Many of us wax poetic at the end of winter and the return of spring. Let’s swap that around. What’s the one thing about spring that you can’t stand?
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Spring is glorious when you’ve just survived six months of winter. And, in Interior Alaska, that six months is almost always spent below zero degrees, so it’s hard to complain about spring. Complaining about spring here is a “red-flag” indicator. You might have Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) if you’re complaining about spring. You might even need to be assessed for suicidal ideation if you’re complaining about spring.
This year, the Alaska spring was a month early and it was glorious. There were green shoots showing in lawns and the birch trees produced their sap early. We sat out on the deck last weekend in shirt sleeves. Oh, so wonderful!
Today, it’s snowing and the sap-taps are frozen. Yes, FROZEN! Spring was lovely while it lasted and now it feels like winter is here to stay. Of course, it isn’t. The weather will blow over and we’ll be back to spring … eventually. Some years spring lolligags until May or even into Memorial Day weekend. It’s hard to know. And we got faked by an early spring this year. Still, it’s a mental health issue around here if you complain about spring.
But I have one easy thing I do hate about spring here. It’s mud season. Interior Alaska really only has two seasons – winter and summer, but there’s this glorious moment in September-October that could be called autumn – don’t blink, you’ll miss it. And then there’s this period that could last from a couple of days to a couple of weeks in April-May when everything is dead, but the ground is thawing. Alaska mud is silty – fine grains with not a lot of organic material and it clings to your shoes and tracks everywhere. Forget about door mats. You are going to bring it into the house. And it’s like wet dust, so it’s going to get tracked on the floors and then it’s going to become airborne in the home heating system and you’re going to have to dust the furniture. You’re going to be encountering silt every day for the next six months, even after the grass grows and you’re no longer tracking mud into the house and you’re going to have to dust because that’s the nature of this place. It’s why nobody here ever wears white clothes. Oh, sometimes you can manage tan clothes and pastels are okay in the summer, but if you notice a lot of our Easter women wear jewel tones to Easter Sunday service because light colors and mud season just do not mix. And, the carpets in my car are filled with little rock chips. Department of Transportation puts those down on the roads to help us with traction in the winter and we’re are very grateful, but they get caught in our shoes and get left in the car. If it ever stops snowing this spring, I’ll have to vacuum those rocks up.
Yeah, mud season. It’s glorious and, being sane, I’m not complaining, but yeah, there’s that whole cleaning thing that just begs to drag you down.
#openbook, #bloghop, #Alaska, #spring
aurorawatcherak 