Alaska winter reflection

So unexpectedly I find myself in the big wide open where

Winter is not just a season to be endured but a state of mind, a way of living

Each day the sun ebbs and then recedes sooner and more quickly than the day before

leaving behind the pitchy black of night and a deep, profound cold.

Still and always, it is the Alaska sky, the space above me that amazes.

Just this afternoon, the sun, a great orange orb refused to go gentle into the night

without setting the whole sky on fire,

even after the sun's face fell down, slipping below the horizon.

And now this morning the sun shyly insinuates itself behind the mountains

Luminescence kindling toward a sun not yet there, still to arise.

I met a woman who lived in Palmer, just an hour from Anchorage but up on a mountain plateau surrounded by even larger mountains. Both of us were enjoying the sunset together when she said that living there is not only about beautiful sunsets. "You know," she said, "the wind blows so strong up here that you have to be careful. Last winter when the wind was blowing and there was ice on the doorstep, I pulled up to the house with my six year old twins. I managed to get into the house with a sack of groceries, but I forgot to tell my sons to remain in the car until I could come and get them. So together they jumped out of the car and blew away! Yes, just like tumbleweed they blew around to the other side of the house and down the gravel driveway. They were pretty beat-up with cuts and bruises, crying and all. But they are fine now." Who knew it was even possible for children (other than Dorothy from Kansas) to blow away?