This is what I went to bed looking at last night. Woke up to 5 inches of fresh snow this morning. Yes, it’s April 5th. I love the snow. I really do. If there were no promise of summer, I’d wish for it to keep snowing every day, forever. However, there is a summer and it looms like a great shadow on the horizon. It’s coming closer every day as the days grow longer. We have light until 9:30pm now. As the daylight increases by 6 minutes each day, I can actually feel summer approaching. I can feel it’s breath on the back of my neck during recess duty. I can smell it in the sea spray on the beach. I can even taste it in the freezer burned Halibut that needs to be eaten before this summer’s catch can take its place.

This world. This Alaska. It lives. It breathes. Sometimes I think I can actually feel its chest heave with the heaviness of the rain. The changing of seasons is a living thing here. It’s visible, daily, even hourly, sometimes by the minute. The snow piles up overnight and then drains off the roof in a downpour in the afternoon sun. The moose are growing bolder with each day – closer to calving in May. The bears are leaving their tracks in the spring snow as they emerge from their dens. The mud is growing soft and thick in the parking lots around town. The students are growing restless as they make plans for the impending summer. Whaling in the Arctic is coming to an end as the ice flows begin to break up and villagers make plans to travel to their summer fish camps.

It may still look like Christmas in pictures. But here… here you can feel the change. It’s intoxicating. This place is intoxicating. This place draws one in with its exhilarating seasons. This place is my home. This place is my Alaska. This is what I will go to bed dreaming about tonight.