her winter break from college. Wednesday, yesterday, was lovely, with dramatic skies and temperatures heading up toward freezing. After a sunrise walk down the river with the dogs, they wisely hurried home. The storm blew in only after the day was done.

Ella entertains her friends

Usually Ella and I take a detour on our way to get water, walking or trotting up the road a piece to see (and, in Ella’s case, smell) who’s been out there. We look for tracks of snowmachines, sled dogs, and wildlife. We didn’t go today; tracks don’t last in this weather. But the snow will stop, and in the next day or two we will be walking in the winter sun, bundled up not against wind and snow, but against cold and clear.

Sunrise: 10:24 a.m.
Sunset:  3:43 p.m.
Weather: High, 10°, Low -4°, howling wind. Snow decreasing; had a few inches of accumulation today.

Mush! The team heads home in a window of good weather.

Riverdance

03 Saturday Dec 2011

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I come from a place where the seasons are constrained in an extraordinarily tight and moderate range. San Francisco rarely sees temperatures above 90 or below 40. Seasonal change is comparatively subtle. Autumn leaves drop in the heat of Indian Summer; cherry blossoms appear when the year is new, and reliable old oak trees come into focus on the straw-brown hillsides well before summer fog rolls into the City.

Here I expected a monotony of winter broken mainly by changes in temperature, snowfall and wind. And the freeze-up of the river, I knew that was coming. But I naively imagined ice would spread from the banks inward, simply a thickening layer over the water.

Early ice on the river

At first that’s what seemed to be happening. One day the stepping stones I had used to get to the clear flowing water in summer had a thin shell of ice. A scenic frost formed around them, and soon ice scalloped the length of the shoreline and began to edge the mid-stream boulders. The rush of water swept young ice into its stream, and I filled my buckets with icewater.

Ladling slush from the overflow

I was surprised by what happened next. Unseen ice forming along the frozen riverbed narrowed the creek’s channels, pushing water up and over the surface crust. Slushy water flowed onto the banks and through the willow brush. I learned to wade cautiously until I found myself in ladle-worthy depths.

Once temperatures dropped close to zero, slush quickly turned to ice. Snowfall covered the slightest crusts, creating the appearance of a river largely frozen over, breached only by a few pools. Under the snow was a patchwork of ice, made thick or thin by forces of air, sun, wind, water and snow. A deep eddy was close to shore; the ice leading to it was solid, so I had an easy filling station for my water buckets. Briefly. A cold snap brought temperatures as low as 38 below zero. High winds made a good excuse not to go out one day and that was enough; the pool had closed.

Surface ice forming on the creek

I moved on to the next opening, but the hole quickly became the very definition of a slippery slope, a two-foot perimeter of slick and sloping ice. When I didn’t come back promptly from my water errand one day, Gary found me with the ice chisel, back at my original spot hacking away fruitlessly. Taking over, he chopped through six inches of solid ice. To defend the breach, we laid spruce boughs over it and topped them with an insulating blanket of snow.

We hiked upstream on the riverbed, turning home at sunset

We left to spend Thanksgiving with Gary’s sister and her family near Anchorage. It stayed cold, so we delayed our return and didn’t go back to the creek for a week. Everything had changed. The creek looked as though it had been hit by an earthquake. Long fissures appeared through thick ice along the shore. Its sources frozen, the river rapidly lost volume, leaving nothing to support the surface. Here and there ice had crashed to a new, lower surface; in other spots it had cracked but held, for the moment. Our water hole was intact—if a hole can be intact—perfectly protected by the snow-covered boughs. But the water level had dropped a good two feet; a new layer of ice had formed below. The water was well out of reach.

Ella peers down toward the new watering hole

Our second pool, too, was gone. Heavy ice covering an area about half the size of our kitchen had collapsed down about three feet, revealing a ceiling about eight inches thick. A smaller shelf appears above the floor, making it seem like a room.

Standing quietly, we could hear water. Gary stepped down onto the floor, chopping at it with axe and ice chisel. The ice was about two feet thick. He worked up a sweat, making a hole large enough to dip the bucket in. We brought bigger boughs and shoveled more snow to protect it.

The ice is nearly as thick as the bucket is tall

I love my new watering hole. I can sit on the floor and peer under the river’s surface. Icicles hang from the bottom of the surface ice, and the ice version of stalagmites rise from the floor. It is decorated with crystals and carpeted with snow. I can look right through the sheered edge of the surface ice; transparent blue, it is utterly gorgeous. I hope the ice and water will stay awhile, unaltered. But I know that when I come back to find my ice room changed, something beautiful will take its place.

The ice is transparent where it sheered off; I can see under the river's surface of ice

It may not be convenient, but it will be beautiful.

Sunrise: 10:07 a.m.
Sunset:  3:23 p.m.
Weather: High 28, low 14, light snow off and on throughout the day.

