layla | Morning comes softly ... and early

Have got to get curtains for the bedroom. There's a big window that faces south, which wasn't a problem during the winter, but now it's starting to get light by four and it's full light by 5 a.m. ... and it's waking me up. This morning I woke up at about 4 a.m. and laid in bed for an hour or so before giving up and getting up to ink RC pages. At least it's a weekend, so when the inevitable crash happens in the afternoon, I can just lay down and sleep for a couple hours.

I should have gone out to watch the sunrise this morning, since from now 'till fall the only times I'm likely to see sunrise are nights like this when I have a bad case of insomnia. The weather page says ... sunrise at 5:45 today, sunset at 9:55. The longer days are accompanied by correspondingly longer twilight periods. (The sun rises and sets very slowly at high latitudes compared to farther south. Sunrise/sunset last a long time before and after the actual event itself.)

In June in Fairbanks, the sun will dip briefly below the horizon after midnight for an hour or two. It won't get dark. Odd what a difference a few hundred miles makes .... Where I grew up, near Anchorage, even in the middle of June we still got a few hours of twilight at night.

There is something very high-energy about summers in Alaska. You go outside at 10 p.m. in the summer, and everyone else is outside too, walking their dogs or jogging or window shopping. A lot of businesses have extended summer hours because a lot of people shop at night. The Midnight Sun Run marathon takes place each year on, or near, the summer solstice at midnight.

Of course, there's a downside as well. Stargazing in Alaska is synonymous with "freezing your ass off". You can't see the stars in the summer. And 4th of July fireworks are nothing to write home about ... you can tell where the fireworks are by the noise they make, but that's about it. ;)

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*snort* One of my favorite bits in the book "Drop City" (very good book, recommend it highly) is when the busload of hippies arrives in Fairbanks and they've heard what Alaska is supposed to look like -- mountains, waterfalls, eagles, etc. And Fairbanks looks NOTHING LIKE THAT. They look around and see gravel roads, swamps and rednecks instead.

There was also a hilarious commercial on the radio a few years ago, in the general style of the Budweiser "Real Men of Genius" ads -- only it was paying homage to the Alaskan black spruce (they called it "swamp spruce" in the ads, which is even more accurate). It's the ugliest tree ever -- it's tiny, gnarly and a whole forest of them looks like something that would be growing on a nuclear waste dump. The radio ad laments the plight of the lowly swamp spruce: "But still they persevere, knowing they will never be featured in tourist brochures because the entire state is ashamed of them." You can listen to the ad on this page of GCI's website (http://www.gci.com/about/video/gci_ads.htm) (scroll down to Radio Ads and click on "Swamp Spruce"). (Actually a lot of GCI's commercials are pretty funny. The "Hummingbird" one cracks me up -- I think it's the beaks sticking out of the quiche.)

But the Northern Lights are as fantastic as you've ever heard, and then some -- one of the most breathtaking things I've ever seen. On the relatively infrequent nights when they actually APPEAR, that is. Oops, I'm doing it again... ^_^

By the way, when I wrote that my bedroom window faces south, I actually meant "east". See, that's what 4 hours of sleep will do for you. Though the sun does rise in the south in the winter...

Google Image Search supplies this picture (http://www.whisperwood.net/pixnpgs/wc/wc19.jpg) of a fairly typical black spruce, er, "forest".

Yargh! Isn't that what a tree looks like when you start painting it, but then eventually fluff it out?

There is something about black spruce that makes me think of an umbrella that's been in a windstorm -- you know, all inverted and with broken spokes sticking every which way. To make them even more of a laughingstock among trees, they're frequently only 5 or 10 feet tall.

You know, I'm betting that John O' Hurley's never even set foot in Alaska... you know he's just doing those from cushy Glendale, CA or something...

Cable Ninjas are cool...........

I love the ninja ads -- those are great. The one that starts off with the guy in the blizzard is especially funny to Alaskans because at least half of our locally produced ads start out with somebody in a blizzard -- blowing snow, wind f/x in the background, all that jazz -- and then it turns out to be a crappy ad for, oh, snow tires or some local motel or something. This is basically a parody of those type of ads.

And I'm sure you're right about John O'Hurley.

Of course, there's a downside as well. Stargazing in Alaska is synonymous with "freezing your ass off". You can't see the stars in the summer. And 4th of July fireworks are nothing to write home about ... you can tell where the fireworks are by the noise they make, but that's about it. ;)

I know exactly what you mean, and you have just summarized in one short paragraph pretty much all of the major (minor?) complaints I had with Alaska while I was living there. Well, that and mosquitos. Living as I did in or near Anchorage, at least we had some of that fabled scenic splendor within easy viewing distance (the Chugach Mountains are absurdly picturesque from Anchorage) and minimal bugs, praise the Lord. The downside of living "so far south" was that we didn't see many episodes of northern lights. Ohhh, but the ones we saw were worth it!

-Sarah D in CA

Morning comes softly ... and early

I wouldn't go applying for that Alaska Tourism Writer position.

Re: I wouldn't go applying for that Alaska Tourism Writer position.

Re: I wouldn't go applying for that Alaska Tourism Writer position.

Even the squirrels avoid climbing these ugly things.

Re: Even the squirrels avoid climbing these ugly things.

Don't come 'round here, J. Peterman!

Re: Don't come 'round here, J. Peterman!

No kidding!