I spent my first ten Alaska years in Anchorage where we got some A-for-effort winters, but even there the Gulf Stream is a tempering influence. My only visit to Fairbanks was at high noon, so to speak, when the flowers were just everywhere and the sun hardly went below the horizon. So the odds were pretty much even that, wherever you were at the time, you were experiencing colder weather than I was.

Then my husband and I moved to the very southern tip of Southeast Alaska. Craig is located on two tiny islands buttressed up against Prince of Wales Island. At the time of this posting you can scroll down and see a picture that I took from the air. These two islands are connected to each other and to the main island by human-built causeways, and if a tsunami is coming you had better head for Sunnahae Mountain on Prince of Wales proper. The surrounding area is scientifically classified as a temperate rain forest. Consider that, and the fact that of all the micro-climates on the island, Craig’s is the wettest and windiest. The east side of the island can be covered with ice and deep snow, with frozen lakes, while in Craig the rain is blowing sideways. If we get enough snow to make snow ice cream, we have to move fast.

The trees and the terrain here are amazingly adapted to the climate. The soil is somehow porous so that the rainfall drains away rapidly. This produces one of the area’s great paradoxes: go two or more weeks with no rain and “hot” weather (say 85 degrees) and you are in danger of a forest fire. In the old days, during times like that, the loggers would go on “hoot owl,” which meant they would cut trees at night to reduce the risk of a spark developing into a fire. People down South don’t always buy that bit of lore, but it’s true. I have seen some of those fires.

The trees also don’t have tap roots, because they don’t need them: the water is right there for the taking. One hundred-plus inches of rain a year gives us magnificent trees, berries of all kinds, gorgeous wildflowers, lots of wildlife, and puddles to stomp in. And I ain’t sweet enough to melt.