Not Quite Like Summer Everywhere Else in the US

2 June 2012
8:37 PM

Sunset at 12:10 AM in direction 337° North-northwest
Sunrise at 3:28 AM in direction 23° North-northeast

Civil Twilight all day

Tourist season is fully underway.  Some are coming on Princess and Royal Dutch cruises.  They are carefully shepherded from event to another.  Then there are those tour that take them to the Bridgewater Hotel on the river, a hotel that is only open during the summer season.  From there they make their way about town, often to the spectacular and most wonderful Museum of the North on the UAF campus and often by bus, which I find fascinating.

Flags of 50 states flying in the Flag Circle quad at UAF

Once they have toured the museum, they catch the campus shuttle back to the North Star Borough bus shelter near the Wood Center and patiently wait for the Red or Blue Line to take them back down town.  How provincial we must seem as they travel past yards filled with trash, rotting mobile homes, and randomly placed strip malls on their way to a city centre that hardly is the focal point of our lives.

Not the focal point, but it is the center of many celebrations - the Midnight sun summer solstice festival, the start or stop of the Yukon Quest, the sprint sled dog races Open North American Championships, the river festivals.  But still, once you arrive there, no matter how lovely the park and that section of the river is with its walks and flowers, it can only be considered provincial in comparison to just about anywhere else where there is public transportation to ferry folks around.

I often think to myself, as I look at the greening countryside that there is nothing remarkably different about Fairbanks from other places in the US during the summer.  There is no snow, no dark, no aurora, no subzero frigid days with the sun barely cascading over the tops of the Alaska Range - none the aspects of living that so many Outsiders think of when they think of Alaska.  In other words, there are none of the aspects that make surviving here the focus it is for those of who live here year round.

One of many planters prepared for planting
June 6, Wednesday

So, in that frame of mind, I can almost convince myself it is no different than Maine or Wisconsin or the Michigan Peninsula.  Although the moose wandering through the borough streets could be considered different.  And the existence of the Musher's Hall is not typical of most cities our size.  Riverboats paddling up and down the Chena River are not what one would expect in Minnesota, despite it being the location of the headwaters of the Mississippi River.  The flat bottomed boats designed to travel across land or water in the marshlands is typical of our region, but not so typical of other places and the fact that small planes have the right of way on any road and in fact are known to land in the Chena so the pilot can taxi up to Pike's Landing for a bit of food is a bit unusual.  I suppose even the fact that plants can grow several inches in one day is an eye catching difference.

But, what I mean is, for these few months, we are not bundled up to the point where we are not recognizable as anything other than a bulking mass of clothes designed to keep us warm.  We are not focused on preventing warm air from the house meeting 40F below temperatures in inconvenient locations, like around the corners of our windows where once it warms to 20F, water begins to drip into the ledges, window sills, and walls.  We are not carefully hoarding our wood and loading it into the garage on balmy 20F days so we can avoid the task the following week when severe cold is predicted.

Russian Pea Shrub shrub limb cascading down

Close of Russian Pea Shrub blooms

In other words, our days are much like summer everywhere.  We relax, we enjoy the warmth, the sun and for a short, very short time, do not think of winter.