Written in May 2025

**The season is shifting again, and memories of Alaska are flooding in.** 
Here in Michigan, everything feels muted—I miss the urgency and drama of real change, the wild call of the land I once called home.

Alaska pulsed with life: spring would explode overnight, summer was a brief, dazzling celebration crammed with activity, and then the shift—rains drenching the streets, vegetables swelling, and neighbors offering zucchini to grind and freeze. There, the calendar had a *texture*—the state fair’s giant pumpkins, the autumn leaves swirling gold and orange, the salmon running, the moose on the move. Even the wind was purposeful, sweeping the last leaves from the trees.

The markets here are a strange puzzle. Tomatoes in May, flowers that don’t speak the same language. Nothing seems to grow in rhythm with the land. In Alaska, I knew the taste and season of everything I ate. There, every person watched for the cues—the coming cold, preparations for winter, the hushed cooperation of survival.

Winter was my real teacher. When the sun barely rose and the world froze solid, life slowed and clarity arrived. The roads and breath, both sharp and cold. The crunch of snow beneath my boots. Blue skies so deep they seemed endless. The woodsmoke lingering on the coldest days, moose meandering through the streets, neighbors keeping silent watch. Not out of friendliness, but necessity—because winter didn’t care who you were, only that you paid attention. If I made it through the deep dark, I knew I’d be alright; enduring winter meant I’d earned another year.

My winters changed shape as my life shifted. With kids, it was hockey—tournaments, chaos, laughter at the rink. Alone, the winter was harsh, and then an unlikely friend. I learned to fix my furnace, patch the generator, keep out the wind. I became my own anchor, knitting my self-worth from each challenge met with grit.

Now, in this unfamiliar land, I long for those cycles—clear beginnings and endings, a community bound by necessity, rituals that made the passage of time real. What I miss isn’t just the scenery, but *the sense of belonging earned through resilience*, the meaning that comes when nature sets the pace and demands everything.

I’m searching for ways to create small rituals again, to find rhythm in a place that seems to lack it. Maybe I can lean into moments of change, mark each subtle shift, celebrate little victories as if they were milestones in the wild.

**I am carrying Alaska with me, even here—its harshness, beauty, and strength have become my own.** 
Nothing can take away what I learned about surviving winter, or about myself. 
This longing is a marker of what mattered most: connection, resilience, and the wild, relentless hope that spring is always on the other side of the dark.

*Reflecting on it all, I see now that even as I grieve for what’s lost, my strength endures—the changing seasons taught me I will always find my way back to hope.*