Dear Relatives,
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By mid-February, many Alaskans begin pining for summer like a long, lost lover. We cope by popping vitamin D, standing in front of full-spectrum lights made for seasonal affective disorder, sleeping 10 hours a day, and generally losing our minds to cabin fever. And the only cure for that fever is a beautiful Alaska summer.
During summer, Alaskans stop daydreaming about sandy beaches, and they start enjoying their own backyards. For a few precious days out of a few precious months, Alaska thermometers might actually reach 75 degrees! In the case of such an event, Alaskans are well prepared with an excuse to ditch work, car-top carriers at the ready, locked and loaded for the outdoors.
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Then why, relatives from the Lower 48, do you send us Christmas cards, announcing June weddings? Why do you ask us to see your new baby in July, also known as peak salmon fishing season! Haven’t you heard of family planning?
If you’re having a family reunion, have it in February. It’s not about weathering the outdoors; it’s about weathering the gene pool. Everything will likely be iced over anyway.
Do you feel that autumn colors will be a perfect backdrop for your son’s bar mitzvah? Quite to the contrary, red is the color of anger and orange is just tacky. Is that really how you want your thirteen-year-old to enter adolescence? Angry and awkward? Besides, it’s moose hunting season! Do you want your poor, distant relatives in Alaska to starve to death?
Why do you force me to choose? Ugly bridesmaid dress, or barn-door halibut? Drunken second cousin or bear viewing? Hunting for cufflinks in Walmart, or hunting for Dall sheep from cliff walls? It doesn’t matter what time of year; the bridesmaid dress will still be ugly, the second cousin still drunk, and the cufflinks stocked at rollback prices. But the window of time to enjoy summer in Alaska is so fleeting.
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I’m not suggesting that you shouldn’t have big celebrations for the milestones in your life; merely requesting that you hold them on Maui, in February, preferably during a four-day weekend. If I’m going to drop $700 on a plane ticket, can I at least get a mid-winter tan?
Much love,
Your Disgruntled, Distant Relative from Alaska
Serine Halverson is associate editor at Alaska magazine.