Autumn in Alaska for the Ardoin’s

Hey there, Friends and Family. It’s been a sporadic year of blog posting over here. My apologies.

It’s been a busy summer. Pop up Camping, hiking, site-seeing with Family, and even berry picking have filled our long Midnight sun days. But the summer days are officially behind us now.

This is our third autumn/winter here in Alaska, and also our last. It’s taken a few seasons, but I’ve finally tuned in to the seasonal rhythms here.

When the last of the fireweed blooms out, winter is only six weeks away, local folklore has it. Those pretty magenta petals all dropped a couple of weeks ago. The days are thankfully getting shorter, making these autumn days in Alaska resemble normal circadian rhythms in the lower 48. It won’t be too much longer before we’re plunged into darkness.

Having been here a couple of seasons, I’ve come to realize we live under a Canadian Goose migration path (I would love to hear more about this from you avid Birders out there!). This time of year, every night between 9:50 pm and 10:10 pm without fail, one flock of geese per night flights over our house, from the north to the south. They honk in a steady meter. When I hear them overhead, I know it’s time to get into bed. When they stop flying over, I know winter is officially upon us.

Little by little every day, the axis of the earth tilts Alaska further away from the sun. In the evenings, I see the sun fall onto the south east corner of my sitting room downstairs. In a week or so, the stairwell will be full of golden hour sunlight. The fiery stairwell seems to last ten days or so, until we’re a little more established in winter.

Cycling out summer clothes for winter wardrobes is already done. Bye bye, Chacos, it’s time for flats and booties. While we’re not quite ready for snow boots, it’s chilly enough to pack away our open toed, summer-loving shoes.

The leaves are starting to change, too. When we first moved here, the hills were a polychromatic wonder — oranges and yellows, bronzes and golds dominated the landscape before the trees dropped all their leaves and snow buried them beneath their drifts. Each year on our Alaska-anniversary (and Woods’ birthday), the leaves drop colorful confetti on us. It’s brilliant.

For Yea Yea Photography’s final fall in Alaska, I’m collaborating with a local company Oma + Jo on their Autumn/Winter line. I think it’s an auspicious way to start out our final trip around the sun in the Arctic. YYP’s sessions are all booked for September — so there will likely be some radio silence here at the Pueblo until after all those galleries are delivered. Of course I’ll make an exception for Woods’ one year milestone session.

Happy Autumn, Friends!