DARKNESS. Once again, Team Leslie has made it to the Winter Solstice, the darkest day of the year no matter where you live, but especially noticeable up here in these Alaskan parts: about five hours of daylight. (For those of you who have been hitting the hard eggnog recently, I'll do the simple math for you...) That's nineteen hours of night, people. Some serious payback for those days of sunny frolicking at midnight during the summer!
LIGHT. But what a chance to appreciate that invaluable visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum! From a morning bonfire with cocoa, through to x-country skiing in our forest, candle-making, fairy crafting, and Solstice celebration
crackers, we took the whole day to unplug, play and connect with the
light...
Indigo says, "Thank you bees!"
Working away to make...
Fairies!
Homemade crackers complete with a snap and a crown!
So I think I've just gotten used to it. And by "it" I mean Alaska. This past month-plus without a post is not due to any crazy circumstances. Team Leslie did not get ravaged by a polar bear nor freeze to death on the way to an outhouse. In fact, we've been happy as clams. Alaskan clams. And that's the problem... when I'm not looking at the Alaska Adventure through a lens of novelty, it's much more difficult to find blog writing inspiration!
Team Leslie: Happy Alaskan clams.
WILD LIFE. Take yesterday for example. I walked out the door of my school building only to find a Mama moose and her baby blocking Ice Cream Newton. I waited patiently, said a good loud, "Heeeeeey Mooooooose!!!" and waited some more. After about two minutes they finished nibbling their exposed ground vegetation and moseyed (or should I say "mooseyed?") on their way to a new patch of delicious sticks. Now if this had happened last year I would have had the camera out, documenting every snort and stomp. This year I didn't think twice and of late have even budgeted in a few extra minutes to my commute time to accommodate happenings like moose in the parking lot, caribou crossing the highway, or traffic lights out due to a lack of power. Ho hum.
TEMPERATURE. Or this past weekend... Day time temperatures were consistently below zero while the overnight's hit thirty below. Last year we would have been a bit intimidated. This year what did we do? Skied out to a rustic backcountry cabin to celebrate the long Thanksgiving weekend! We would all play outside for an hour, and then hustle our bustle inside to warm up by the woodstove, drink a cup of cocoa, and do it all over again. Believe it or not, with sufficient layers and some exercise to keep the blood pumping to those exposed skin cells, a person can stand being outside in such frigid temps without much bother. Truly! And the benefits are outrageously cool:
Sound travels better in cold air than warm because the air molecules are closer together, right? (Say, "right.") So with such cold temperatures, the sound traveled like nobody's business. We could howl at the moon or call out our names and they would echo off the surrounding mountains for ten seconds at least. Even better than in Death Valley. Hoo ya!
The snow was so cold and dry on the lake near the cabin that we could ice skate through it like it wasn't there with only a delicate swooshing sound and a puff of sparkling powder. We were able to skate around an island on the lake, passing wolf and snowshoe hare tracks. Double hoo ya!
The cold, high pressure air was accompanied by clear skies; coupled with the sunset gracing us in the afternoon, we had hours of star and planet gazing. The first night also offered up some Aurora Borealis action with shifting ribbons of green stretching across the sky. Hoo ya doesn't even come close to honoring this spectacle... no words do.
Admittedly, some family friends who were planning to join us made the ski out and then promptly turned around when their kiddos started howling in the cold. And the toilet seat was a little hard to take upon first sit. But the amount of pure joy and family fun made it one of our better weekends ever. And that's saying something. Some pictures of the venture follow, as well as a video which I believe can only be seen from the true blog site.
Scientific evidence... it was really f-ing cold.
But playing keeps us warm!
Past the carrier stage - Indigo can ski herself!
Come to Papa!
Yikes.
A morning skate...
Geared up again and ready to roll.
An afternoon ski!
Friends who stopped by one afternoon and brought their kids - can you find them?
Catching the sunrise after 10 AM.
MODIFICATIONS. I've already mentioned a few, but there are some elements to our day-to-day seemingly normal routine that might strike folks from the Lower 48 as "notable." Like always remembering to plug in Ice Cream Newton before going to bed so our engine block heater can get nice and toasty and she'll will start up strong in the morning. Or skipping buying bananas (always dark green) or fresh spinach (always slimy) at the grocery store. Trading in the bear spray (they're hibernating) and instead bringing a headlamp or flashlight with you if you're going outside past 3 PM (it's dark). And checking the aurora forecast when we check the weather report. The list is probably much longer, but as I said, my novelty lens is a bit foggy of late!
RECREATION. For a long time you've heard about the skiing, the skating, the romping about on mountains. Well one tradition we've had in California, Oregon and now here in Alaska is the Pre Season Ski Movie Extravaganza. Either at an official ski-porn event with all the free schwag and a huge screen, or at a friend's home with buttered popcorn and little ones blocking the projection, we always manage to celebrate the coming snow recreation with a movie night. And often each family presents their own little slide show or home movie compilation of last year's shenanigans. This year things rose to a whole new level.
Act 1: Team Leslie's 2012-2013 Ski Season featuring some respectable shots set to the newest Justin Timberlake (for those of you who know J and his hippy curmudgeon ways, this recent genre preference may come as a surprise... I love it).
Act 2: The Dura Family's "The Next Generation" movie with a heavy focus on all the small kiddos slipping and sliding on the white stuff with big smiles and bigger helmets.
Act 3: Our friend and dentist Tom's movie with an opening scene from a vantage point within his plane. Set to AC/DC's Back in Black, Tom proceeded to share footie of himself and his friend (also with a plane - apparently the safe thing among bush pilots landing on snow fields is to always take two planes... just in case. Who knew the buddy system extended past kindergarten field trips?) as they flew and then landed deep in the Alaskan wilderness in the midst of some very impressive mountains on a blue bird day. They got out, toured above glaciers, climbed high on rocky outcroppings, and skied down chutes into beautiful wide open bowls, their GoPro helmet cams capturing clips that Tom wove together in a rhythmic back and forth that mirrored their figure eight turns. It was just a day trip. Wow.
Act 4 was the actual purchased ski movie with all of its high production value and X-games talent, but I was still stuck on Act 3. Mind you, we have some very althletic friends from other states who capture some darn good skiing moments, neon thongs and all, but this was different. Personal private planes? Monstrous glaciers? Wilderness the size of most countries? In your homemade ski movie? Only in AK.
So that's about it for now... the Alaska Adventure lives on for sure-sers. I just need to stay mindful of it, for you and for me!
