It's my birthday!

Yay! I'm 16 today! Not really that exciting actually... next week I'm having a party and I'm forcing some friends to go with me and volunteer to pack food for the elderly. It should be great! I promised them cake after >.<

So Karis Koett sent me the following unphotographable scene.

Night Ski

The computer said it was 2 degrees out, but it had to have been to be at least 0. It may have just been the shock of going from inside to outside. The sun was setting, but it always sets very slowly in Alaska, so although it was well after 10:00 in the evening there were still remnants of the light reflecting of the stratus clouds that stretched from the north sky. The puffs of white were blue and pink with a darkening background. Everything south was dark. We walked towards the spot where we would put our skis on, shoes crunching in the snow. Crunch, crunch, crunch, it went, and so on. The sound of the skis rubbing against each other as I carried them in my left arm, and my poles, falling slightly, clicking against each other as I tried to adjust them in my right arm. We walked quietly towards our spot, through the dusky evening, white covered world. The buildings are hardly distinguishable, except for the odd colored paint that shows through the dabbles of snow that seems to control the color. Even the red house we pass on the left is less red, which seems weird. You would think that the turquoise apartment building would be more turquoise when surrounded by white. But somehow it sinks into the snow - everything becomes the snow. It's all snow. I live and breathe snow. We walk snow, we ski snow, we talk snow, we die snow. At our spot we gently laid down our skis and clicked our boots into place carefully, one at a time. We discussed our latest slips because we both enjoy watching people fall. "Yesterday morning I went outside to get my dog, and I only had house shoes on, so I totally wiped out, fully flat on the ground, didn't even see it coming." And I hadn't. One foot went up, and my entire body followed. The oval blue bruise on my left leg is evidence. She laughed, and then we were skiing over the river and away from town. The sound here is perfectly acoustic. Every noise is heard at that place - the sound of the skis moving over the fresh powder, the sound of the poles hitting the ice and snow, the creaking of each pole as they give with the weight of my body, the sound of the air as it hits my face. When I finally turned my head lamp on I could see my breath as though it were smoke fresh from a fire. It floated in front of me, almost resting, freezing in the air, barely making it to evaporation. My finger tips began losing feeling, so I swung my arms as I skied, attempting to force the blood to my hands. It's a trick I learned from a dog musher. We continued moving along, side by side, in the contrasting dark sky and white floor. When I looked up through the darkness I could see white for miles where the tundra leads to rolling hills to the north and east and towards perfectly formed white mountains to the south, just past the river, which is hardly distinguishable as a river. The ice is about three feet thick, and snow covers the top. We skied on in the night, guided by our small blue lights, which seemed very small and insignificant next to what light from the night reflects on the snow. Everything is white and clean, everything is the same, everything is, or was, in that moment, perfect, unbreakable, silent. Everything was nothing, even the cold. It all just was - Heidi next to me all in black, gliding to her rhythm across the fresh snow, the movement of the small flakes that fell into my light, my skis making new trail. And I never wanted to leave.

Great job Karis! It wasn't exactly from an outsider's perspective, but it was still a solid piece of writing and I really enjoyed reading it. Thank you so much for your contribution. Please continue writing!

So now for a big announcement!

Next month is poetry month which means...
for all of you who enjoy the art of poetry, April is for you! I created a cute calendar with the schedule for the 25 poem types I chose. What I have done is I've split the month into 5 parts. There are 6 days to each part. One day will contain the definitions for each poem featured in that section and some examples.

All submissions will be collected and posted in May.

I look forward to hearing your poetic voices. I've picked out some fairly simple and fun ones for you to do.

I can hardly wait until Tuesday!

I'll see you when poetry month starts, so get ready to write.