Well, we sure saw some weather on our Anchorage trip of Wednesday and Thursday...and a lot of snow fell back at home in our absence!
Yes, this is an Alaskan winter, but by all accounts this year's is extraordinary. It's only my third winter here, so I have less basis for comparison, but old-timers are saying it's been many years since there was this much snow and cold. I have lots of pictures to share.
Driving up to Anchorage on Wednesday, there were blizzards most of the way, with strong winds gusting across the road, cramming the air with powdered snow, both falling snow and blown snow. I'd never thought of air as something with no gaps in it before.
At our friends' house in Anchorage, the snow was above the mailbox.
Snow half as high as a house...
See that pile of snow in the middle of the picture as tall as the building next to it? And the snow berms along the roadsides were generally well above my head, some of them as tall as the bus stops! I am in constant awe of the infrastructure and constant work it takes to keep roads open in the winter here.
We were glad that the truck was fully loaded: increased stability and traction, you know ;) We stocked up at CostCo, and Phil purchased a used wood-burning stove at Habitat for Humanity--that was some serious weight. And so aesthetic!
While we were town, it warmed up by 40 degrees, after hovering right around zero for the whole of January. Warm-up above melting point plus all that snow, and then some rain on the snow, equates to avalanches: big ones across the roads on the way from Anchorage to the Kenai Peninsula and Homer; smaller ones onto roads and buildings in town.
Coupled with the strange concept of air as something crammed and having no gaps was this eerie monochrome light, dissolving distances and making everything feel very intimate and immediate.
When we set out for Homer on Thursday, we knew the highway was blocked by an avalanche at one spot, and that there were avalanche warnings in many other places. The avalanche blockage was right around the turnoff for Homer, and we were hoping that it was just beyond the turnoff, so we wouldn't be stuck. But we were prepared to stop. And stop we did, for 30 minutes at one point while they let off howitzers to cause controlled avalanches up ahead.
Most people were sensible and stayed off the road. If you look at the picture below, you can see that there are no tire traces in the oncoming lane opposite ours--what looks like one to the far left is the shadow of the snow berm. No one was on the road coming from Homer or Seward!
Closer to our turnoff, we stopped again, for about an hour--this was where the avalanche was being cleared. As you can see, it was raining on top of the snow at this point, which can't have made the job of clearing the mess any easier.
We got lucky, though: it turned out that the avalanche itself was beyond our turnoff, so we were allowed to head on after that not-so-long wait, but the people heading for Seward got turned back. We've waited six hours for avalanches to be cleared before, so this really wasn't so bad. Phil took a nap. I broke the back of one of my critical essays for my "packet."
We had word that it had snowed non-stop since we left in Homer, warm, soft, blanketing snow, drifting over everything as fast as it could be cleared. But as we headed south, the temperatures began to drop again, as had been predicted. The roads were not so slick as things froze tight again. We even had the sun in our eyes for a bit. Welcome back, colors! In this particular stretch, the sun through storm clouds looked like a celestial body, angelic and radiant.
But when we got home, I had to plow my way out of the truck using the door!
This is the path down to our cabin. You can just see where the path should be: the snow was up to my hips.
The cabin itself looked like a model house inside a snow-shaker. But what a delight to reach home at almost 6pm and still have some light to see by! Finding our way down to the cabin through such deep snow would have been even harder in the dark.
Kudos to my hero Phil for much heroic driving. He felt short on exercise after his recent trip, so this morning while I worked out and made breakfast, he was quite happy to shovel. I was impressed with how quickly he made our path into a reality again. Also impressed by how tall the walls on either side are.
Forecast says it's going to warm up again tomorrow. Everyone's anxiously anticipating what will happen when all these huge piles of snow start to melt. Our entire bluff, cabin and all, could become an avalanche! At the very least, there will be a lot of water downtown. Ebb and flow, change of state, pole to pole with ulterior harmony all over again. I am grateful for the experience.
So many other things I could talk about, but I want to let this stand alone.
There's a major discussion on my mind about the relationship between goal-setting, body image, and success: I'll try to get out a weekend post to talk about that.
love to all!
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