What’s your preference? Spruce or birch? When it comes to heating our homes and cabins this winter, this question is one of many about the methods we use. Many people heat their homes with oil, as natural gas is not available north of the Matanuska Valley in Alaska. To supplement that, both financially and environmentally, most of us utilize the local abundance of trees we have right here.

The process of rendering a standing tree to logs burning in our wood stoves takes several steps, as well as a substantial amount of time. Dead trees are ideal, as you don’t have to ‘cure’ them in your yard for a few years prior to burning. The tree has to be sawed down, the branches taken off, and the trunk chopped into sections (aka ‘bucked up’). Then you haul those sections home, and split the logs. Colder days are ideal, as the grains of the wood split more easily then. A sharp big ax and maul are very useful here, as well as having a healthy chunk of confidence. I never seem to split my logs perfectly on the first swing, and end up grabbing the maul a lot. I get particularly befuddled by knots in the wood, which are basically scars from when old branches fell off. One of these days I’ll be a regular Paul Bunyan, I swear.

My naturalist’s sense of wonder is still active while splitting the logs. Inside, I find several grubs, which have bored extensive networks through the logs. How is it that I can hardly get a heavy ax through the logs, with all the help of physics and a young back on my side, while a grub the size of my fingernail can? Seeing these little guys doesn’t exactly make me jump for joy, however. They are reminiscent of the recent explosion of spruce bark beetles in south central Alaska, which has left vast swaths of boreal forest dead or dying. The incidences of wildfires have escalated due to the abundance of dry timber. Similar problems are occurring in the lodge pole pine forests of states such as Montana. Although the direct reason for their explosion is speculative, it probably correlates with global climate change and warming winter temperatures.

But for now I’ll do my part to reduce carbon emissions, and keep my cabin cool. 50 degrees is the baseline temperature while I’m out for the day, but I throw some wood in the fireplace while I’m home and heat it up to a comfy 70 or so. Norwegians have a word for a quaint, rustic but cozy atmosphere like the one generated by a wood stove. The word is “koselig,” and though it has no direct English translation, embodies the essence of a warm winter retreat. We hope you are all having a koselig winter, as we think about the summer to come and the seasons which lie ahead of us.

This morning I scraped frost off the windshield of our vehicle. Last night I stoked up the woodstove. Today I looked up at the peaks around our winter office and noted how low the snowline was creeping towards us. 3000 feet now, perhaps? 

Locals call the first snows at the tops of the mountains “termination dust”; harbingers of the end of summer. We had been anticipating the arrival of winter for over a month now in Denali. Hard frosts killed many of our flowers at Camp Denali and North Face Lodge in mid August. How is it that flowers are still blooming in Anchorage? Here in the interior portion of the state, our climates are extreme. Like Siberia or Colorado, we are great distances from the ocean, which absorbs heat during the summer and releases it during the winter, making greater temperature swings for us non-coasties. 

Clever ‘ol Jack Frost seems to be sneaking towards us.

The last signs of autumn are disappearing…leaves are falling off our deciduous trees (willows, alders, aspens, and poplars) and all the birds we’re seeing are winter residents lately. Trumpeter swans flying above our office about a week ago seemed to be a final salutation to our migratory avifauna friends.

Today, September 21^st, is the fall equinox. The date is special to us in many regards. Today we experience exactly 12 hours of both daylight and nighttime. Beginning tomorrow, we continue to lose 5-8 minutes of our daylight daily, until we hit the winter solstice on December 21^st. 

I recently moved into my new cabin for the winter, a beautiful log house, sans indoor plumbing. Before I did, I spent a night curled up on our office porch in my sleeping bag, watching the green twists of a faint aurora borealis to the north. I’m waiting almost breathlessly for the first snowflake to fall, almost as I await the first pussywillow in the spring. Transitions, both in life and in the seasons, can be exhilarating. The lingonberries (Vaccinium vitis-idaea) are in abundance here, about 10 miles south of the park entrance, nestled along a bluff of the Nenana River. Perhaps our summer season is over, but we’re looking forward to a cold winter filled with wood fires, knitting, skiing, and general warmth.