The Last First snow

In past years the snow brought optimistic thoughts of adventure at the East Pole. This year, eh, not so much.

     

A rare visitor, a pine marten.

This year looking out the window as I think about it, I guess my feeling is sad more than anything. For the past seven years snow meant beginning that obligatory Alaska exercise: getting ready. Lists of supplies to be purchased, equipment to be tested, food to be obtained separated into what could freeze and what shouldn’t. By this time I would already have had the shop look over my snowmachine for the coming season. And then there was the trip to the bookstore with a couple of hundred dollars in my pocket to purchase the winter’s supply of reading material.

But time and circumstance have caught up with me and this is the first year since 2014 I am not going to the cabin for the whole winter and the first year since 1986 I have no plan to go out at all. Last year I expected to go but then life got in the way and changed in a major way. I had already gathered some of what I would have needed and then didn’t go.

This year there isn’t even any planning or preparing, I am not going out for the winter. I might be

First snow 2022

able to make a trip in March. And in a few days I am going to have one of those terrifying birthdays with a “O” in it.

So, as I look out the window today at the first snow, I don’t feel energized, I guess what I feel mostly is sadness especially as I look over the winter gear in my storage room gathering dust perhaps never to be employed again: clothing, boots, snowshoes, chain saws, yes, firearms, trail survival pack, the SPOT locater, emergency tool kit for the snowmachine and more and more and more,

Snow is falling and I perceive it this year as a problem, not an opportunity and freedom. I will miss the solitude, the animals and birds, North America’s tallest mountain in the picture window, the life. I am thankful for the blog posts I made over the years so at least I can reminisce and perhaps relive some of those moments,

East Pole Journal