Autumn In Alaska: Even Freddie Would Say That's Mercurial

"Fall is here and all I have to say is; fuck Fall. Fall? I hate the Fall. What bullshit. Oh, the leaves change color...they change color for two days; then a big wind comes and you got nothing but sticks for the rest of the year. You never have a proper fall coat, nothing you wear is right. You wake up it's sunny out, you put a coat on. You go out, you're sweating like a pig, you take it off then it's cold...it's bullshit." -- Lewis Black, The White Album

Achievement unlocked: Autumn

 Hooray Fall! I love love LOVE the Fall. We don't do that season in Hawaii; so, as far as I'm concerned, I bought the upgrade. Three seasons now, eh, what what? But the temperature is kind of...well, I guess "mercurial" is the only truly applicable word there. A little too on-the-nose for those who know what a thermometer is, but I'll just have to try to own it; hells, I'll make it the post title. No one backs Baby Kana into a corner!

Now, I totally got the whole layering memo -- but that's just inadequate to what Alaska is dishing out right now, and what my newly less-insulated body can take. To truly be dressed appropriately for this weather, I need to be allowed to work in just a bra, but also come equipped with a light tank top, with another light tee top over that, followed by a medium sweater or shrug, a light jacket and then a medium one -- because that's easy and convenient, right? The bra must be a padded pushup with the inserts taken out so that I can jam coldpacks or handwarmers in there as needed. This place is hard.

Am I going to die?



Yes. Yes I am.

A lot of it has to do with my office-aka-"library suite" which has a bank of almost-floor-to-ceiling windows that would be more appropriate to a bikini barista* (Google that. I'm not kidding, it's a real thing) which can generate an amazing greenhouse effect, coupled with the Stacks, the back room where all of the hardcopy is stored. And that room is horrifically cold. I don't mean reallyreallyreally cold, like a freezer; it's the literally the kind of cold from a horror flick, a subtle creeping clammy chill, usually associated less with fluorescent lights or rotating shelving and more with crypts and the presence of evil spirits. I frequently find myself going "OOH ooh ooh ooh, AHH ahh ahh ahh, CH ch ch ch ..."

Seriously. Who else gets a suspense soundtrack at work? OTHER THAN THE MURDERER RIGHT BEHIND ME.

 My desk is in the sweet spot right in front of the door to the Stacks, facing the bank of windows. A meteorologist could work full time reporting from underneath my chair on the cold and warm fronts occuring at my station, it's nutso.



I wouldn’t be at all surprised if, due to established

meteorological physics, I ended up sporting one of those

individualized Eeyore clouds right above my desk



And the world outside the windows doesn't help either...I dare you, find a way to dress office-formal in the 40-degree morning for the 80-degree afternoon that becomes 90-something in my office greenhouse. Yesterday I wore wool dress slacks. It was reasonable! I could barely see the lock that morning because of how thickly my breath clouded the air as I tried to open the car door. 

My office was in the mid-nineties by 3pm.

And because the temperature gauge is in my area, the rest of the building was being refrigerated by the central AC. So everyone who passed through my area was either bitching about how hot it was in here or how cold it was out there, all with a vaguely accusing tone. Meanwhile I'm trying not to move in any way, because once I start to sweat I'm awash, and was therefore trying to avoid that first drop from beading. I self-soothed with images of forcing them to trade pants with me. I'm in the top 5 for slimmest people in my building, so it was pretty cheering.

It would barely even fit their fat heads

This all just supports my major theory that Fall is not intended to be experienced from an office. To a Hawaii chick, it seems like it should be ruled a month-long holiday full of berry picking, long walks in the woods, baking, shuffling through leaves, etc. Like most of life, I think Fall is most optimally experienced under a quilt, by a window, with a drink, a book and a cat. Fall's drink is cider. We aren't cleared for full-on hot cocoa until mid-October, when the snow starts to stick. Because, you know, Halloween's a Winter holiday. T_T;

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* I guess I did ask to work in my bra.../regret/

Fireweed: Alaska's Summer Countdown



Halfway there: wretched jaunty little thing

As the car hood starts to sport delicate frost patterns in the morning and the sun starts getting up later than we do, Alaskans are forced to admit that the default state of our State is nigh; as certain throne-straddling individuals are wont to mention, Winter Is Coming. It shouldn't come as a surprise, though; even before the termination dust starts to whiten the very tops of the mountain ranges, Alaska gives us an easy visual reminder by which to more accurately dread the end of Summer. This is called fireweed. While not the actual State flower, it is still a big part of the eco-tourist's picture of Alaska, in much the same way that palm trees are not Hawaii's state plant but are still inextricably linked with one's mental picture of the place.  

