Depending on where you live in Alaska, summer can be full of fishing or seal hunting or goose hunting or getting that moose for the winter. In all those scenarios, two things are a constant. One, summer in Alaska involves killing something. Two, who the hell knows what the weather may actually be like? And given the fun that global warming brings, you never know from one hour to the next whether it will be cold, hot, warm, rainy, cloudy, windy… and usually, on a good Alaska summer day, you get all three in the space of about four hours.
I can’t remember a year in which I did not pick raspberries in the rain here in Anchorage. I can’t remember a July 4 in Barrow where broadcasting the softball game wasn’t complicated by snow obscuring the white ball being hit and thrown. And, of course, there was that wonderful summer softball game that got held up for an hour while the stands emptied and everyone looked for the second baseperson’s contact.
This is why I love this place. None of the fun things of summer involve me wearing a bathing suit, sweating too much, baring my arms or legs or pretending I like heat. I get to wear my winter clothes with only one change – the sweatshirt becomes a t-shirt. How amazingly wonderful is that?
So if you are looking for a change from the broiling heat of the lower 48 (not caused by global warming as we have been assured by Republicans around the nation so I just misspoke earlier if I implied it was), come on up. We guarantee rain, clouds, cold winds and the biggest friggin’ fish you’ve ever encountered. Oh, and bring mosquito repellent. Our fish aren’t the only thing bigger than the ones in the lower 48. Our mosquitoes have their own NGO at the UN.