The Fog of Winter

10 Thursday Nov 2011

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I leaned out the door and snatched the cast-iron Dutch oven from its spot under the chair on the porch. The chair is little-used since the weather turned, but the porch has taken on a new life as our freezer, large enough to hold cheese, cream, chickens and other supplies for the coming months as well as leftovers still in the pot, waiting to be reheated. With a fleet kick I slammed the door shut, but not before a fog had pervaded the kitchen. Fog, yes, but nothing like the wrap that envelops San Francisco, protecting it from extremes – extremes of temperature, anyway. It reminded me of the fog from a commercial freezer. My hand stuck to the knob, just for a second, as I went out again to check the thermometer. Ten below zero.

Dutch ovens in the "freezer"

November is still new; the calendar claims we’re little more than halfway through fall. But if winter isn’t on-scene yet, clearly the stage is set.

I wouldn’t have said that a few days ago. The temperatures had been running in the teens, but, despite a wintry backdrop with a delicate snow cover, the days were crisply autumnal. Still, now, all I need to do to stay warm is dress properly, stay active, and keep the fire going. It’s been gorgeous weather, really. Sunny days are the cold ones now, but they show off the mountains best and tempt us to make time to hike or ski. Cloudy days tend to be warmer, and bring the most beautiful sunsets. Snowy days cover our footprints and make everything clean again.  But I get the impression that a number of my friends in San Francisco agree with my friend and former colleague Steve, who says he would catch the first moose out of here.

Though I find myself startled by the stark shift, it is part of an evolution that has been playing out for weeks and is far from complete. A week or two ago we decided it was safe to turn off the propane refrigerator/freezer so we could close the kitchen windows, which were cracked open to prevent carbon monoxide buildup. With little chance of a thaw now, we can count on the floor space near the door to stay at refrigerator-like temperatures, at least until the nights grow even colder.

The creek changes daily. Ice formed along the shore first, then built up from the creek bed mid-stream. Just as I was gaining confidence that the icy shoreline would hold me while I filled my buckets, I came out one morning to find an overflow of water forced up by the expanding ice left me no choice but to wade in several inches of slush to dip my ladle. This made it harder to know how far I was from shore and how solid the under-slush ice was.  When I got back to the cabin with the water, I fretted aloud about falling in.

I'm ladling water among the willows, which used to be onshore!

Gary was reassuring. “Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s not deep.”

Whereas the ice may or may not be strong enough to hold me, some days it is thick, so I bring a shovel along in case I need to punch through to the water underneath. Lately, though, the overflow has flooded the banks, so the slush I find myself in is in the willow brush.  Gary’s right: it’s not deep.

The sled makes hauling water from the creek easy

I’ve been surprised to see how winter can make things easier. I would much rather pull my heavy buckets on a sled than carry them or push them along in the wheelbarrow. Hauling almost anything, in fact, is easier with the sleds, pulled by hand or snow machine. Cooking is simpler, too; the wood stove is a perfect slow-cooker and warming burner. I have a chicken in the pot as I write, and just hope I remember to pull out the giblets once the bird has thawed enough for me to get at them. The two big stockpots of water on the stove heat quickly and stay warm all day. And with the freezer empty, I have way more storage for pots and pans.

Now we have extra space for pots and pans

Some things, predictably, are harder in winter. But the mattress? We have a Tempur-Pedic—you know, the kind that sort of reshapes itself around you. My side of the bed is next to the window. Though we close the window each morning—the loft can get hot, so we do like the fresh air at night—through some sort of operator error it was left open one cold, windy day. When I went to bed I found that the mattress had, well, solidified. After five or ten minutes it started to yield a bit, so I got comfortable and reached for my water bottle. It was frozen, too.

Getting dressed is a challenge. It’s not just the magnitude of the task—underwear, knee socks, long underwear top and bottom, wool crew socks, pants and top, maybe another top or sweater or two, jacket, boots, hat, hood, glove liners, gloves, and, for some occasions, down over-pants (for cold) or canvas over-pants (for wind and wet snow), anorak, knee-high snow gaiters, mittens, over-mittens and ski mask—but the task of remembering to put things on in the right order. This morning I got all my socks and long underwear on before remembering my regular underwear.  I had to start over. And I’m trying to learn to time it so I don’t go mad in the heat of our toasty cabin with all those layers on.  Once I’m dressed, I’m out. Oops, I forgot my sunglasses.

I’ve been here almost three months. Other than the cold, rainy day when we finally got the wind turbine up and working, I can’t think of a single day that I’ve wanted to stay indoors. At first I waited expectantly for the weather to invite us to spend all day reading by the fire, sipping hot chocolate. Those days may yet come in abundance. But so far it’s been one long stretch of beautiful days, fresh and lovely outside, cozy inside.

Ella enjoys the view on a hike upstream

I had always thought of good weather as sunny, mild days, or beach weather, or the crisp clear days of autumn. What I used to see as bad weather was generally just bad for whatever I happened to be doing or wearing. I’m no longer commuting or having to walk through rain or salty slush in my good work clothes, and I’ve never had to bundle up small children for cold weather. I am learning what to wear depending on conditions and what I’ll be doing. And I’m discovering that beautiful weather can be many things.

“It’s only ten below,” Gary reminds me. “Wait until it’s forty below.”

I can’t wait.

Sunrise: 9:00 a.m.
Sunset:  4:19 p.m.

Weather: High 21, low -4, cloudy with some light snow last night. Early Wednesday morning the temperature dropped to -28!