summertime

 

Anytime I went from Fairbanks back to the Lower 48 to visit someone, they would ask me if it was cold at home. This happened no matter the time of year. Of course, we had snow and ice around for most of the year, but summers did actually occur. They were short, but intense. It was not hot during the time we lived there, although that is now changing as the climate crisis deepens. I don’t think it ever got to 80F the entire time we lived there, which was fine with me. 

It never got dark in summer, which was weird at first, but we quickly adapted. The sun did set in the wee hours sometime, but no darkness. The sky would become a light grey colour. Whenever anyone came to visit us, we had to spend at least one night outside at 3 a.m. so they could experience this. Of course, they missed seeing the aurora borealis because of the light. And when we first got to Fairbanks, our friend’s son was angry that there would be no fireworks on the 4th of July, but why bother, since no one would really see them?

pig races

Because of the constant daylight, people were able to have gardens, as long as they could have a fence that would keep out the moose. Giant cabbage contests were a thing at county fairs. In Fairbanks, the fair was in August. We learned that if we were going to get some elephant ears from one of the food stands, sharing was a good idea. And we enjoyed watching the pig races.

Summer solstice was the big day of celebration. There was a festival downtown and the Midnight Sun baseball game, which started at midnight and was played without any artificial lights.

Chatanika River

By August, I knew to start sniffing the air for that first bite of autumn. At the end of the month, the leaves had mostly changed colour. It was mostly birch and aspen in our area, which were bright yellow. We’d start waiting for the first frost because after that the time was right to pick low bush cranberries. There would be a day when the cloudless sky would be an expanse of bright blue—a background for the golden leaves. When we looked down, the vegetation close to the ground was bright red. Every time I see such a sky, I think of those moments I spent in the woods with my containers, picking berries, pausing to look up at the beauty above my head, and savouring the moments.

I’m not a fan of summer, but even I have to admit that summer in Fairbanks was pretty cool.