Moonlight? Spotlight? Or what?

A little clarification.

That's a snow fence in the foreground, the shadowed riverbank just beyond, and the frozen river is that white space between the two. Beyond that, it's all tundra, flat tundra, without trees or any other sort of obstruction, which makes that sliver of laser-bright luminescence all the more noticeable...and strange.

In all the years that I've lived in the Arctic, I've never seen anything like this. There have been plenty of clear nights in which the moon illuminated the entire snow-covered expanse creating an ocean-like reflection as far as the eye could see.

This night was different.

It's as if a spotlight was trained on one, specific, amazingly limited area.

Very pretty. But kind of eerie.



Sort of Twilight Zone-ish...without the pesky aliens.

At least, as far as I know.

Snowbow or Icebow?

Not a rainbow, not a sun-dog, this bow was the handiwork of Mr. Sun...painting ribbons with ice crystals across our northern October sky.



Of course, Old Man Winter had a hand in it too.



The colors were much more vivid than these photos reveal.



Snowbow or icebow?
Either way, it was pretty cool!

Good Intentions

Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we plant…and then we leave.

My intentions were good.

1. Plant seeds.

2. Harvest vegetables.

3. Stock freezer.

4. Cook like someone living on the road system. (Cha-ching!)

Sadly, somewhere between planting and cooking things went terribly wrong.

I planted too late, didn’t have any stakes, and was forced to leave for vacation with the disappointing knowledge that I’d likely return to find my mini-garden full of sticks and dried up leaves.

What a surprise to find an overgrown jungle crowding the pane of my classroom window, thick ropey stems straining toward sunlight, leaves pressing for position against the glass.

Not only had the plants survived, they had thrived!

It seems I’d underestimated the botanical will to live.

Of course, no one was there to pollinate the blossoms, so the profusion of foliage was just that—a matted mess—lots of green, but nothing to glean.

Heavy sigh.

Sometimes I feel like a walking idiom. I bite off more than I can chew while simultaneously lighting both ends of my candle with all those sizzling hot irons that I keep in the fire.

And I plant seeds that I don't have time to care for.

It’s hard not to see the parallel in other areas of my life and such were my heavy thoughts as I snipped stems and tossed the tangle into the trash.

Imagine my astonishment upon finding these...

My heart did a little happy dance. :)

So maybe there’s hope for a walking idiom after all?