Ice, Ice Baby

Break-up came freakishly early this year.  That means that daytime temperatures have soared into the 40s, so much water is dripping off my roof it sounds like rain, and the parking lots are slushy-slick death-traps that refreeze every night.  Naturally, we have to go outside.

The local ice parks opened in February.  We made our annual visit, but since I'm the only one who really seems to enjoy going we didn't get season passes this year.  We slid down the slides, spun in the spinners, and dutifully admired the statues.  As is tradition (apparently, though I didn't vote on it), there was at least one kid who protested against being outside and had to be dragged around on a sled from slide to slide.  Ah, memories.

I love these ice-bowls.  They're basically for corralling small children, who can't make it up the slick walls.  They also work on bigger children.

For scale.

Porta-potty, Alaska style.

When Mom overrules you and makes you play anyway.

We have some very adventuresome friends who are hellbent on enjoying their time in Alaska.  They recently made the 13 hour drive up the Dalton to Prudhoe Bay and the Arctic Ocean. (They're bold; I'm too nervous to make that trip during the winter like they did, and I'm certainly not doing it now when all the roads are turning to mush. I'm planning to make it at least to the Arctic Circle this summer.) They also visited Castner Glacier, which is not only safer but more local (within three hours of Fairbanks) and I was inspired to follow suit.

With less than a day of serious planning, we threw our snacks, snow gear, and a sled in the van and headed south to Delta Junction. It was gorgeous out.

We pulled off the road into a makeshift parking lot (a thoughtful snowplow had shoved the snow back twenty feet or so) and piled out.  After a steep initial drop from the roadside, the trail leveled out.  I say "trail" but I mean "the two foot wide path of packed snow that you really shouldn't step off of." If you stumbled or were bumped or, heaven forbid, were stupidly trying to be polite and let someone else pass you...well, you were thigh-deep in snow.  Which I may have been one or five times.

 After a mile, Castner Glacier looms out of the snow.  When we got there kids were sledding into the glacier itself.  For all its remoteness, it's a pretty popular spot; we saw around twenty other people and various dogs during our hike.  It's pretty easy to understand why.

Castner Glacier is an actual flippin' glacier and YOU CAN WALK INTO IT.  *Squeee!*  During the winter, anyway, since during the summer there's a river flowing out of it and the melting ice can be dangerous.  The ceiling is blue ice but the walls are crystal-clear, and you can see the sediment trapped in the ice; it's almost like a giant piece of gold-bearing quartz.  The floor is solid ice in most parts and the further you walk in the crazier the ice crystals get.  We went a couple hundred yards.  We could have gone further, but the ceiling got a little too low for Rick with the carrier, and we also hit the first bit of open water--we heard it long before we saw it.

It. Was. Amazing.

 

Like I said.  Amazing.

As per the universal laws when an experience has been freaking awesome, things had to balance out. Somewhere on the snowy mile between the glacier cave and the van, I lost my phone.  I was taking pictures, and while returning it to my pocket with my fat-gloved hands, I didn't get it all the way in the pocket and it slipped to its death in the two feet of snow on either side of the path.  I didn't realize it until we got back to the van.  Immediately I set back along the trail, checking every hole.  Rick joined me ten minutes later.  He ran the trail to the glacier and back, then went back over it again with a shovel and a walking stick, literally probing every hole and mentioning it to everyone he passed.  I prayed.  He prayed.  We tried calling it, a desperate but pointless attempt forty miles south of the last bar of coverage.

Nothing.

I felt sick.  Not only had I lost my phone (I really shouldn't have an iPhone, I have a history), but all the trip pictures were gone, and my hungry kids waited in the van for an hour and a half while their dad and I looked for a 2"x4" needle in a huge snowy haystack. This trip, which I had been so proud of spearheading, I had singlehandedly thrown in the crapper.

Finally, we returned to the van.  We had done everything we could have done.  The phone was gone.  We had kids to feed, and a three hour drive home.  So we left.  Rick attempted to be supportive and comforting, but after forty miles of me apologizing decided antagonism was the best bet to get me out of my slump.  One of the kids, smelling blood in the water, offered her condolences for me "losing [my] favorite child." 

She has since been struck from the will.

Anyway, by the time we got to Delta Junction I was leveling out and accepting the inevitable.  We went to dinner at a roadside steakhouse and hotel.  Halfway through dinner, Rick got a call from one of our friends in Fairbanks asking if I'd lost my phone.  It turns out some guy had found my phone and texted our friends, freaking out the wife who didn't want to give out my information to a stranger without double-checking.  Rick took the stranger's number and called.  The guy told us to wait, he was 10 minutes out and would meet us at the store down the road.

