Pictured above is something called 'Starvation Gulch,' an annual event at UAF featuring five or six house-sized structures built of transport pallets collected from businesses around the Fairbanks area. Like Halloween, it seems to be an event placed strategically on the calendar to mark the day(s) we all unpack boxes of gloves and hats and scarves, in addition to commemorating... not much else. No charities, no causes, no explicit historical context.

Big fires though. Like, 40-50 feet high, and not just one. In fact, the closest I could get to any sort of legitimacy for the University's seeming participation and promotion of the event was the inconspicuous and necessary constant presence of the school's fire department and Student Firefighter Program, a noted development and training unit designed to aid the surrounding community when dealing with extreme and unstable climate conditions.

So: it was a big deal, an event students were discussing and anticipating a week or two in advance. And, to be honest, it lived up to the hype, in a really primal, spectacular kind of way. It was, y'know, charming in how simple it was. 'Here, look - a bunch of really, really big, really hot fires.' Not completely unlike July 4th, though more unapologetic, if that's possible.

We're still here, I assure you. We haven't been eaten by bears, or wolves, or Joe Miller. Quite a strange and transitional time recently, it seems like for everyone here.

The run-up to Halloween kind of makes people anxious, I gather. Seems like folks approach it as the last real 'moment' before things get really hairy and life changes for the frigid and everyone heads inside.

But there's snow here already, and it's nighttime until ten in the morning (which is nice, since it lets me feel pretty ambitious no matter what time I get things rolling in the a.m.). So, again, we're building some kind of artificial boundary between the sun and the ice, when we all know it's a pretty explicitly gradual move.