 

 

But this bright pink blossom is no docile tropical perennial, that will reliably stay the same shape and size while your back is turned; these sneaky devils are countdown timers to their own ultimate demise.

  



Nothing if not literal, they spring back from their dormant state in mid-Spring, but aren't up to blossoming until genuine Summer has arrived in June. Then begins the merciless pink indicator, creeping up the stalk like a dynamite fuse until late August, when it starts to get chilly at night.

Termination dust: You can actually see

Winter storming the barricades

Now, as it's September and time to get out the coats and scarves, it's too late -- Fall arrived with force on the 5th, with a wind storm so ferocious I experienced my first-ever paid emergency State closure. I got to stay home, one of the few homes with power and internet service, snuggling with my Bun, marathoning White Collar and generally living the dream while the cats tore wildly around the house. My smugness could not outweigh the inescapable promise of the fireweed, though; hearing birdsong, feeling sunlight, wearing anything revealing, or going outside out of anything but necessity is all over for another nine months. While the earth carries this next summer to term, I will just have to sit in my sweaters, saving up enough spite and bile to resent the fireweed again next time. 



Sometimes Reality Blows My Mind

I am a fiction writer. But as Richard Feinman said, "I think Nature's imagination is so much greater than man's....she's never gonna let us relax." The constant striving to survive against whatever odds has led to outlandish extremes of life, and even as a fictionalist, without proof I could never have lent credence to these real-world phenomena:

The Blue Hole of Belize is one of the world’s most recognizable natural wonders. It's found in Belize's Barrier Reef Reserve System, about 60 miles away from Belize City. It is believed that this hole is the world’s largest sea-hole. It is about 125 meters deep and it's about a quarter of a mile in diameter. It was created by the collapse of a limestone cave system when ocean level began to rise again after the the last Ice Age -- the caves flooded, and the roof collapsed into this beautiful deep-sea pit. It's now a prestigious advanced dive-spot, with crystal-clear waters, a constant 73 F temperature year-round, and many impressive aquatic species, including giant groupers, nurse sharks and several types of reef sharks such as the Caribbean reef shark and the Blacktip shark. There have also been irregular sightings of other species of sharks, like the bull shark and hammerheads. It is a place of implacable beauty and danger, and in my mind the elemental balance to the next phenomenon I wanted to share:

The fire-pit at Darvaza is a gas crater which has been flaming for nearly 40 years. During its time under the rule of Soviet Russia, Turkmenistan had geologists conducting gas drilling in Kara-Kum desert in 1971 when an underground chamber was discovered close to the village of Darvaza (known in Turkmen as Derweze, but sometimes also referred to as Darvaz). The discovery of the chamber was accidental and resulted in the drilling rig collapsing, leaving a massive crater filled with toxic gases fuming out into the open air. The concentration of gases within the crater was so dense no one dared approach it. It was then that someone came up with an idea to light the gas in the crater on fire so as to burn it before the poisonous fumes engulfed the nearby town of Darvaza. The geologists decided to burn the gas off with a controlled detonation. As it turns out, the supply of quality natural gas below the crater is near infinite, as the crater’s been burning uninterrupted ever since.

But not all my mind-blowing phenomena are geological, lawsy no; our flora-fauna synergy is amazing as well.

Cool story brought to my attention c/o of Ariadne @
http://ariadne-imaginationwithouttaste.blogspot.com/2011/04/mostly-dead.html

With over 1/5 of Pakistan underwater after a heavy flood, millions of spiders climbed into trees to escape the rising floodwaters. The water took so long to recede that the trees became cocooned in spiderwebs. The result is this surreal fantasy landscape, with any vegetation covered in a thick mass of gauzy spiderweb.

This bizarre turn of events may be a blessing in disguise, as Britain’s department for international development reports that areas where the spiders have scaled the trees have seen far fewer malaria-spreading mosquitos than might be expected, given the prevalence of stagnant, standing water. This catastrophe may be another lurching step in natural evolution, an event that kick-starts a new habit in insect behavior and a significant change in the region's ecosystem!

