We woke up this morning inside a Christmas card.
Light, powdery snow piles up on branches in the calm air of Fairbanks, Alaska
This leisurely dawn photography sure is rough. Sunrise was at 1059 today. These are some shots out the windows of our snow-globe home.
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We’re not wood snobs. If it will burn well, into the firewood pile it goes. So while cutting, moving, and stacking wood, some real ugly cusses get brought along in the process. They can screw up a good woodpile because they can be grotesquely misshapen, so I often put them on top. But where they really gum up the works is in the splitting.
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Here we are staring at the ass end of November, cold and dark. But we were completely surprised yesterday morning to wake up to a very crisp -36 F. While we’d been having some below-zero weather, we hadn’t been expecting such a drop off a thermal cliff.
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During the past week or so we haven’t gotten any new snow, so the tracks have been building up. Sunrise-to-sunset time is about 5 hours, so there is little daylight during which to see (in real time) who’s been passing. Our resident snowshoe hare has been dashing everywhere. We first saw it in the latter half of October—it stuck out so boldly, white against the snow-less landscape, that we could even see it after dark. This species has only recently colonized our neighborhood, probably drawn by the increasingly open woods as aging aspens have fallen. Until now, we have not had one actually spending time in our yard. It seems to love to run on the deck. Of course we call it Thumper.
At least that’s what Rose called it as we planned and made it. We’ve had this jar of canned Mystery Meat since 2002. We rediscovered it a few months ago, and I left it on the counter threatening that we’d cook it up and eat it one day. Because I didn’t get a moose or any other big game this year, that day has finally come.
Rose suggested that we make sure our wills are up to date, and that we leave a note for the coroner to make their job easier. So I began this post.
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