Spring Arrives

    

 The days of the snowmobile are numbered here in Kotlik.  Last weekend was a blizzard and whiteout with temperatures in the single digits.  This week began with snow falling every day and the mercury slowly creeping into the teens and twenties.  Now it’s Friday and temperatures are in the mid thirties.  They are calling for 41 degrees on Sunday.  Yeah, a heat wave!

     So the snowmachines (what we call snowmobiles) are trudging around town, the tracks spinning up slush as the engines whine, straining to make any headway at all.  Kotlik is now buried in a foot of grainy chilled slurry.  Walking is a chore with every step sending up an icy splash in every direction.  There is no solid footing anywhere but on the boardwalk now, where the 4-wheeler snowplow has cleared down to the wood planks. 

     The ice on the river can’t last much longer.  Seventeen hours of sunlight a day is taking it’s toll on our frozen thoroughfare and breakup will be soon.  There’s already a good layer of water on the ice’s surface.  The sloughs around town have flowing water in them.  Thank goodness Hobart and I have less than a month remaining here.  Our days of aimless perigrinations are at an end because for the rest of our stay we’ll be stuck on the boardwalk unless we want to go slogging across the muddy tundra bog.