For much cooler expansion on this topic,
read Terry Pratchett's Bromeliad Trilogy.

This precious little gem is called the Golden Tree Frog, or Phyllodytes auratus. Found only on one mountain in the world, in Trinidad, it lives and breeds exclusively in only one type of giant bromeliad that grows high up in the canopy layer of the trees there. Visiting herpetologists found gold-striped tadpoles only in the bromeliads that had a single adult frog present, suggesting the parent may care for their tadpoles in much the same way as poison-dart frogs do -- by guarding and feeding them on unfertilized eggs. The frog lives in flowers that have been filled with water during a rainshower and will spend its entire life in a single flower; when they die they sink to the bottom and release nutrients into the water, allowing both the bromeliad and other frogs to glean their nutrients for survival. What an amazing, closed little universe, in the center of a flower atop a tree atop one lone mountain on an island, far far away. This may be more mind-blowing to me than fire pits or mile-deep shark tubes. A universe within a universe, like suds inside a larger bubble just floating in the sky.

How would those little frogs feel if they looked out of their bromeliad universe, to the outer petals and to the branch extending into an incomprehensibly larger world? And how would we feel if our furthest deep-space satellites sent back images of massive petals, hinting at something even larger beyond?

Spring Update, OR: STOP IT ALASKA

Noooooooooooo

So I woke up to this today...effin' Alaska! STOP IT. The traffic was poops, the whole city was at a loss to change back to old driving habits. And now that I'm at work, it's still just PISSING down out there, each large wet fluffy flake giggling obscenely as it passes my floor's windows...at least in my mind.

Look at it, just giggling merrily away like
so many little vicious pixies - EFF YOU SNOW

I might have gone a little cuckoo at the sight; you see I bought a t-shirt last night. Madness, you say? It was heady optimism, I know, and I was carried away  by the siren song of Summer -- and now, here I am, all enshirtled, gazing bleakly at the giggling snow. KHAAAAAAAAAN!

All upon a bleak midwinter? TRY MARCH.

::Mid-day Update::
I have been informed by my coworkers that I'm insane for expecting anything OTHER than this when it's "only March." I didn't tell them about the giggling snowflakes.

Spring in Anchorage OR: A Molting, Melting City

Alaska's Wheel Of The Year

There are dozens of variations on the sentiment that Alaska has different seasons than the continental U.S.; most classically described as Winter, More Winter, Break-Up, and Construction. We are now in Break-Up, the saddest-sounding season of them all. Initially of course I thought this referred to the ice melting and breaking down, but now that Scimon has totted up three separate couples he knew that have now broken up in the last month, I might need to revise my mental estimation of this pseudo-season. This reflects our new tendency to only hang out with couples -- Spring is a time for new romance, as the same impetus that stirs the sap in the trees to pump up all those trunks propels all us mammals to find a honey, but this only good for singles. If you're already in a relationship, finding new love precludes the old...Unless you're really alternative...But otherwise just sucks for the dumpee.

Lovely sunshine pours down onto a nasty gray city

The look of the town reflects these poor souls' sentiments -- it is a world of nasty browns and grays up here right now, folks. As the snow melts it leaves behind its silt and grit, and the dog walkers of the past Winter (and More Winter) are revealed to have been less than diligent as our fluffy white cover recedes.

Allergies are beginning; Honey Bunny's mom is home with a 'head stuffed with gunk' today -- her words -- This means there's enough things in the world that are not-snow that allergies are possible. Which is like Spring, I guess. Woo!

Is it ice? Is it snow? It is both, plus
dirt and trash; icesnow!

The sun is warm and the skies are blue, but down on earth the funk runs rampant, trash and dirt and weird half-melted icesnow. (It's a real thing, trust me.) Plowing snow in the city is actually plowing garbage you won't know about 'til break-up, as I've learned in the past few years -- and GUESS WHERE OUR STREET'S PLOWING GOES? That's right. Into our poor yard. Which has been a ton of fun to listen to morning, noon and night for the past Winter (AND MORE Winter!) I assure you -- but now we get to find the detritus of a hundred negligent thoughtless acts of litter in our sad little green patch. Wheeeeeee.

