The Hindcast: Anchorage’s Past Week in Weather

By a route obscure and lonely,

Haunted by ill angels only,

Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,

On a black throne reigns upright.

I have reached these lands but newly

From an ultimate dim Thule –

From a wild weird clime, that lieth, sublime,

Out of SPACE – out of TIME.

-Edgar Allan Poe from “Dream-land”

It’s raining now, washing the white rime from trees and coating the snow with an ice crust. Inside, my husband spoons sugar and salt into baker bowls for cookies and cake. From his book Independent People, I think of Halldór Laxness’ descriptions of hungry Icelanders twitching with coffee and sugar in the dark of winter, their energy the only sign of wakefulness. Is Poe’s dream-land where we are going to or where we are coming from? The edges of our known world, our Ultima Thule, have crept inward. The Pandemic’s new variant has made a recent trip to Seattle my last, for some unknown amount of time. Under our tinsel tree, I’ve put an enormous family Bible that I lugged back in my suitcase. This one is signed by my great-grandparents, tenant farmers like Laxness’ protagonist. I pre-occupy myself with thoughts about our farms and what we might do with them, justly, in a “wild weird clime.” This Illustrated Bible, printed in Sweden, is artful, with hundreds of Gustave Doré’s woodcut prints. That imagery is what piqued my interest; the stories that keep us alive. Rest in Peace Ms. Didion. I’ll keep reading until it’s time to shovel again.

— Jessica Cherry, PhD, is a scientist, writer, and commercial airplane pilot living in Anchorage and Fairbanks.