A life which is split between Alaska and Kentucky often involves sharp differences in experiences. Those sometimes show up in our annual Christmas letters, which don’t usually focus on what we’ve done (won the Nobel prize, walked on the moon, are the parents of not one, but three little geniuses, etc), but on what happens to us. With Christmas approaching, I’ve been rereading past letters, and thought posting one of those a week would be a nice lead-up to the holidays. This one was written in the nineteen-nineties, and gives a real feel for a Christmas in Anchorage, Alaska, at least that year.
“It’s been very cold here – ten to twenty below. The Christmas lighting is
spectacular, but we still don’t have any snow. Vapor from the creeks and the extreme cold have coated the trees and shrubs with a heavy layer of white frost, though, which has given our surroundings a very winter-wonderland effect. There’s not much activity; everything is very quiet. We can hear the crunch, crunch of footsteps as people walk by on several inches of sidewalk frost seven stories below. The whole thing is very Robert-Serviceish.
In spite of the cold, the weather has been lovely. We’ve seen Mount McKinley
almost every day on the northern horizon. There are still eagles and ducks flying around the city, and the ice in Cook Inlet is a never-ending show as it shifts with wind and tides. The light is another source of fascination. The sun came up on the very tops of the mountains at 10:30 a.m. today, and got down to the houses at about 10:45. Every dawn and sunset there’s a rosy glow around the sky about 20 degrees above the horizon. The Chugach, Talkeetna and Alaska mountain ranges are visible along with Mountain McKinley, but the lights of the city dominate now that the days are so short. The view from our windows is beautiful. We’re under six hours of daylight now, and dropping fast. The sun never gets far above the southern horizon in its abbreviated journey, and at
midday autos cast a shadow three times their length.
It’s been a long time since we spent a winter in Alaska, and we’d forgotten about the wonderful atmospheric effects here. Night before last, the moon not only rose full and clear above the Chugach mountains, but was preceded by a paler image that stayed just above and to its right. We’ve seen reflections of mountain ranges on the opposite horizon, and incredible rainbows. Winter is also the time to see the fata morgana. All in all, it’s something not to be missed.”
The letter sounds idyllic, and in many ways it was, but trouble has a way of intruding, and it showed in the new year. Because of the lack of snow, the ground had no insulating cover, and the frost kept driving deeper and deeper. Eventually it drove past ten feet, the depth at which city water lines are buried, and pipes started to burst all over. Since the ground was frozen, the water, which had to go somewhere, would travel along just under the frost line and would pop up in unexpected places, like a suburban basement. Tracking these burst pipes was a challenge for the city's utilities department, but excavating down to the break was even more
challenging. Driving around town, you’d see a steam thawer at work somewhere and know it was being used to thaw the ground for excavating down to the (one hoped) break that might be there. It was a miserable time for those affected; a basement full of water with
temperatures below zero will depress your spirits, to say the least. So, as life often falls out, a few of us - notably the city utilities department people who had to work out in the extreme cold - paid for the Christmas the rest of us enjoyed.
“It’s been very cold here – ten to twenty below. The Christmas lighting is
spectacular, but we still don’t have any snow. Vapor from the creeks and the extreme cold have coated the trees and shrubs with a heavy layer of white frost, though, which has given our surroundings a very winter-wonderland effect. There’s not much activity; everything is very quiet. We can hear the crunch, crunch of footsteps as people walk by on several inches of sidewalk frost seven stories below. The whole thing is very Robert-Serviceish.
In spite of the cold, the weather has been lovely. We’ve seen Mount McKinley
almost every day on the northern horizon. There are still eagles and ducks flying around the city, and the ice in Cook Inlet is a never-ending show as it shifts with wind and tides. The light is another source of fascination. The sun came up on the very tops of the mountains at 10:30 a.m. today, and got down to the houses at about 10:45. Every dawn and sunset there’s a rosy glow around the sky about 20 degrees above the horizon. The Chugach, Talkeetna and Alaska mountain ranges are visible along with Mountain McKinley, but the lights of the city dominate now that the days are so short. The view from our windows is beautiful. We’re under six hours of daylight now, and dropping fast. The sun never gets far above the southern horizon in its abbreviated journey, and at
midday autos cast a shadow three times their length.
It’s been a long time since we spent a winter in Alaska, and we’d forgotten about the wonderful atmospheric effects here. Night before last, the moon not only rose full and clear above the Chugach mountains, but was preceded by a paler image that stayed just above and to its right. We’ve seen reflections of mountain ranges on the opposite horizon, and incredible rainbows. Winter is also the time to see the fata morgana. All in all, it’s something not to be missed.”
The letter sounds idyllic, and in many ways it was, but trouble has a way of intruding, and it showed in the new year. Because of the lack of snow, the ground had no insulating cover, and the frost kept driving deeper and deeper. Eventually it drove past ten feet, the depth at which city water lines are buried, and pipes started to burst all over. Since the ground was frozen, the water, which had to go somewhere, would travel along just under the frost line and would pop up in unexpected places, like a suburban basement. Tracking these burst pipes was a challenge for the city's utilities department, but excavating down to the break was even more
challenging. Driving around town, you’d see a steam thawer at work somewhere and know it was being used to thaw the ground for excavating down to the (one hoped) break that might be there. It was a miserable time for those affected; a basement full of water with
temperatures below zero will depress your spirits, to say the least. So, as life often falls out, a few of us - notably the city utilities department people who had to work out in the extreme cold - paid for the Christmas the rest of us enjoyed.
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