All Things Being Equal

EQUINOX. A day of the year when we have an electromagnetic balance... most of my life I passed this occasion by, not ever noticing the 12 hours of light matched with 12 hours of darkness. FYI, the Autumnal Equinox was last Sunday, September 22nd, at 20:44 Universal Coordinated Time. If you missed it, fear not; you can still look forward to the Vernal Equinox in a mere, six short months! (In case my writing does not convey it, please soak the word "short" in a serious bath of sarcasm. Our weekly weather reports have already featured snow. Winter, thy name is Alaska.)

Backyard campfire on the Equinox - note the darkness - haven't had that in awhile up here!

These days I anticipate the Equinox like a major holiday... something akin to Thanksgiving or Easter. We plan harvesting adventures; we create costumes and decorate our bikes for the potato parade; we get out the ingredients for our Equinox and Solstice breakfast of choice: crepes with various fillings (think homemade cranberry sauce and goat cheese... beyond delicious) - folded in half for Equinox, or spread out in a circular whole for the Solstice. Yes, we are secular holiday culinary nerds. Praise the Parsnip!

Kim and Jodi, cranberry picking in the forest... but where's baby AnnaBeth?

There she is! Happy as a clam stashed in the cranberry bush!

Some of our cranberry harvest.

Team Leslie - Ready for the potato parade!

Community garden goodness - bags of potatoes and cabbage!

Indeed, we may be some of the very few people in Alaska putting a holiday name to our now "second annual" traditions, but we are not alone in our actions. Stories in the work place revolve around weekends spent gathering low-bush cranberries, processing hunted meat, and picking green tomatoes from withering vines. And not just the crazy hippies like us... SUV-driving, fashionistas and gun-slinging (I love how often I get to use that phrase up here), wool jacket-wearing grizzly men... we all unite in this gleaning of the gardens and forests in an Alaskan frenzy before the frost. Compared to last year, Team Leslie is feeling professional. Gallon bags of berries and filets of salmon in the freezer, jars of dried mushrooms in the pantry, and some of that moose meat sausage that I found so unusual last year, in the fridge. Mind you, we did not kill or prepare the sausage. It was our generous neighbors again... freshly ground and spiced and delivered down the driveway, like the bear meat last week. Today I learned that the top floor of our neighbors' home, a sort of tower with 360 degree gorgeous-o windows overlooking the lakes and mountains, has a single small window with a sliding pane. Why? In case they spy a moose in the yard and want to jam a gun through the window and take a shot from above, of course. I bet Architectural Digest hasn't featured that one.