one hundred [and eighty] degrees. difference.

Last week it was so cold that particulates (as local commercials refer to the disgusting throat-gagging dirt pieces from exhaust floating around our clean "last frontier" air) landed on every visible thing...street signs, light posts, fences, stoplights, tree trunks, car windshields and branches. The branches in return took on this droopy 'weight of the world' look that was neither sad nor happy but at least a bit beautiful and set against the sunset on a clear early afternoon could make one feel they were living in at the tippy-top of Earth. Like Antarctica. Or another planet certainly. Which was cool.

But that was the only cool thing about the weather of last week...and the two weeks preceding it...because at record numbers of consecutive days in the negative-thirties-to-fifties, every human being was edgy. And that's putting it lightly. Trapped inside our one-hall-wide-by-two-floor-high school building to start off 2009, for example, my students had to "walk a mile" around the school during recess every day and get the wiggles out....up the stairs down the hallway, down the other stairs and along the lower hallway to go, you guessed it, back up the stairs again. Ten lap loop.

It is needless to say the term 'cabin fever' took on new meaning.

Then, as if from above someone was watching our little lemming-esque misery with empathy and had finally decided to intervene, the cold cap on the sky that was keeping all those things frozen, leaving us like the inhabitants of a literal snow globe, just lifted off and let some freakin' warmth come in. And sunshine too.

Instead now its too warm to behold...three days so far at thirty-to-fifty above. We all take time to recognize that in degrees that's a hundred points difference. Or in other words, the weather did a 180° . The air is light and fresh with smells pleasant, natural, blooming. People clean out their cars, shovel the driveway, throw on some skis and a hat and glide down the trails. No need for snow pants, down coats, long underwear, sixteen layers, suiting up, warming up, or plugging in. It feels strangely like "break up and thaw" time (late March or early April) as cars slide across slick melted roads, and snow slurps off metal roofs forming icy mounds around our homes. Our confidence in living here may be slightly revitalized.

But I think we're all a bit confused biologically...our bodies can't help but think that we are out of the trenches. 'Spring is coming!' our minds and souls exclaim. But calendars show the glaring truth: it's only January. Almanacs point out the obvious: the heart of winter is just around the corner....February's often the worst. And we find ourselves dreading the next move in the game to which we are pawns.

What I realized today about the limits the Alaska-winter darkness and cold can impose is that these really have to do with space. The cold cap which will inevitably return to finish its yearly stint keeps our minds, souls and psyches contained. What is out there, we do not know. We forget the smells, the images, the colors, the infinite distance that surrounds us, for we cannot often even see our hand in front of our face. And if we can, its wearing a glove. And we saw it with our headlamp on. Our toes hide in socks day in and day out (even while sleeping), our bellies, our elbows, our knees, our cheeks both north and south lose the remembrance of sun's rays and air's heat. Our skin's screams are muffled by fabrics in abundant layers. Its rather claustrophobic.

When all the days of frigid and dark let up, I'm reminded the ultimate reward of living here is being able to climb a mountain, find a dome, or scale a boulder to look out at the earth from a new view...to place oneself atop something and spin around one hundred and eighty degrees to see the expanse of space before you. And remember what all the other stuff is for.