Your Yukoner develops an acute weather sense after living here awhile. My own personal weather radar picked up the first stirrings of change on the first of the month. The following morning I did after all look closely at the wild roses along the driveway -- thick masses of rose hips were already turning a dull brick red! And the willows -- here and there along the highway single bushes had turned completely to the bright cadmium-yellow of the highway centre line. In the Miners' Range, there was fresh snow on the mountain crests for the first time.
Today the maximum-minimum thermometer outside my shack testified that the mercury had descended precisely to zero degrees Celsius during the night. August 3 -- the first frost of the season. In the kennel at mid-morning many of the dogs were still curled up deep in their doghouses, celebrating the cooler weather by sleeping in!
At noon came a brief, drenching rain. While forest fires rage out of control in British Columbia and Alberta, the Yukon gathers itself for winter. It came from nowhere, this sudden turn of the seasons. A line from a Wallace Stevens poem comes unbidden to my mind, "out of nothing to have come upon major weather"...
Posted by jjeffrey at August 3, 2003 01:05 PM