Twenty & Twenty-Four

Written By Karl Stevens

Something new here - a whole year in one blog entry from pictures and notes I’ve taken throughout the year. Concise. Novel. Not lazy, I swear. But I hardly have time to reflect and put together these entries in the way I’d like.

 

Spring.

There’s nothing as therapeutic as seeing meltwater. Rolling the car windows down and listening to it splash under the tread is better than Beethoven’s 9th. Summers are so short here that the valleys don’t waste much time leafing and greening out.

May 18th. Denali National Park.

June 30th. Wildfire smoke over Smith Lake.

 

Summer.

The heat is intense for only a couple days before the rain came. And more rain. Every season is unique from others of its kind, and no two seasons of a kind are alike. The summers are so short here that any day that isn’t perfect is grumbled about and emotional. A sense that summer is being wasted becomes pervasive. But a friend came and visited for a week, and on the day they arrived the skies cleared and I saw blue for the first time in weeks. Most of this year’s photographs are from his visit.

July 10th. Old pond next to Chatanika gold dredge.

July 3rd. Boreal owl outside the cabin.

July 11th. Tanana Flats.

 

Autumn.

Gone are the days of wearing sunglasses at 1am.  Autumn feels apocalyptic here.  The subtle onset of catastrophe, the same sinking feeling as finding coolant in your oil or a bedbug on your pillow.  The change season has put all the leaves away and committed summer to memory, and now we dredge the scent of leaves from the discarded wild and collect them into neat piles.  Another jet plane takes off at the airport and I know it's loaded with tourists.  In the foreground is a field of Canada geese awaiting takeoff, too.  And I look up at the remaining spruce in the naked forest  around the cabin.  They're a bit taller than last I saw them.  Are they swallowing me?  

September 7th. Creamers Field. 

 

Winter.

Chickadees are cuter in winter when they fluff up their feathers and their head and bodies look huge alongside their little wings.  They don’t fix my mood when there’s week after week of below-zero temps, though. Goddamn, this town is hard on the kidneys at times. But sometimes 5 shots of whiskey is the only thing that puts me back in touch with reality after a month of tuning out and working an office job.  Art school is in full swing and I realize the Alaskan winter corrupts my sense of color temperature.  Warm colors are widely considered yellow and orange, but these colors are the coldest here when the days are short and the sun peeks over the horizon, casting the valley in yellow light.  And green, the color most associated with summer, makes an appearance when it’s not.

September 14th at the cabin.

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San Antonio
San Antonio

The day I arrived it was 120F warmer than where I was coming from.  Now at the end of March, the ground soaks up so much sunlight that this place is like a thermal battery, absorbing energy during the day and radiating it out after dark.

Twenty & Twenty-Five
Twenty & Twenty-Five

Another year condensed into a single entry. The goal now is to break this habit. But art school isn’t even half over, and I’m only now in Beginning Painting and learning what acrylics can do. So, it’ll be a long term goal.

Twenty & Twenty-Four
Twenty & Twenty-Four

Something new here - a whole year in one blog entry from pictures and notes I’ve taken throughout the year. Concise. Novel. Not lazy, I swear. But I hardly have time to reflect and put together these entries in the way I’d like.

Karl Stevens
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Twenty & Twenty-Five
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The Emerald Isle