Changes

Birch is changing also.

Baneberry
Elderberry
Devil's club

August 7, 2006

Things are changing. I guess nature is always changing. But where I live in Texas, nature changes slowly. I wake up some morning in December and realize that it is not summer anymore, and that the only leaves left on the trees are the dirty brown ones on the blackjack that will hang their crackling in the wind until the buds push them off next March. Some how I missed fall. It came and went like my children grew up. Where was I? How did I miss the change?

In Alaska nature must change quickly. Even humans notice. If some living thing fails to change quickly it will go the way of the boat people (Princess customers).

Things are changing. We have night. I get up to go to the bathroom and run into the half closed door, invisible in the dark, just like Texas. On June 21, we had nineteen hours and twenty-two minutes of sunshine and the rest was twilight. Yesterday we had sixteen hours and thirty-five minutes of sunlight, over three hours less, and we will loose five minutes and twenty-four seconds of sunlight today and even more tomorrow. Darkness rushes down hill toward December 21 like a soap box derby racer.

Things are changing. Two weeks ago dwarf dogwood blooms were sprinkled across the forest floor like giant flakes of snow. Today each plant is crowned with seven red berries. Clusters of red berries cover elderberry bushes, and red berry spikes top devil’s club. But the brightest, most beautiful red is reserved for the deadly baneberry; maybe a warning to bears and other berry eaters. The blueberries, salmonberries, crowberries, currents, low bush and high bush cranberries, bearberries, serviceberries and strawberries are ripe and ready to be picked. And the raspberries, uummmm, are at the edge.

Things are changing. The fireweed is in full bloom. Grass florescence spreads, shimmers, floats above yellowing stems and drops seeds. The cow parsnip leaves yellow around brown splotches and a thousand toothed seed packets top the stems where a thousand tiny white flowers had recently perched.

Things are changing. The average temperature graph has peaked and is following the light.

Things are changing. Next Tuesday Elmo, Annie, and I will load the Highlander and take off across Canada for Maine.