The deep freeze is here in Fairbanks, for the extended winter season. Consistently and clearly, we've been at 20 to 30 degrees below zero for the last two weeks, and concepts like movement, and clarity, and strangeness, have been squarely in our minds and breaths.

It's not really desolate here, at least not with the same connotations I think the term normally carries. The cold and ice and snow cover are almost exclusively gorgeous, and display colors and feelings that are varied and vivid. It's blue, as in the picture above, taken at about three in the afternoon, and pink and silver, and deep, dark green and charcoal. Relief, in its senses similar to both solace and contour, is a prominent idea.

Awareness of temperature and climate is also very clearly discriminated for me. My memories of temperatures this low, from the upper plains and Sandhills of Nebraska and South Dakota, include stinging winds and blowing snow, and temporary, limited confinement to vehicles rushing to warm and secure but anxious living rooms and fireplaces. Here though, the cold and dark are sustained, and still. Walking out, with others, into a late morning or afternoon of permanently frigid air, toward normal destinations and tasks, is tough to describe, but it is, ultimately, a confident and reassuring act. It's unique and stark and severe, but this weather lends the community a resolve that's weirdly comforting. And it doesn't feel all that mean.