The nights have gotten colder lately, which is to be expected, I suppose — it is December, after all — but I’ve refrained from turning up the heat. For one, I like a little chill in the air, but for another, I love cold sheets. If there’s a minority among those with particular bedtime preferences, then I’m probably in it. There’s nothing quite so relaxing and wonderful as sliding between cool, smooth sheets. Fuck flannel, I say. When I lived in Alaska, come winter I would often throw back the blankets on my bed, then open the window that I slept beneath; after a few minutes the sheets would be absolutely perfect. (And I’d sleep with that window open all night long.) After a little while, the sheets warm to your body, and the feeling that you’ve worked for a little warmth is what makes it so rewarding.

Tonight Susan and I talked about our upcoming Christmas getaway. Like last year, we’re driving to Washington to spend a couple of days with my family, then driving back down to spend some time with hers. Despite her aunt’s warnings that young relationships are all-too-easily strained by a week in a car, we had a kickass time. Hell, we even accidentally found a place I hadn’t seen since I was a tiny little booger riding on my dad’s shoulders:

Our return trip took us through one of my favorite places in Oregon, a magnificent place called Grants Pass (I’m fairly certain the missing apostrophe is intentional). We got bogged down in traffic in the mountains — road work — and it began to snow. We’re hoping the weather repeats itself; Susan loves the way snow makes me light up, I think.

It seems like all my life I’ve been missing Alaska. I spent six years there as a boy, two more as a teenager, and two more as a foolish young husband — give or take a few extra or missing months, I lived there for eight or nine years. It’s the only place I’ve ever lived that felt unmistakably like home. I’m not sure I’ll ever live there again — it’s not everybody’s cup of tea, and even those who love it can tick off its disadvantages on the spot — but I’m not ruling it out.

When I was a child my parents played community volleyball for a summer or two. Games began at nine or ten p.m. — and ended when darkness fell several hours later. The league was named Midnight Sun, and there’s a strip of softball fields, tennis courts and other parks that was heavily populated with amateurs playing games well into the night. You gotta love a place where people keep playing until the sun goes down, even if sometimes it never seems to.

But I miss days like the day this would have been if I were there — a cold one that begins with a shovel and a pile of fresh snow locking the car into the driveway, that ends with a fire in a woodstove and more snow falling. There’s nothing like the light on a cold day there; the sunlight isn’t warm, exactly, but because it’s so limited during the winters, it’s so much more valuable, even though the light it gives off is pale and cool, not orange or yellow. I got my best writing done in light like that.

I only spent about a third of my life there, but the impression it left on me is the one that every other place I’ve ever been has failed to live up to. Not that I hold that against any of those places (well, except for Nevada, but since I never liked the place anyway, it never had a fighting chance). I miss watching the mountains for the first dust of snow, and then watching for the first one that stuck. I miss stacks of pancakes at the Long Rifle Lodge and hiking the middle of nowhere just a stone’s throw from civilization.

I miss the sometimes treacherous drive between Anchorage and Girdwood. I miss spotting belugas in the inlet, and the way finding a moose bedded down in the backyard was almost commonplace. I miss ice skating on Potter’s Marsh.

I miss the way every time you got behind the wheel to make a quick run to the grocery store for milk became an hour-long slippery adventure. I miss the worst radio stations known to man. I miss spending an hour digging my car out of the driveway, only to slide windshield-deep into a snowbank a block down the road. I miss sledding down the hills behind Service High, or in the driveway while waiting for the folks to take us to the hills behind Service.

I miss trudging around in snow deeper than I was tall, building the most terrible snowmen ever, watching Dall sheep and mountain goats scale roadside cliffs. I miss doing our own climbing atop the snow-buried restrooms on the Turnagain Pass.

Funny how just a little conversation about snow can make you impossibly homesick.

Wednesday, December 7, 2005   

1. Pierce wrote:
   December 7th, 2005 at 3:17 am

   Funny how reading someone elses description of somewhere can make you homesick for a place you’ve never been.

2. Jg wrote:
   December 7th, 2005 at 3:25 am

   Well, then, what are you waiting for?

3. Pierce wrote:
   December 7th, 2005 at 4:16 am

   I’ll add it to my list.

4. Jg wrote:
   December 7th, 2005 at 4:26 am

   All kidding aside, Alaska — any part of it — is a place everybody should see once. Everybody, but particularly Americans, if only to learn just how extraordinarily beautiful this country can be. Not that there aren’t exceptional places elsewhere in the U.S., but once you’ve seen Alaska, nobody has to tell you that there’s no comparing. You just sort of understand.

5. kin-knee wrote:
   December 7th, 2005 at 6:48 am

   Remember us building snow tunnels and forts in Grandmother’s front yard? Those days were the best!

6. liz wrote:
   December 7th, 2005 at 12:16 pm

   Remember when you taught me to ski and I cried and fell down a lot and wiped out so hard at the bottom of Hill Top that my skis flew off and I lost my poles?

   I’d do it again.

7. Jg wrote:
   December 7th, 2005 at 12:19 pm

   Maybe you can be there for encouragement when I finally get the chance to teach Susan how, too. She’s apprehensive as hell. “I’ll just stay in the cabin and drink hot chocolate by the fire, and you can go play on the slopes,” she likes to tell me.

8. G wrote:
   December 7th, 2005 at 2:04 pm

   Finally a post worth reading, very nice man. :) I’m pining to see it.

   …

   AND THE EASTERN SIERRAS KICK ASS!!! Represent’n for RENO baby! heh. That was a bit uncalled for.

9. Jg wrote:
   December 7th, 2005 at 2:05 pm

   Heh. Ass.

10. G wrote:
    December 7th, 2005 at 2:07 pm

    Yeah basically. Snowed here the other day. More tonight. I think Lisa likes cold sheets too. But me? I’m not sold on em. I’m gonna buy an electric blanket.

11. Angela Hunt/Groves wrote:
    July 23rd, 2007 at 12:32 pm

    Holy Crap Jason! Loved those pics! It’s been a VERY long time. Congrats on your up coming marriage. I know how you feel about Alaska! I miss it as well..there’s really no place like it! Shoot me an email some time.
    -Ang

12. T wrote:
    December 29th, 2009 at 11:00 pm

    Represent Mountain View, yo!

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    February 26th, 2010 at 1:22 am

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14. Photo gallery wrote:
    February 26th, 2010 at 1:23 am

    very very good…;)

15. Schroeder32Geneva wrote:
    April 28th, 2010 at 9:20 pm

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the blog and design portfolio of Jason Gurley. (Learn more.) This site has been around since 1998; me, since 1978. In 2005 I drove 3,000 miles to see a movie. 2009 is pretty aimless so far, but I'm sure I'll get around to something sooner or later.

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01. dreaming of falling
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05. huffnagle island
06. a hundred million
07. sixty-six stories
08. anyone earthbound
09. a girl named eleanor
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