For sometime I’ve had an odd day dream: to winter in Barrow, Alaska. There’s not much up there, not even mountains or forest. Although clearly beautiful, by Alaska standards, the North Slope is Kansas or Nebraska. No glaciers, no soaring peaks. Even the coast along the Arctic Ocean seems mundane. No craggy shoreline, no fiords cutting deep inland, no peninsulas jutting out into the sea. In short, It’s nothing like Juneau. More like the Texas gulf coast moved way north--a flat prairie ever so slowly sloping off into a flat sea.
So, why Barrow? Cold and darkness. The real stuff. If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. In fact, last year I thought seriously about applying for a teaching position there, worked real hard at convincing Marci and the boys to move, as teaching in Alaska is something we’d considered on and off over the years. But, as much as I wanted to go, when I prayed, I was prompted instead to return home to Dry Creek.
However, since Christmas anyway, I’ve pretty much received what I wanted minus the absence of daylight. Right now, as I write this, our pipes are frozen and we have no hot water. After consulting my sister, I placed a small electric heater out in the small closet on the east side of the house that contains the propane water heater. It didn’t seem like a good idea to me, but I guess if your pipes are frozen, you don’t worry about small things like gas explosions. You just do whatever it takes to get the water flowing. I put the heater out there last night, around 6:00 p.m., and it’s now almost 9:00 a.m., and there is still no sign of water. I’ll have to venture out in the balmy 2 degree Fahrenheit weather soon and find out why it didn’t work.
I say a balmy 2 degrees because all but a few mornings since Christmas have been sitting down anywhere from -9 to -5 at Dry Creek and as low as -17 out in the valley. Highs have rarely topped 20. We also have 18 inches of snow on the ground, 12 of it new, which I’ve been attempting to plow off the roadway since last Thursday with an ATV and plow.
And strangely, I love it. Last Thursday, I got off work at 10:00 p.m. and it took me two hours to drive the 35 miles through a blizzard of horizontal-flying snow, dunes forming across the Highway 50 before my very eyes. Then, once I made it through town, then on up Canyon Road, I was horrified to find the plow stopped at the edge of the city limits, more than a half-mile from our house. There was nothing to do, but gun it through 12 inches of fresh snow. Luckily, it was so cold that the snow was dry as dust and most of it went flying up over the hood and windshield of the car as plowed erratically through, its bumper picking it up and tossing it back. The problem was, the minute the grains of snow hit the windshield, they’d briefly melt and then freeze. Even with the defrost running full blast, an ice sheet quickly spread across, blanking out what little I could see through the driving snow.
I did make it though--at least to the entrance to Dry Creek. Right at the gate, the car slid to the side, said, “That’s it, I’m done; it’s all yours. Go on ahead; I’ll wait here.” And so I walked the rest of the way to the house, let Marci know I was home safe, hopped on the ATV and started to plow, knowing something had to be done in order for us to be ready to leave for work at 7:00 a.m. the next morning. Marci joined me with the shovel, and together, we worked until 1:00 a.m., and then came in for four hours of sleep, before starting all over again in the morning.
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