I see you, snowplow man!
Don't think I don't

This is an awkward, liminal (see def. 3) time for Anchorage -- it's definitely not Summer, or even what I've heard Spring should be*, but neither is it really an Alaskan Winter anymore. One of my fellow interns said he walked to work yesterday in nothing but his shirt -- no jacket! He's born-and-raised Alaskan, and therefore insane (see jumping-the-gun Alaskan Summer phenomenon in this entry) but to have willingly walked outside for farther than car-to-building is a testament to the temperature lightening up -- and without a jacket on top of that means the end of Winter (AND YET MORE WINTER**) for realsies.

Molting, melting Alaska

It's like molting for birds -- it's ugly, necessary, and means that shortly they will be as beautiful as they can possibly be, as brand-new plumage comes in clean and shiny. Soon there will be Frisbee-ers at the dog parks, and young women in next to nothing, and young men walking around holding large things in front of themselves awkwardly as a result. And while no one will overtly tan in public -- which is considered somehow too licentious, or hedonistic, or something, for these poor fools -- there will be people hanging around on folding chairs not seeming to do very much at all, which is as close as it gets. And I'm SO ready!
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*Rainy.
**I'm cracking myself up with this. Sorry.

Summer Or BUST

I officially have Alaskan Fever. I didn't understand how people could go so nuts about a little summertime the first few times I watched it come around -- all the women skankin' out (even the ones who REALLY OUGHTN'T), everybody and their dog fighting for camping spots, etc -- but I get it now. I mean, I understood intellectually that it's cold and dark here for much of the year and that good weather would excite these poor fools...Both condescending AND short of the truth. Warm, sunny weather is nice, and variety is nice - but when temperatures above the thirties meet both of those criterion, it becomes AMAZING.

For me it's also mixed up with homesickness/ongoing culture shock - what do you mean I can't sleep outside? And why can't I wear slippers*? I miss the kinds of clothes we wear in the tropics - light, breathing fabrics in bright colors, things that look good with volcanic dirt ground into them, loose-under-the-arm tank tops and slippahs, the Hawaiian plastic or rubber slipper. Now I can only wear them when I visit home, or at the peak of summer. Most folk up here get so stoked that they jump the gun, and start wearing shorts in March. For non-Alaskans, trust me that's Spartan-level madness. There's still snow on the ground. These people are just so pathetically happy that it's not in the single-digits anymore that they lose their minds. And then their full-length pants.

Image c/o Amazon.com. But still MINE.

There are about three weeks of really warm weather here, and it usually rains for at least half of it. Of course, the kama'aina version of "really warm" is eighties or above, so don't be too sad for us; global warming has done wonders for Alaska. And I love. LOVE. LOVE rain, so in fact don't bother to feel bad for me at all. I recently bought a fancy-schmancy umbrella in anticipation of the upcoming showers n' flowers...Bearing in mind last summer, in which there were only two sunny days all summer. Oh, the moaning and the bitching that rose from my new city, but I loved it. I just needed this awesome umbrella to help me through the dripping underbrush. I want to camp, and go for long walks, and just generally get out for an airing...nobody said I needed to be DRY. Puddles, beware!
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*In AK they've informed me that "slippers" are those things you wear indoors to keep your feet warm. I have informed them right back that trust me, those are house shoes. Or carpet slippers if you're British. Or maybe just socks. They have gone on to inform me that what I call slippers are actually "flip-flops." I then inform them that they should by that logic call dogs "woof-barks" and get on the short bus with their precious simplistic worldview.
...Don't even get me started on people calling them "thongs."

The Hungering Cold

Sweetie and I have decided that the cold you suffer getting into the car at the end of the day, when it’s so cold you don’t talk because talking allows heat to escape the mouth, is actually indistinguishable from being hungry.  We sat in the frozen motionless air of our mobile frost cave, waiting for the engine to get warm enough to turn the heater on, and could not decide if we were hungry or not. We were getting off early from work by the simple expedient of leaving after the boss has gone home but before you’re scheduled to, and were trying to decide whether or not we should make dinner early as well, but could not honestly tell whether or not this dying sensation was separate or different from being cold. Profound bodily distress is apparently like bright light, where after a certain point of intensity you can’t tell what color it is. So we went home and cooked hot food to cover all our bases. 

 

I believe the Alaskan wisdom on this phenomenon is thus: When in doubt, eat hot food to solve both possible problems. Then you are fat enough to be insulated from the cold to a greater degree, and therefore better suited to address the problem. The rest of America should move here so that there’d be a reason for their overall shape.