Alaska, you know I love you, but sometimes you're just weird
Hopefully by now it is painfully apparent that I am in love with living in Alaska. From my sidebar-bio in which I proudly proclaim myself an 'ecstatic Alaskan' to lens which is rapidly filling with Alaska shots to a few of the many new opportunities that living here has offered me that I have written about here, the evidence none-too-quietly shows that I am the pea and Alaska the pod.
Sure, there are certain quirks about living here, like no longer being able to navigate by the sun (in winter it rises in the south, skims across the horizon, and sets four hours later in, well, the south, and in the summer it rises in the north, makes a wide arc around the sky and twenty hours later sets in, well, the north) or sixty-degree high temperatures in July and August (a great selling point when your relatives in Texas are cooking in the midst of a streak of thirty consecutive days of 100+-degree temperatures), but by and large these are easy to forgive. However, the latest quirk has just about broken my brain.
Ok. It's August Late August, mind you, but two weeks ago it was mid-August, and two weeks ago is when this, this aberration, this abomination decided to do something like divide by zero and all other such unnatural things. I have not the words to accurately express the sight that so discombobulated me, so I'll let a photo do the talking:
This snow showed up in mid-August. That's weird (click for an expanded field of view).
That's right -- snow. In August on what was previously a naked rock mountain mere days ago. Ok, sure, it's not called snow per se -- it's given the poetic honorific termination dust. This must be short for "Harbinger-of-Summer's-Termination dust" because really, it serves to remind you that the summer is on its way out. It's being let go, downsized, it's obsolete, no longer the hot new thing in town. It causes a sense of frenetic panic to set in because you know that summer's days are numbered and you worry that you've haven't fully enjoyed the beautiful, I mean truly breathtaking, Alaska summer days, and you remember and regret every single day that you didn't take full advantage of what you were given by this awesome state.
I think that Catholic parents who have formidable guilt-tripping skills must have learned them from this particular type of precipitation.
Now if you'll excuse me, I must go sleep so that I can wake up early enough to go for one of the season's lasts runs on what I hope will be a beautiful, classic Alaska summer day.
Sure, there are certain quirks about living here, like no longer being able to navigate by the sun (in winter it rises in the south, skims across the horizon, and sets four hours later in, well, the south, and in the summer it rises in the north, makes a wide arc around the sky and twenty hours later sets in, well, the north) or sixty-degree high temperatures in July and August (a great selling point when your relatives in Texas are cooking in the midst of a streak of thirty consecutive days of 100+-degree temperatures), but by and large these are easy to forgive. However, the latest quirk has just about broken my brain.
Ok. It's August Late August, mind you, but two weeks ago it was mid-August, and two weeks ago is when this, this aberration, this abomination decided to do something like divide by zero and all other such unnatural things. I have not the words to accurately express the sight that so discombobulated me, so I'll let a photo do the talking:
This snow showed up in mid-August. That's weird (click for an expanded field of view).
That's right -- snow. In August on what was previously a naked rock mountain mere days ago. Ok, sure, it's not called snow per se -- it's given the poetic honorific termination dust. This must be short for "Harbinger-of-Summer's-Termination dust" because really, it serves to remind you that the summer is on its way out. It's being let go, downsized, it's obsolete, no longer the hot new thing in town. It causes a sense of frenetic panic to set in because you know that summer's days are numbered and you worry that you've haven't fully enjoyed the beautiful, I mean truly breathtaking, Alaska summer days, and you remember and regret every single day that you didn't take full advantage of what you were given by this awesome state.
I think that Catholic parents who have formidable guilt-tripping skills must have learned them from this particular type of precipitation.
Now if you'll excuse me, I must go sleep so that I can wake up early enough to go for one of the season's lasts runs on what I hope will be a beautiful, classic Alaska summer day.