Hello Darkness my old friend...

Fall didn't last long, but it was gorgeous.  It started out all fire and gold, the birches flaming against the more reserved spruce, then faded into weeks of grey drizzle and sleet. Last year life was a little hectic but this year we got to watch the transition.  It was awesome.

If I'm honest, though, it's always a pretty crazy season for us.  We have four birthdays, Halloween, and Thanksgiving all crammed into about 8 weeks.  We managed to survive another year, but if I never see another cake it will be too soon.

Trick or Treat on Halloween, the beginning of the real snow.

After a long, soggy brown October, snow finally started to stick on November 1st, and in the last month or so we've gotten roughly 20 inches of snow.  My snow-mountains on the side of my driveway grew steadily until the snowplows came and removed all my hard work.  I'm a little grumpy about that, but Rick reminds me that it's only December--we literally have months of snow to come.  My shovel and gloves will find their purpose again.

Off to shovel.  Again.

But seriously.  Look at those tiny, perfect flakes.  It is incredible to reflect that the five feet of snow lumped on my lawn, my fledgling Caradhras, is nothing more than millions of delicate Lilliputian crystals.

We watched the river freeze over.  It's more solid now than in the pictures, but I'm not going to take a chance on the ice until we've had a good solid few weeks of single digits.  For the desert dwellers reading this, the first step of rivers (and oceans) freezing over is called pancake ice--chunks of ice that freeze and slap up against each other, growing larger and larger until they are all frozen together into a solid sheet.  It's pretty cool to see.

The native Fairbanksans have been out and about.  The moose have made an occasional cameo; we have a mother and baby that have set up shop again in woods behind us. 

The veloci-ravens are back, gigantic black birds that clearly remember being dinosaurs and are just waiting for their chance to put the boot in to us monkey-folk again. In all fairness the ravens probably never left, they just stand out more against the snow.  All the same, they're the most obvious, brazen--and obnoxious--of the local fauna.

We found a vole-hole on our back porch a few weeks ago.  For those of you not in the know, voles are adorably round rodents, about 2 inches long, with short hairy tails.  They do not hibernate, but make tunnels in the subnivean zone--in other words, they run around in their own little world under the snow all winter long.

This is a vole. Cute little bugger (Picture courtesy of Pennsylvania State University)

The little buggers tunneled up on my porch through four inches of snow and ran around my porch for a bit taunting the cats.

A vole hole.

We had another visitor dressed for winter.  I found the tracks while I was once again clearing the driveway.  I followed them and found a little guest huddled under our neighbor's long disused car.

As the temps have been dropping, we've naturally been lurking inside a bit more.  The older girls are adjusting pretty well to having no more friends until spring.  Claudia has mastered rolling, and is focusing her attention on crawling and eating every piece of trash her sisters leave on the floor.  Echo is still her delightful, irrepressible, diabolical self; despite the negative temps, she's come out firmly against wearing pants.

The best part?  The dark is back.  Right now we average about 4.5 hours of actual sunlight, with just over a week to go until the solstice.  The sun only gets about 5 degrees above the horizon during the middle of our day.

The premise of scarcity increasing value holds true--you definitely appreciate the light more when there is so little of it.  It's pink and gold and gray depending on the time and weather.  Every day I see things that just take my breath away.

Life is pretty good.