First Snowfall

I started this entry yesterday using my mother's ancient eMac.  Her computer (nay–her glorified abacus) suffers from epically-long load times, a terminally-fragmented hard drive, and a lack of Flash for my facebook Scrabble addiction.  If I pull more than two tabs up in Firefox, the puny CPU goes into seizures and I'm stuck in an infinite wait-time loop with Apple's hatefully hypnotic color-wheel cursor.   I have never wanted to cause physical pain to an inanimate object before, but I do now.  Excuse me while I have a Michael Bolton revenge moment with the machine.  I know of an abandoned field where no one will ever find it.

The reason why I was using the eMac yesterday was because John had taken his laptop to school for his First Graduate Class Presentation.  I can't accurately describe the topic of his report, but it was on rift valleys and deposition and erosion and all sorts of neat-o science-y stuff.  He was a little nervous about it, but apparently he hit it right on the mark, receiving kudos from his prof, applause from his peers, and a ticker tape parade from UAF administration.  In fact, I'm pretty sure the school is just going to confer an immediate degree on him and save us this rigmarole of a prolonged education.


So at least we have John's awesomeness going for us.  We had hoped to have big and exciting news about our house-hunting adventures, but there's no happy ending in sight yet.  Last Thursday, we toured a house on Waldheim (two miles northwest of Ivory Jack's in the hills off Goldstream) that mostly matched what we were looking for (energy efficiency, a little bit of acreage, lots of light, a heated garage, good well water).  The house also came with an adorable (and heated!) one-room cabin.  Visions of a fairy-tale guest cottage or art studio danced through my head; I was smitten.  We made an offer late Thursday night; I think our realtor was still wrapping up paperwork that midnight (thanks, Joel!).  Then on Friday afternoon, minutes before the sellers were supposed to meet with their realtor to make a decision on our offer, a counter-offer from another potential buyer came in.  Hearts were broken, then unbroken when we were informed on Monday morning that we were still in the running after all.  The saga continued to play out until yesterday afternoon, when we were told that the sellers went with the other buyer, and it became apparent to us that our involvement in the whole affair was mainly as leverage by the seller's agent against the other couple so they would offer more money.  Bah.

You know you might be a little fragile when not getting the house you made an offer on causes such an emotional blow.  Other telltale signs: when catching a scene from the 2002 Seattle episode of Rachael Ray's "$40 a Day" travel show, you start to weep uncontrollably. 

In all my sadness about the end of summer and fall (yes, I know that technically the season of fall just started, but believe me, it's already winding down at this latitude), leaving Seattle, and our interminable search for a house, I had forgotten about the magic of Fairbanks in winter.  And winter is definitely on its way.  This morning, my father announced that the temperature outside was 14º F.  My mother has taken her two rose bushes inside, hoping to cajole them into a few more blooms before they die (what she's mainly accomplishing is offering the cats a round-the-clock buffet of rose leaves to chew and then vomit up).

The birches have shed most of their leaves, and there's a grayness in the hills instead of fall's bright orange.  John and I spent last weekend on a couple walkabouts on local nature trails, which are actually local ski trails–us mere mortal pedestrians get to use the trails until the snow flies and the nordic skiers take over as rightful kings of the mountain.

Saturday, we discovered one of many hidden (and frozen) lakes on the trails behind UAF.  I was really tempted to jump in the shallows and break through the ice.  (Breaking puddle ice, like Amélie's breaking of the crème brûlée crust, is of course one of the supreme pleasures in life.)  But I was worried about my feet getting wet.  We then spent the remainder of our hike tramping through half-frozen and muddy muskeg, after which, I had to throw away my shoes anyway.

We drove out to Two Rivers Ski Trails on Sunday and walked one of the loops.  Apart from a group of horseback riders who were on their way out, we were the only ones in the forest.  (Okay, at one point, a guy zoomed up the neighboring road on an ATV and the engine roared like a sputtering chainsaw, but really, other than that, nature afforded us a Thoreauean silence.)

As we shuffled through the thick pile of leaves on the trail, we heard the wind crackling through the treetops.  Chickadees flitted by.  The sky was overcast.  The northern horizon was a deep, portentous gray, stifling and heavy, the color of steel.  Definitely not a summer sky.  We unearthed the shattered shell of an abandoned wasp's nest and cleared the trail of dead logs and debris.   It seemed like we were looking at the world through one of the camera's color tricks; everything was a shade of gray except for the faded orange leaves carpeting the trail and the bright red high-bush cranberries still clinging to their branches.

It's at this point in the narrative that something exciting should happen, like, we saw a bear!  (As we left the house earlier, announcing our intentions to hike around a bit, my mother called out to us, "Make sure you make a lot of noise to scare the bears away!"  Boy, nothing inspires me to relax like the mere possibility of running into a bear.)  But there were no bears and no other wild thing, except for the aforementioned ATV man and the chickadees.  In this moment of stillness and anticipation, it started to snow.  Or at least, I think it did.  We can't really be sure, it was over so quickly.  Small white crystals–not even real flakes, just tiny bits of ice–fell against the backdrop of a steel gray sky and onto our fleeces then quickly melted away.  When we looked again, it had stopped.  Our first snowfall, or hallucination of snowfall.

So just like that, with the season's first cold spell and the hint of snow yet to come, my brain has shifted gears.  I'm not thinking about missing the green and wet of Seattle, or the lemonade (or gin and tonics) of summer.  I'm thinking of red winter berries on white snow, and steaming cups of hot chocolate after a brisk walk.  Of perpetual twilight and then darkness and the aurora at midnight and finally being able to see whole star constellations again.  I'm thinking that it's less than three months away until Christmas (Kaleb, I like to give you early enough warning so you can start your shopping list for me), and that means less than three months away until solstice and we start gaining light again.  Bread–I must bake you!  Sweaters–I must knit you! (Naomi, I'm going to need your mother's help with that one.)  Spices–I must inhale your festive, sweet scent!  I'd go try to burn cinnamon and clove as holy incense if I weren't afraid of burning the house down (now I know what kind of olfactory magic those pumpkin-spice lattes have over people).  Bring on the scratchy wool mittens and the ugly Sorel boots I bought in 8th grade, because, winter, I embrace you!

Or at least I will until round about January, when I'm depressed to death of your cold and darkness and will use all my Alaska Air miles to escape your evil clutches.