I had tried to find a way to describe the joy of waking up to crisp starlight before going to work.  My front door faces Orion in the mornings, his belt providing the landmark to see other constellations nearby.  Ever since the municipally replaced the street lamps with downward facing LEDs and less light pollution, you can see the Milky Way from my urban front porch.  It is just magical.

Well… unless there is a forecast for aurora.  Then it’s high overcast.

Alaskan summers are short, and we tend to start counting down the days from the very beginning of summer.  It’s the only place in the world I have lived where the radio station gives a daily countdown of the number of minutes of daylight gained or lost.   Even so, we are seldom ready when summer gives way as the seasons turn.

As a consolation prize, there is an absolutely undeniable beauty to fall.  While spring comes with shades of green unimaginable at other times of the year, fall brings in the reds and burgundies.  It’s a fractal of color, where the trees on a distant mountain top mirror the lichen on the nearby rock.  A certain symmetry of repeating patterns, just as season follows season.   The death part of rebirth.  Beautiful, but still the coming darkness.  An excellent time to remember the writings of Gordon Bok.

It’s a pity we don’t know what the little flowers know;
they can’t face the cold November, they can’t take the wind and snow.
They put their glories all behind them, bow their heads and let it go
but you know that they’ll be shining in the morning.

Ah, my Joanie don’t you know that the stars are swinging slow,
the seas are rolling easy as they did so long ago.
If I had a thing to give you, I would tell you one more time
that the world is always turning towards the morning.

Take heart and take care.

Cross-posted to Livejournal and kevin.mcclear.net

A very good morning to you all.

I was walking the dogs past a quintessential Alaskan lake. You know the one, shared by people fishing skiffs, paddling kayaks, swimming and landing seaplanes. As I walked around the lake I was admiring the fireweed, some of it up to my shoulder (*gulp*) and I found myself unconsciously counting the number of flowers yet to bloom.

You see, we have this… superstition. You can tell the severalty of the coming winter by the hight of the fireweed, and the winter will start 6 weeks after all of the buds bloom. It’s kind of like a very weird courting candle; once the fireweed blows out, the date is over.

Here’s the thing… we also count the start of summer with the arrival of the fireweed. We have literally created a mythos where the very beginning of summer heralds its end. How cleverly fatalistic is that?

I love Alaska.

The whole effect is rather less mystical than one might imagine.

But then the remarkable thing happens. You look to the hills, between the blowing fog and sun, and you realize that there is more color than ever. Burgundies, reds, greens, golds, yellows greys and browns, all previously hidden under what announced itself as the color of fall. All just waiting to be seen.

The result is that this morning shown down on the (for now) beautiful desolation of early winter’s greys and muted reds of the hillside brought to a full stop by a band of bright orange defiantly holding on the the last breath of fall.

1) A busker singing “Folsom Prison Blues” in an over-the-top Disney “Pirates of the Caribbean” accent (“I stabbed a man in Port Royal, just to watch him die”).

2) A running fight between Peter Pan and Captain Hook down 4th Aventine, that ended with Tinkerbell being stabbed to death in front of the Avenue Bar. The crowd started madly clapping, bringing Tinkerbell back to life.