-1 at noon

Cold day today. Geoff couldn't get his car started this morning because ice had clogged up the ignition. By the time we successful thawed it and rolled away, the outside thermometer read -1, with a bright sun rolling over the southern mountains. It was just after 12 p.m.

We have been doing a lot of cross-country skiing this weekend. Today was a short trip around the groomers near town. I ran behind Geoff and Craig on snowshoes, breathing so hard that my eyelashes froze - hence the self portrait above.

Yesterday we drove up to Hatcher Pass to ski along the "Little Su" River. The trail rose ever so slightly, and we didn't even really notice we were climbing much until we looked back to a lateral view of snow wafting off the mountains. The trip went long, and one guy we were with eventually dropped out. But the ski down was exhilarating, with enough gravity-forced sliding to finally stop Geoff from saying "Hey, Jill, I think you forgot that you're skiing again."

We did run into a couple of friends from Homer on the trail. They invited us to their family's home in Wasilla for what turned into a second Thanksgiving dinner. A house full of strangers welcomed us in like one of their own, and filled us with starch and stories of the local color-variety (many of them hailed from Homer.) The evening had the same sweet sensory overload that really makes Thanksgiving feel complete - sitting on the couch as plates of pie and hot chocolate are shoved in your face from stealth angles, all the while lost in a tangle of multiple conversations illustrating people you don't know and places you've never been. Then, to top off the experience, I even got the "How old are you now, sweetie?" comment from Grandma, albeit somebody else's grandma, but it still made me feel nostalgic.

Just eat it

Oh why, oh why is it so psychologically impossible to turn down that second helping of homemade mac 'n' cheese or politely decline a slice of pumpkin pie the size of a baby's head? Why must we close businesses and cook enough potato dishes to supply a Mormon funeral, only to end up slouched in our chairs in a bloated stupor, staring in sheer wonder at the ruin that replaced the kitchen? I know this holiday is supposed to leave us with warm feelings of familiarity and well-being, but the excess is as much as tradition of this holiday as anything. I'm as wrapped up in it as anyone ... I, too, feel all the more thankful for my existence with a 20-pound turkey in the oven and more pies than people at the table. But the aftermath is absolute, it leaves that final impression, and it always leaves me feeling more overstuffed than overjoyed. I guess I'm just experiencing some post-Thanksgiving remorse, maybe a little hint of tryptophan hangover.

We're up in Palmer right now, the north country, celebrating the holiday with other childless 20-something couples that are thousands of miles from Outside families. It was a lot of fun. We spent the morning cross-country skiing in the veritable winter wonderland that took the city by storm (which, while we were motoring up the Seward Highway last night, was to our sheer dismay.) But the "White Thanksgiving" was a nice touch. So was the diverse group of friends Craig invited ... including, respectively, a Jewish couple, a Muslim, two Mormons and a Buddhist, who unfortunately was caught in the weather and was not able to attend. But a great group. We even whipped out the Texas Hold'em as the turkey cooked and cooked, and continued to cook for more than six hours. I mean, we even had the canned cranberry sauce that I love so much, sliced in gelatinous discs and still bearing the artful mold of the inside of the can. Sigh. I guess I am thankful for this holiday, even if I do feel like a gelatinous blob myself, and even if I do have to be thousands of miles from my family and snowed in - in Palmer. I could use this space to ramble through "things I'm thankful for," but it seems so much less redundant to just say "life."

Out in the weather

I've been having reoccuring dreams about going to Disneyland in a snowstorm. The dream is very lucid and blue-tinted, and kind of absurd because I always end up on Splash Mountain. Anyway, it inspired me to visit the beach today, only the second time since I moved here that I've actually been within touching distance of the water.

An isolated snowstorm whipped overhead as the sun set in streaks of magenta behind rolling clouds on the horizon. The air was a frosty 19 degrees, with the wind chill it felt at least 10 degrees colder. I had only my work cloths to wear, though I have to admit I dress rather substantially indoors to survive my Alaskan boss's perpetual miserly-ness with the heat. I walked along the tideline, scanning the sand for shells in an effort I haven't made since those family vacations to southern California. I only picked up two ... the effort of removing my hands from my down vest was saved only for the most promising. I rotated them in my fingers until I could no longer feel the rough surfaces, then absentmindedly tossed them back into the sea.

I walked a little too far out and had to run almost a mile back to my car, into the 4:30 p.m. twilight and snow flurries, the promise of a long night in the glitter of distant lights.

