This weekend a friend and I took advantage of a discount offer for locals to take the Alaskan railroad north and then south again. It was a wonderful opportunity to gawk at the scenery and breathe in all of those vibrant colors of fall that come and go so quickly. The fact that it was blowing 40mph outside made the comfort of the train that much more cozy.
I have to admit, I sometimes feel like Fredrick Mouse (who stars in the children's book Fredrick by Leo Leonni). Fredrick goes around trying to store up color for the dark winter months much to the despair of his food collecting companions but when they run out of food in mid-winter it is his recollections of colors and smells that distracts them from their hungry bellies. Of course, I store food too but sometimes I feel like I am trying to drink up all of the colors around me and imbibe them in the fiber of my being to keep me warm when the days are long and dark. Look at the light on those grasses!
In case you are wondering why there are all these dead trees in the picture above I shall explain their existence. These trees died in the great Alaskan earthquake of 1964 when the ground subsided over 10 feet in only a few short minutes causing an inundation of salt water to kill trees all along Alaska's shoreline and to simultaneously preserve them by filling them with salt & preventing rot.