Dude.  DUDE.  This guy had been hiking down to the glacier when he had seen something flashing in a hole in the snow.  He leaned over to look and there was my phone, flashing with a text message.  I remind you there was no coverage.  I couldn't receive or send calls or texts.  In fact, the text I sent during our search didn't arrive until I got my phone back in Delta Junction.  Rick and I had poured over the trail four times.

It was an honest miracle, and I don't use that term lightly.

I could have handled the news better (I might have thrown out a "I got my favorite child back, so suck it" at the previously offending child) but all was forgiven in the moment of excitement.  The guy, Stephen, let me give him a hug and refused a tank of gas for his trouble. It was a good reminder that people are generally good, one my increasingly cynical self really needed.

And, of course, we took a "holy crap, phone is back, day is saved!" selfie.  Because memories.

Snowlumination.

The other day I was sitting in Sunday School, and the teacher mentioned that she was startled to hear her mother give thanks for the snow in winter.  

It was easy to understand her surprise.  Snow isn't something you'd expect Alaskans to pray for.  Usually they just want a decent couple of inches to insulate pipes and protect them from the hard cold, and then they're pretty uninterested in the white stuff until it's time to go skiing.  In a state that can see up to 300 inches of snow in some towns (looking at you, Valdez) and 600-900 inches in some mountain passes, snow isn't exactly something you think about being grateful for--it's just something that is and must be endured, like a runny nose or slow drivers in the passing lane.

The value of snow, however, isn't in its insulating abilities.  Its worth isn't found in its simple, pristine beauty or in its facilitation of snow-sports.

Its value is found in its light.

Starting in October, the days start getting shorter and darker.  By mid-December, the sun doesn't climb so much as skate over the horizon, and central Alaska sees about four hours of daylight.  The further north you go, the darker it gets.  The darkness should be heavy, nearly a tangible weight...but it isn't, because of the snow. The moon, the streetlights, even the aurora--any source of light is reflected and amplified.  When it's cloudy, it's even brighter because the clouds reflect the light as well.  Don't believe me?

Look.

These pictures were taken away from streetlights, with my headlights turned off. I went looking for darkness and could still see well enough to read even hours after sunset.  Snow, the cold, white nuisance that coats the ground from October to April most years, illuminates the long winter dark.

Sometimes the things we must endure are not just there to be endured; sometimes they help us in ways we never know or appreciate until we glance behind us.  Stop merely enduring.  Look for the unseen benefits to the trials around you.  You never know what will provide a little light in the darkness.

Hold the Botox

I always told myself I was going to age gracefully, allowing nature to run its course with dignity and embracing the changes as they come.  I was going to be Helen Mirren--sleek and silver and stately.

Then, a few weeks ago, I got my first gray hair.  It sprang out ex nihilo, three inches long, wiry, and standing straight up like a Who-hair.  In a single, sharp moment of soul-deep clarity, I realized that I wasn't going to look like Helen.

I was going to look like Doc Brown.

So let's just throw it out there.  Growing old sucks.   

You've all thought it, too, so don't get all "Oh, it's not that bad." Of course it's not all bad.  I'm particularly fond of getting to make my own rules and eat my midnight pizza on the couch. Sometimes it just hits me, though, that I'm getting older.

And it sucks.

Everything that tastes good makes me bloat.  Salads are apparently now a viable meal choice. Things that worked perfectly well for twenty or thirty years have suddenly stopped working for absolutely no damn good reason, like my warranty just expired.  I woke up one day and realized that my metabolism broke up with me years ago and didn't bother to leave a note.  We haven't even mentioned the funhouse sag and shift of anatomical drift, thinning hair, sun-damaged skin, stretch marks, weird hormonal mustaches, a resurgence of the acne I thought I had left behind in high school, and an extra half-chin.

I do have some things going for me.  While being flat-chested was a trial when I was younger, it also means less back pain and a lower likelihood of my boobs keeping company with my bellybutton in twenty years.  I also spent puberty, some of the most soul-crushing years of life, looking like this:

It could only go uphill from there.

I mean, sure, I'm not thrilled about whatever shenanigans my body is going to pull in the next fifty years, but facts are facts: I'm too unmotivated and cheap to do more than cursory maintenance.  My attention span just won't allow it.
   

With that in mind, after careful reflection I have come to the following conclusion: I have to choose my priorities. With a minimum of vegetables and exercise, modern medicine can give me roughly at least another 50 years on this rock.  How do I want to spend the next five decades?  I could choose to romanticize the incompletely developed body that I had at 17.  I can obsess over every wrinkle, stretch mark, and skin tag.  I could flagellate myself with every memory where one of my charming, sensitive children grabbed a handful of belly and asked why I was so "squishy." I could keep my hair coiffed with regular visits to the salon, spend copious amounts of money on creams and unguents and unicorn blood to rub into my skin, and eat all my kale like a mature woman...or I can wrestle my old-lady fro into a ponytail, buy adult-quality chocolate to go with my minimum of vegetables, swap bad puns with my tasteless kids, and go read a book that makes me laugh so hard I cry.

