It's clear that the picture is neither groceries, nor a goldeneye, so it's fair to say it must be graupel. And what--you ask--is graupel? Google it! I did.
It's another of those phenomena that seem commonplace here at this time of year, but I've managed to live close to 69 years without knowing there was such a thing. So the other evening, during an especially heavy graupelshower, I went outside and aimed the camera at the ground. Voila.
There is much about this place that I continue to find new. I've lived in Alaska before, but Anchorage provides an urban setting with Starbucks, high-rise buildings, and suburban sprawl. Living there is pretty much like living in any city, just with a longer and darker winter and moose out the kitchen window. Last summer I enjoyed complete off the grid living--heat the cabin with a woodstove, walk down the hill to the showers, walk up the hill to the outhouse. But with upscale food that I didn't have to prepare and a view off my porch of the tallest peak on the North American continent.
But living here at the east end of Denali National Park, at mile 227.5 of the George Parks Highway is different. The community is invisible from the road although the road can be heard from the invisible homes. The community center serves myriad purposes: large meeting room for group gatherings and the knitting group, training room upstairs for the volunteer fire persons, garage for the vehicle beneath the room. It's where you can get drinking water--bring your own 5-gallon plastic jugs--and it's where the CSA distributes produce. Day care and dance, they both meet here.
While last summer I experienced isolated group living, this is more isolated solitary living. And I have to prepare my own food. I came up from Anchorage a month ago with a plastic bin full of groceries: some went in the freezer, some in the refrigerator, but most is of the sort that needs neither. My shopping list was lengthy, and the cart filled up fast with pasta and sauce, applesauce for when the fresh apples ran out, flour and yeast for bread, tea, coffee, peanut butter and rice cakes, milk and sandwich cheese, squash for soup, quarts of chicken stock, and more containers of yogurt than I've ever purchased at once. With the nearest [limited and expensive] shopping in Healey (20 miles north at $4.999 per gallon to get there), you don't do a lot of zipping out to get what you forgot! You make what you've got work--from the planning of the list to the figuring out what to use first. Cabbage may not be what I want, but that's what's wilting, so I've got to use it.
The weekends are full of housework as I tend this beautiful home I've been allowed to occupy. Saturdays I do chores: sweep, vacuum, scrub down, neaten up. On Sundays, laundry sloshes and fluffs, soups steam, bread rises, as I cook and bake for the week. I've been to Fairbanks once (2.5 hours to get there), and this weekend I head to Anchorage for the last weekend before the summer. I'll drive one of the company vehicles down so it's in town for arriving staff; I'll come back on the bus that another staff member drove down today for staff and supply pickup.
And I'll come back to this lovely location on one of several small ponds (they're lakes here). I've watched the ice go out and the birds come back. Last weekend I heard a strange noise, looked out the window, and there were two pairs of Trumpeter Swans flapping and swimming about, dipping their long necks beneath the water to feed. But there were just a whole slew of ducks! I'd visited the bookstore at Denali National Park on opening day to get a bird book (I'd forgotten to bring mine from Milwaukee), so I dug it out of the bag and started trying to identify all the ducks. I recognized the Mallards...kind of the 'Smith' of ducks, and after much page turning and binocular peering I realized I was seeing Barrow's Goldeneyes! [much more page-flipping and peering] And Wigeons! I knew the word, but I'd never seen one. Unlike goldeneyes, Wigeons float along on top of the water like Little Toot. It's a hoot to watch them all up-ended and waggle-tailed as they forage beneath the surface.
I'm learning so much here. Old skills come back to me, but what's most fascinating is the amount of completely new things I'm bumping up against. I can feel the gratitude building, like it did last summer, as I meet wonderfully generous and gracious people, appreciate new artwork, savor the fresh air blowing from the south and the snow flurries blowing from the north, discover birds I'd only known in books, and as I learn a new job, answer new questions.
And I smile--no, grin--that I'm only a couple of months away from my 69th birthday, and I'm still eagerly seeing and doing things for the first time. Dieu soit beni.
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