Dressed for the weather.

So, I asked my husband to find us a Christmas tree.

Sure, he says, I have been meaning to take down a few trees from behind the shop in any case.

(Sounds of chain saw)

A little later he shows up at the back door with a chunk of spruce about 7 foot tall.  We trim a few branches and set it up in a bucket weighted with river rocks.  Braving the sharp spruce needles (ow, ow) we get it decked out beautifully with lights and ornaments. 

-It’s kind of nice- I say -that the branches are so far apart. All of the airplane ornaments look like they are flying.

-Well- he says -I sort of cut the top part off a larger tree.

Christmas Alaska-style!

… We sled like it’s our job!

The last of the sunshine, after the first warm day in weeks, brought a mist up off the ice on the lake.

Got Snow?

Here is just one example of the sunrise colors that we get.  Unedited photo. 

They keep asking me back.

To hear the essay I read aloud for my local radio station, go to KHNS’ website: http://www.khns.org/localnews. Find the local news for 13 December and play it (using the arrow/speaker button).  My essay is the last four minutes but the whole thing is pretty short and you can hurry it along with your mouse.

Let me know if you can’t get it to work…

Or, read it  out loud for yourself HERE while wondering why I used words like “atrophied” and “applicable” in a text I planned to read aloud.  http://alaskarosaliewrites.tumblr.com/post/37964554307/alaskarosalie-out-loud-what-we-learn-the-text

My mother is visiting us.  Here is her busy schedule:

She skis for about three hours most mornings.  She plays with the girls the rest of the day.  She takes a lot of pictures and usually cooks something and cleans up a messy place in my house that I have stopped being able to see.  Dust bunnies fear her.  As they should.  She falls asleep at the dinner table, but revives enough to edit the day’s photographs until the wee hours. 

I only wish she would stay longer and that Dad were here, too.

After you have lived in the mountains there must be some part of you that always will miss them if you can’t look up to see them all around you.  No matter where you go.  No matter how long you are gone.

The two year old at a friend’s place, enjoying a day of sledding and hot chocolate. 

The color palette on the ground is the dark green of evergreen trees and white snow.  The sky, however, makes up for it with long drawn out sunsets full of tropical juice colors: lemon, guava, tangerine…

Eagle Tree

Winner Takes All

Majestic, no?  Sometimes I get a little tired of the soaring eagle pictures that make the rounds after Eagle Fest with their too-white photoshopped heads, all stern eyebrows and piercing gaze.  Eagles mostly eat rotten fish around here and would rather steal a meal than catch it.  Snow Turkeys, I call them, when they hop around the riverbanks. 

What a chore it is to have to take the dogs for a walk…