First Snow in Skagway (and other signs of winter's coming)

As the years have gone by, the signs associated with the transitional seasons have become more and more familiar and comforting to me. Both summer and winter can feel unbearably long halfway in (summer because it's too crowded, winter because it's too lonely), so the signs that things are about to change are almost always welcome.

One of my favorite things to watch as winter is coming is the new snow making its way down the mountains. Dick Proenneke referred to the mountains once as having new mantles around their shoulders as the scenes around him changed from summer to winter. In Skagway we're at sea level and surrounded by 5,000-6,000-foot mountains, some of which keep some of their snow all summer long. The fresh powder on top is a portent of winter's coming. As time goes by in Skagway I've never ceased feeling joyous anticipation as the snow level makes its way closer and closer to me.

So, the first snow in Skagway happens on the mountains long before it happens at sea level where we all live. I experienced my first snow of the year a few weeks ago. The highway out of town climbs from sea level to 3200 feet pretty quickly. I went for a drive a few weeks ago to get out of town.

I'm beginning to love getting off work at midnight. The things I see as a creature of night are so much more beautiful and poignant than the things I'd see if I were an average daytime person. The northern lights and wildlife I've seen since working nights make the awkward shift and lack of social life well worth it. Most people don't get to or have a desire to take a drive to Whitehorse (110 miles away, the nearest city) at midnight and camp on the side of the road for a few hours.

The last midnight drive I took, I saw snow. I got off work and actually thought I probably shouldn't drive since it would be snowy and icy on the pass. I went to the Station for a beer but really just wasn't feeling it. It was shortly after Stimee died, and I just really needed to get out of town. The atmosphere at the bar was pretty somber and all the conversation was about Stimee. That's been fine and therapeutic, but I was feeling the need to get away so I drove anyway.

I hit the road around 1 with Merlin. It was foggy from as far back as Liarsville (only mile 3 on the highway - the summit is about 18 miles up or something). The snow on the summit was absolutely gorgeous. It was dark, and it was foggy, so it's not like I could see any gorgeous scenery or anything. But the snow itself gave me that comforting feeling it always has. Winter is coming. Everything else may be completely awry at the moment but I can rest assured that the seasons will still change and snow will still fall.

I had a better snowstorm about a week and a half ago on a drive to Whitehorse. My brother Andy was in town and we took a drive up the highway on my day off. Snow was coming down for a good part of the drive, and it was even starting to stick and accumulate on the side of the road. Driving in the middle of a snowy cloud once again didn't lend us too much in the way of scenery, but the snow itself, once again, was gorgeous.

The snow that day kept falling even when we got to Whitehorse. It was magical the entire time.

Tonight I started seeing the statuses come up on facebook that Skagway was having its first snow. it seems early, since it's not even visible halfway down the mountains yet. I was surprised but went outside for a smoke break anyway. I smiled and let it hit me and let it soak into the pages I was writing on.

I think there's a few different things that factor into what exactly makes snow such a comforting phenomenon for me. Part of it has to do with what I already said - that no matter what else happens, whatever else changes, the sun will still rise, the seasons will still change, and snow will still fall.

Part of it has to do with the fact that snow means winter is coming, and I've always preferred winter in Skagway to the busy, crazy, extrovert-fest that is summer. There's a comfort to knowing that the peace and quiet are on their way and that relaxation and sleep can actually happen now after 5 months of crazy.

But i think the biggest part of what makes snow magical is just that - that it's magical. I grew up in Massachusetts and saw more nor'easters than I can remember. Snow was a big part of childhood - snow forts, snowmen, snowball fights, and everything else that goes along with snow as a kid. Every time it snows, especially every time it snows for the first time, it's like I get to be filled with that glory of childhood that we all lose a little more of every year. When it snows again, I get to be excited about something really simple again. I get to be awed at the elements once again. I get to start thinking about Christmas and hockey and days off and all the other exciting things that go along with snow and its season.

It's really comforting.

When I came back inside from smoking out in the snow (which isn't sticking to the ground just yet), my hot chocolate was sitting there waiting for me. When I get off work tonight I'll be going for a beer or two. The bars have morphed from summer mode to winter mode so I know that when i get to whichever drinking establishment we choose, the snow won't be the only thing that's comforting. The only people in the bar will be people I know, people with whom I share the bond of surviving winters in Skagway. The topic of the snow will likely come up over our beers and cigarettes, just like everyone talks about northern lights and bear sightings when they happen. It'll be nice because talking about snow will mean we're not talking about death anymore.

