LIGHT TRAFFIC

© Carolyne Weldon

Since mid-August, I’ve been living in a dry cabin outside of Fairbanks, Alaska. For those unfamiliar with cabin terminology, “dry” is a euphemism for “with no running water and some sort of outhouse nearby”.

The cabin is on a dirt road off Farmer’s Loop, the last house before the cul-de-sac. At the end of a bumpy gravel drive-way (that I partially destroyed the only time I tried backing out in the Suburban instead of turning around), there’s the cabin, cute in cream and green; the sauna; a concrete skateboarding bowl, now covered with a camo-pattern smoke-jumper’s parachute, to fend off the snow; a fire pit, surrounded by green plastic chairs; and the outhouse, way in the back.

One of the first things you’ll notice about the place is that the sauna appears to be bigger than the cabin. It is. Which should not suggest that the sauna is gigantic. It’s the cabin that’s on the smaller side of things. But how much space do you need, really? This cabin’s the perfect place to ponder that question, snuggled under a pile of Alaskan quilts.

These days, there’s frost on the long grass most mornings, and the boys had to hang a lamp and pull a heater inside the parachute to be able to skate after work. Their goal is to keep skating all winter, or at least until there’s powder deep enough to go snowboarding down nearby glaciers. These are the sorts of thing that get grown men excited enough to break into a little dance around here.

Anyways. All that to say that back in the summer, in the pre-parachute days, I met the sister of a Texan girl who was getting married up here. It was to be a very small wedding, outdoors, and would I please come by and take some photos?

The ceremony, officiated by the sister’s husband Tom, was held on a rocky outcrop surrounded by hills at a ski resort called Skiland. It was short, sweet and luminous. Here are some photos from the wedding. You can see the rest of them here.