Sunday, April 1, 2012

A Hard Winter

I've been particularly whiny lately, self-pitying and dissatisfied. None of these are very admirable or noble traits, but in my defense, it has been a long, cold, snowy winter. Snowfall is at near-record levels (I guess I should apologize for the mean tweet regarding the plow guy at my apartment...), and the season started out with seven weeks of fifteen-degree-or-less temperatures. At one point, seeing that it was snowing AGAIN made me unreasonably angry, tooth-grindingly mad.
And this winter has been seemingly full of tragedies, large and small. A young female moose died in a friend's yard, apparently of starvation. The deep snow taxes the moose population. They starve or get hit by cars on the plowed roads. Another friend's dog of eighteen years had to be put to sleep. And, the deepest cut, Tom and Jean's son, Lucas, 25, dying in his sleep a month before he planned to move up here. A hard winter, indeed.
The days are getting longer and the snow is melting, finally. Sun storm activity made the Aurora spectacular this year. Alaskan summers are really something to look forward to. But that little niggling voice in the back of my mind just whispers, "What about next year?"