Jo-Ann Mapson

Late fall. My first day out of the house in a week. The souvenir I brought back from my first trip out of Alaska to California is a chest cold. In addition to all the usual disgusting symptoms, I've also lost my voice. To someone like me, enforced silence is nearly unendurable. I start my day singing to my four dogs (even the deaf one), reading out loud, generally warming up like an opera singer before I being my writing day. However, after a quick surf on the net regarding chronic laryngitis, I'm attempting to keep my mouth shut to heal my vocal cords. When I'm unable to restrain myself, I squeak like a dolphin.

Before I left the Matanuska Valley for my trip to California, the fall leaves had amassed in golden piles on the lawn. They cried out for collecting between pieces of waxed paper, to make the faux stained glass of my childhood. Or for jumping into, or maybe even a bonfire, some kind of rite to celebrate my first real autumn in Alaska. Driving down the lane that leads to my house, there were golden blurs on all sides of me, shot through with sunlight, like Rumplestiltskin at work in the woods. Every now and then, just when it seemed my eyes might tire of it, an occasional sprig of red berries would vary the color palate. Chilly breezes bent the tree branches. I smelled the first aromatic wisp of wood smoke. A delicious feeling of slowing down, preparing for winter overcame me.

Instead, I had to pack a suitcase.

In California, it was 80 degrees and humid. The traffic was typically insane. Everything moves so fast there, and I was used to Alaska Time, manana at best. First thing I had to go out and buy flip-flops at Target. Spying a leather jacket there for $80 I had to buy that, too, even though I couldn't wear it until the flight home. I borrowed T-shirts from my friend mystery writer Earlene Fowler. I had great fun seeing old friends, letting my mother make me dinner, as well as eating too many lunches out, though one can never eat enough at Chester Drawers' Omelet Parlor in Costa Mesa, where the ambience is timeless in a hip diner sort of way. After I gained a few pounds, I began to feel homesick for all things Alaskan: Fred Meyer, the box store where I can (if I so choose) buy groceries, a hunting knife, ammo, silk panties, even a diamond ring if I'm feeling romantic. Up here, people say, "If Fred doesn't have it, do you really need it?" I also missed my seven students in PRPE 086, who gently tease me about being the Cheechako teacher while I strive to teach them the rudiments of writing. And I longed for my view of the Pioneer Peak, which changes daily and forces me to burn up Kodak film like there's an endless supply. Instead of city noise, I wanted the utter silence of days that pass without fanfare except in nature, which for the first time in my life feels as large as it truly is, a force not only to be respected, but also to be genuinely awed by, as if to observe is to participate in an ancient pagan rite.

I'm gone twelve days and winter's touched everything. Three inches of snow covered the ground the day I got home. A Chinook blew it away, but between bare trees, patches lurk, a reminder. Every morning the deck's covered with a sparkling veneer of hoar frost. The temperature gauge I bought at Fred's, featuring an arcing trout reaching for a pink tied fly, is razed over with ice. The red arm points to around 22 degrees, and may go up to 34. I layer myself in leopard print silk long underwear I got on sale at TJ Maxx, throw on a shirt and zip up my Polar Tec vest, but it always seems that at least one body part stings with cold.

Friends call or e-mail, chiding me about the winter, waiting for me to cave in and admit that moving to Alaska was a mistake of the highest order. After all, I'm a third generation native Southern Californian. Snow is as alien to me as Bermuda shorts in December would be in Alaska. How do I explain to outsiders the feeling like I belong here, or of welcoming the sharp intake of breath on mornings when I rise in the dark to go teach my class at Matanuska-Susitna College? I've witnessed sunrises in other parts of America, usually bleary-eyed at some airport where I'm trying to catch a plane so I can make a book signing, but here when the sun rises (around 9 a.m.), it's this shocking, indescribable pink, something like alpenglow. It demands my full attention.

This afternoon I hiked around Kepler Lake, where a few hardy fishermen stood jacketed up at the frosty edges, dangling their lines. I let the dog off her leash. She bounded through the trees straight for the water's edge, and drank long and deep. Three trumpeter swans-looked like a family-protested with hoarse calls as they flitted across the water toward a safer harbor. They sounded so much like my own froggy voice that I debated calling out to them to ask how they felt about the coming winter, whether they will stay here and tough it out or if there are major travel plans in the offing. From what I've seen thus far, the birds of Alaska are big and comical. Besides the stunning bald eagle, there's also the raucous raven, the elusive magpie, the ptarmigan that takes its own sweet time crossing the road, as if he owns it and I'm privileged to pass. In July, it was loons overhead, their ululating, shrieking calls impossible to ignore. In September, an entire field of migrating Sand hill Cranes. Here and there, Canadian geese feed in the fields that are now fallow. The only petite birds I ever seem to see are chickadees, bullying each other from the suet I've put in the feeder. They go through 2 packs in a week.

Tonight I stood on the deck watching alien green Northern Lights flicker across the star-studded sky in my own personal light show. It wasn't even 8 p.m. I stood there like the Cheechacko I am, rendered mute, not just by laryngitis, but also by all of this Alaskan wonder.

More later,
Jo-Ann

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