City dweller

One thing I'm still adjusting to in Alaska is wildlife - or, more specifically, the wildlife that adapts to urban life. Living stateside, people usually never think twice about the animals that occupy their space. Many even regard them with outright disgust. I used to watch my hopelessly awkward cat stalk squirrels almost as large as she was and laugh. Or I'd smile in passing as a humming bird buzzed by. Moments like that felt basic, domestic - they never changed the outcome of my day. But here, all you need to do is glance outside, and often you'll see something that has the ability to trample or maul you to death, or that has national notriety second only to the Flag ... "oh, another moose is walking down the road." "A bear stepped on my car!" "Hmmm ... looks like one of those $#&! bald eagles landed on the power box again." Alaskans yawn. I'm still caught off guard.

I didn't want this to become the "Gee Whiz" journal of an Outsider who doesn't own anything in flannel and still visualizes sundaes when the term "Arctic Circle" is thrown into casual conversation. But, still ... it's kinda cool.

Overland

In many ways, winter is the ideal season for hiking in Alaska. Set out in the summer, and you're stuck on the trails - unless you want to try your hand at land swimming in a sea of shrubs and mosquitoes. But in the winter, with the landscape stripped of all but its most basic elements and covered in an indiscriminate layer of snow and ice, overland travel is a breeze. You don't even have to have a good sense of direction ... if you get lost, just follow your own trail back. Geoff and I set out today from Ohlsen Mountain and walked toward the Anchor River for a couple hours, traversing the open fields, forests and streams with relative ease - that is, it was as easy as something can be when you're stamping down fresh tracks in calf-high powder. It was fun to think that summer exploration of this area would require rubber boots, a machete, 100-percent DEET, strong protection against scratches, a partner for crossing large streams and more than a passing awareness of bears. In the winter, all you need are a pair of snowshoes and a warm coat.

People in Alaska have looked to winter as the premier travel season for hundreds if not thousands of years, but it's still a strange reality when weighed against the usually uninviting obstacles of cold, ice and snow. I'll probably get more traction out of my snowshoes this year than I ever did in warmer climes, and I'll cover more ground than I ever could in the summer. Plus, there's all that freedom of movement, even when bushwhacking (see above). Good times.

Powerline run

The snow returned today. Geoff and I headed behind the house to get a few runs on our snowboards. We found a powerline run that was short but sweet; however, that did not change the fact that beneath five inches of fresh power was a rain-drenched layer of glare ice. On the way home a couple of kids called out to us from the hill. When we looked up, we saw them beckoning us toward a jump they were building, with the crest approaching the tops of their heads and an instant drop-off into a steep gully. It looked like a blast and would have been tempting if not for the whole certain death aspect. And my family thinks I'm not going to live through the winter.

This evening I took a backstage tour of the tallest building in Homer ... the Mariner Theatre at the high school. The production manager of our hometown Nutcracker ballet led me up the twisting staircase to the "deck," a full seven stories above the stage. Already a bit dizzy and disoriented from climbing those stairs, I stepped onto the cross-linked metal platform and, of course, looked down. I'm one of those vertigo people that tends to see long drops rush up at me ala, well, Alfred Hitchcock's "Vertigo." So I just froze in place, absolutely exposed with no hand railing on a bottomless, dangling floor. I must have looked absolutely stricken because the production manager said "I like to bring the little kids up here. They think they'll turn to Jello and slip through," he said. "It gives 'em a good scare." As I struggled to find my center of balance, I felt exactly like Jello, but I didn't say anything. Although the rest of the tour was a bit hazy after that, walking around on those narrow catwalks with my heart in my head and vice versa. And my family thinks I'm not going to live through the winter.

B4ITMELTS

Geoff and I went to a global warming presentation today. There was no earth-shattering information. Well, not in the metaphorical sense, anyway. Just the simple facts ... Alaska’s melting. The ranger from Kenai Fjords National Park didn’t want to get political at all. He just wanted to show us cool overlapped photos of glaciers that were there ... and then gone. While the guy’s speech tended to veer toward the glossy confusion of fifth-grade science, the graphics were intriguing: one hundred-foot walls of ice that just vanished into lush, green valleys. A continent’s worth of polar ice, melted into the sea. Thunderstorms and tornadoes in interior Alaska. The most interesting part was the time-lapse. Thirty years. That’s it. I’m starting the understand a tourism campaign that parodies Alaska’s license plate pitch: See Alaska, B4ITMELTS.

Maybe the presentation was more effective because it’s been raining continuously for two days. That’s not an anomaly in coastal Alaska in November, I’m told, but still. I grew up in the decade of CFC-free hair spray and Toyota Tercels, but despite taking and entire college course on global warming, I never thought I’d see any effects of it in my lifetime. But as long as I stay in Alaska, I may not have a choice.