Ode to Dirt

The ground is still covered in snow, but the weather is warming up considerably and we are enjoying a sunny +50 degree weekend. We have heard that it is warmer here than in Texas today. I can hardly remember what cold feels like! The streets have been cleared of slushy, melting stuff and there are some places where there is actual DIRT showing through. I never thought this would be so exciting, but it is. The earth has been covered in impenetrable layers of snow since October, and a little color - even if that color is brown - is welcome and full of hope. When Peter and I saw our first patch on a walk, he stopped and knelt down in the snow to touch it. Such is one's reverence for the earth when it is beyond view, for Astronauts, Sailors ... and apparently winter-weary Alaskans.

Last weekend, Peter and I took a jaunt down to the Copper River Valley and Valdez. We needed to get out of town, and decided our classes could do without us for an evening. We packed the car and dog (who now spends most of her days sprawled in the sun on our porch) and with some trepidation left the cat home alone with two huge dishes of food. We woke early and drove to the edge of Wrangell St. Elias national park. At thirteen million acres, it is the largest national park in the United States, and when joined with its sister parks Kluane, Alsek and Tatshenshini in Canada and a few other wilderness preserves on the Alaskan panhandle, comprises the largest continuous tract of protected land in the world. And it's not just special to wilderness buffs like us, but recognized by UNESCO as a world heritage site. The park contains 10 of the 15 highest peaks in North America, the largest sub-polar ice field and is thickly populated with all manner of northern wildlife. Unlike Yellowstone and even the much less accessible Denali, Wrangell St. Elias is not easy to get into and impossible to "see" by way of the traditional "driving through the National Park" American pastime. There are two rough, barely-maintained roads that make a tiny scratch into the park from the west and north-west. Maintained trails are negligible. If you really want to see the park, you have to be flown in on a small bush plane and dropped off with your pack and bear spray and map and hope you make it to your pick-up point to be flown out again. If the weather is good. And if you don't wind up as somebody's lunch.

On a small hike to stretch our (and Nyssa's) car-cramped legs near the road that leads to the park, Peter and I came across several tufts of three-inch-long, coarse brown hair on the snowy trail. Contemplating their origin, we wondered aloud if the bears were awake yet. We continued our discussion as we moved down the trail. Three steps more, and the hair on the back of my neck stood on end as I saw a grizzly print as wide as my forearm in the snow on the side of the trail. We quickly decided that the bears were undeniably awake, and that we should probably be moseying our bear-spray and gun-free selves back to the car.

The drive into Valdez was nothing short of breathtaking. I won't even attempt to do it justice here. The coolest part of that leg was watching ice-climbers navigate the frozen waterfalls on the side of the canyon heading into town.

[see the climbers?]

[there they are!]

[hang on to that ice pick!]

Overall, it was a great trip to get away and celebrate spring (and a belated first-year anniversary.) And we arrived back in Fairbanks to wonderfully balmy temperatures, sunshine and increasingly visible patches of dirt. I have a feeling I won't be so giddy about this development as the town (and our street) turns into a mud pit as the rest of the snow pack succumbs to the sunlight.