By now, you may know I live in Alaska. A product of living in an extreme environment is that you often notice your environment more than where the living is easy.
Because I will have just gotten back from vaction yesterday, I wrote this article in early- to mid-March, when spring was still a promise yet unfulfilled.
Ice Nap
When it’s winter in Interior Alaska, it’s likely to be below freezing for several months. Sometimes it will be below -40’F. Other times it might “warm up” to above O’F. But the trees and plants are all taking an ice nap until late-March, early-April. You can literally taste the CO2 building up in the atmosphere. It’s a tangy metallic taste. Runners feel the imbalance in their lungs as they train. CO2 and nitrogen became the dominate atmospheric gasses because all the plants that would normally consume CO2 and convert it into oxygen are dozing. I really notice this when I go from my house, which has a fair number of house plants, out into the yard where everything is frozen. There’s metallic taste to the air and if you have to do anything more physical than get the mail or start the car, your muscles let you know they require more oxygen.
But the sun reaches equinox on March 21 and soon after, winter ends. It just collapses. The polar vortex is no more. In the space of six weeks, we melt 5-10 feet of snow (depends on the year) and grass starts putting out green tendrils. Then, in early May, the trees put out tiny little buds and — BAM — it’s spring.
Alaskans call it Green Up. Fairbanksans notice it when Chena Ridge to the west of the town takes on a emerald hue — overnight.
Spring
And just that quickly, the metallic taste is gone as buds open to full-leaf and our lawns demand to be mowed.
Visitors always remark on how quick spring is here. It’s sometimes less than a week. In fact, I went on a trip once on April 1 and it was still winter. When I got back on April 8, the snow was gone and the pussy willows were out. Two weeks later, my mother informed me the lawn needed mowing.
That quick!
So why does Alaska have such a fast spring?
Some local scientists in the old days before “climate change” became a reason to get a grant, posited the theory that we green-up so fast because there is excess CO2 in our atmosphere in the spring and the awakening plants suck it up rapidly, allowing an incredibly quick transition. And you can actually do tests showing how high the CO2 and nitrogen levels are in March compared to what they are in May. Something changes dramatically in those few weeks.
Which suggests to me that plant life really appreciates high CO2 levels and doesn’t consider it to be a pollutant. At some point we have to acknowledge the world around us and quit panicking over bugaboos of our own making.
Lela Markham is an Alaska-based novelist and commentator who has been observing the extremes of nature for a while now and thinks we sometimes don’t understand what’s right in front of our eyes.