I'm going to take the second option. Surgery is expensive, good memories are better than good boobs, and life without Oreos isn't worth living.

I need to get that on a shirt.  I could make a killing.

The Waiting Place...

This is the hardest time of year for the Bushman clan.  We can handle the darkness of winter and the brightness of summer, but the flirtatious not-yet-spring is a challenge.  The growing days seem incredibly long, and actually make the biting cold that much more confining.  Everything is still frozen and will be for another month.  There's nothing to do but wait.

Which sucks.  I'm not good at waiting.  So I'm going to make bad choices, stay up too late, and play catch-up on the blog.

Light pillars

It's been a long start to the year.

New Year's Day started inauspiciously--ever optimists, we went to see Aquaman.  Now, I'm a mature woman and can appreciate Jason Momoa in all of his half-dressed glory, but even his oiled up abs and perma-cocked eyebrow couldn't save that movie.  Unpopular opinion, but there it is. The girls enjoyed it for the spectacle it is, but they can be forgiven for their misplaced youthful enthusiasm.

This winter we've made an effort to get out more, with mixed results.  Our first big venture of the new year was to try and go tubing--I say "try" because we failed dismally.  Apparently everyone else had the same idea and converged on the local hill.  Instead of waiting for slots to open up, Rick suggested we go for a walk.  I thought it was a wonderful idea.  The girls died in protest.

Alaska was apparently menopausal this year and suffered hot and cold flashes.  After a couple weeks of temperatures creeping into the 20s, we plummeted into the negatives.  Naturally, this is the time Rick decided he wanted to try hunting.  He managed to get a ptarmigan on Murphy Dome.  It was the beefiest-tasting bird I've ever had.  I went along on the initial trip and froze my keister off.  The next time he took the three older girls (who may have been slightly better prepared than I was) and they all had a blast even though they didn't manage to shoot anything.

A far off glimpse of Denali.

The cold snap presented another opportunity. Whenever the temperature hits -40, the local crazies strip down to their swimsuits and go pose in front of the University of Alaska Fairbanks sign, which flashes the temperature.  I've wanted to do it for years but the first year we were here I was pregnant and Rick said no; the second year it didn't get cold enough while I was awake.  This year, though, I got my chance.  Coming back from a friend's goodbye party, we noticed that the temperature had dropped, so before I could chicken out (I'm often more of a talker than a doer) Rick and I got into our swimsuits and drove into the frigid night.  We opted for the local junior high sign instead of UAF because it was closer to the house and we could pull up within 10 feet of it.

Totally worth it.

By the end of January Rick was out on his annual winter work-cation in the lower 48.  Those of us left behind barreled into an intentionally overscheduled month. We kicked things off by catching the high school's production of Newsies on its final night.  It was pretty spectacular.  Everyone really pulled out all the stops, and as a result over 8,000 people saw it over two weekends.

Next we went to the Bardathon.  Every February, the local Shakespeare company reads ALL of the Bard's work--every play, poem, and sonnet--over the course of a week.  We went with some homeschool friends to an educational session where we read part of The Comedy of Errors as an introduction to Shakespeare.  A few days later, I took some of the girls back to read the last of the sonnets.  It was a really cool experience.  It's already penciled onto my calendar for next year.

From the Fairbanks Shakespeare Theatre Company FB page.

The 1,000 mile Yukon Quest dogsled race ended in Fairbanks this year (it alternates every year between Fairbanks and Whitehorse).  We managed to catch the winning musher and team as they came down the Chena River on Fort Wainwright.  Totally worth the hour we waited, no matter what the kids say.  We've already established that their judgment is lacking.

Our string of birthdays kicked off with me.  I took myself to an Ice Dogs hockey game; out of guilt, I took some of the smaller minions with me.  Not a mistake I'll make again.  It's hard to watch ice fistfights when you're wrestling a four-year-old away from a stranger's concession snacks for two hours.

The next two birthdays went smoothly, but, since they fell in the middle of the week, completely threw off our school schedule.  You see, it is a truth universally acknowledged that when a homeschooler's birthday falls on a weekday, absolutely nothing useful will be accomplished.  This happened twice in as many weeks.  Somehow we managed to juggle violin and art lessons, playgroup, skiing and gymnastics--but I'm not going to lie, I'm very incredibly relieved that half of that ends next week.  We stayed busy, though, so the goal was accomplished.

And now it's time to get my sleep-deprived butt to bed.

Sunrise light pillars.