Alaska is sometimes said to have two seasons…pick your favorite vocabulary words of the following for those two; the green and the white time, the light and the dark, summer and winter.  Though we would disagree with this (who among you has seen Dryas flowers poking their heads though springtime snow or Denali’s vibrant, albeit brief, autumnal colors?), I can understand the sentiment.  Spring comes late and summer ends early.   Our leaves were gone by mid-September, and today a fluffy 4” of snow lies on the ground as the sun peeks its head off to the southwest at noon.  Four year old Danika Hamm, Simon and Jenna’s precocious daughter, commented last winter how she saw the sun rising in a particular direction from their house, so that “That way must be East!.” I believe it must have broke Jenna’s heart to have to explain to her brilliant child that here, at 63° N latitude, the sun actually rises in the south and sets in the south in mid-winter.

Although it’s not yet the heart of winter, today I went for a walk in the snow. I enjoyed seeing the Labrador tea covered in its white blanket, and already felt nostalgic for the first June day I laid down with my hiking group out at Camp Denali and North Face Lodge and smelt its fragrance; a mixture of lemon and bergamot, in my olfactory world. The blueberries which filled my morning smoothie were hand picked in July and August on the tundra benches around Camp Denali, making me already wistful of days where I could pick for hours into the late northern summer evenings, filled with so much light.  We’ve boarded up the lodges for the season, buttoning them up to protect against winters elements and any curious critters who may be about.  But as I sit here contemplating the snow, and if I should already start cleaning up my skis for winter, I do feel the pull of summer and Camp Denali, with its midnight sun, bounding caribou, boundless hiking, flowers, birds, and berries, tugging at my heart.