On my brother's last full day in Skagway, we wandered around International Falls with Merlin. As we climbed, Andy wanted to veer off the beaten path, which is one of my personal favorite hobbies. We veered northward and disturbed a family of ptarmigans. They took off, much to the chagrin of my dog. Ptarmigans are brown in summer and white in winter. I've seen them in summer a few times, and I've seen a newly dead one in its winter plumage. I'd never seen them in their transitional colors before, and they were beautiful. They were mostly white but somewhat speckled with black spots. They reminded me that, even though winter meant death to Persephone and means hibernation and migration for a lot of other animals, we're still not alone in the winter. Life still goes on around us, even in the bleak, bald-headed north.

The Gossip Mill

One of the most difficult things about living in Skagway, particularly in the winter, is the way gossip works here. It makes it difficult to maintain a personality that includes the trait of caring very little about what other people think, because in a lot of ways it's just like being back in high school again. Because sometimes what other people think of you has actual ramifications, even if what they think is grounded in false rumors and bald-faced lies.

I didn't really care about it at first, because I was still in that mode of not caring what other people think and not thinking that it mattered. My first winter it started actually making a difference. When I went through what I did with Allen, I went from someone who had a bunch of friends and a lot of acquaintances to someone who had approximately three friends in town and zero acquaintances. What's ironic is that, though people would refuse to meet my eyes, smile or wave like everyone does to each other here, they had no problem making up rumors and lies to spread about me and Allen. It was a shitty situation to begin with, and the realization that I had no support outside of three people made it even harder. It wasn't only that I didn't have support that made things difficult. It was that when I went into the grocery store, post office, bar, hardware store, bank, I could only stare at the ground as I walked through, because I didn't want to meet anyone's eyes.

I don't care what anyone says about keeping your chin up and not caring about what other people think. When an entire town has seemingly decided to erase you from existence, what they think absolutely matters.

That was, of course, the worst gossip that I'd dealt with until recently. But I can't even begin to list how many other times gossip has affected my life. I'm certain that it has stopped people from being friends with me, and I'm also unable to deny the rifts that it has caused in my relationships.

There was that time that someone told my boyfriend that my friends were at the bar talking shit about me. I had a breakdown. The friends in question had always been there for me when no one else had, and this information upset me to no end. I confronted the friends in question, separately, and they both shrugged and said "well, yeah. But it's not like I said anything I wouldn't say to your face." Someone else saw them saying bad things about me and perceived it differently than what it was, and for a few days it really upset me.

When my partner was out of town trying to get doctors to solve the medical mystery that was preventing him from being able to eat for a few months, the rumors then were rampant and shameless. While someone was in physical agony and scared because no one could tell him what was going on with his body, people had a field day coming up with reasons why he was out of town. He was on vacation; he was visiting family; there was even one that said he was hiding out in our house under our bed, in Skagway the entire time. Does that sound like the type of thing that someone in that type of situation needs to be worrying about? His work situation was made even worse than it already was by the fact that people decided to make up lies about why he was out of town. Even people that we thought were friends were saying these things, using quotation fingers to describe his "illness" as if it weren't real.

When I broke up with Allen and then started seeing Steve, lots of people apparently said I'd cheated on Allen with Steve, a rumor almost undoubtedly started by Allen. That wasn't true. After Steve and I broke up, a few months later I started seeing Stimee -- guess what -- people seemed to believe I'd cheated on Steve with Stimee (and i wonder who started that rumor?). Sure, who really cares what people think? I could be worse things than a serial cheater. But I didn't cheat on either of those people, and I don't like my integrity to be threatened or questioned that way. In a town where I was struggling to stay afloat, I didn't need potential year round employers to think I was a drama-hungry vixen.

Then there's always the little ones. There was the rumor that I was pregnant, shortly after the rumor that I had a second boyfriend. And, because it isn't always about me, there've been a lot more rumors about my friends that I've dispelled at least to the person who told me. One of my friends had a medical emergency that sent her out of town on a medevac a few years ago. Someone casually mentioned to her recently "that time you OD'ed and had to get flown out", to which she replied with the natural "HUH?!??!" They're all pointless, but they aren't all without consequences.

The latest one that's prompted all of my thoughts on gossip in Skagway probably isn't even worth mentioning. And you know, when it all comes down to it, the way it should work is that the people who are saying things that aren't true obviously don't know me very well or else they'd know these things weren't true. But unfortunately it isn't always the case.

I'm a little more secure now. I know that there are more people in the past month who are supportive of me than there are who are talking badly about me. And it's pointless for me to even pretend I don't participate in gossip, because obviously I do. But if there's one thing I've learned over my five and a half years in Skagway it's that some things just aren't worth re-telling. Not to mention the realization that everything anyone ever tells me about anyone else needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

I wish it didn't bother me when rumors about me make their way back to me. I also wish I didn't participate in conversations about gossip so I couldn't be a hypocrite. And while I like to think that the conversations I do participate in aren't harming anyone, the fact is that probably the people talking shit about me don't think it's harmful either. It's kind of a vicious cycle and it's hard to not be a part of it. I'm optimistic, though, because I care a lot less now than I used to.