Only in Alaska #1

I should probably title this "Only in Alaska #1-2" because I'm going to mention two things that happened on Saturday.

First, I was able to enjoy the most incredible sunrise. I drove straight toward the horizon where the sky was lined with a dusky pink that faded to rose, violet and then to the pale blue of the predawn sky. The evergreens were silhouetted by the soft light while the snow brightened the foreground. It was amazing. And the reason this can be entitled "Only in Alaska" is that I was enjoying all of this at 9 a.m. I have a feeling I will be enjoying more sunrises over one winter here than I have viewed in my entire lifetime.

The next thing happened a little later on the same drive. My windshield was getting dirty and clouded, so I pushed on the lever to start the automatic windshield wiper fluid. That seemed to make it worse. I tried again. It was better for a second, but then it got worse again. I tried this two more times, then realized that the fluid was freezing on my windshield, so I turned up the defrost. Tried again after a minute, no luck. Tried again after another minute and rejoiced when it worked, but then had my vision quickly obscured as I watched ice crystals blossom across the expanse of my windshield. It was like time-lapse photography of flowers blooming, except that they were made out of ice and spread across my windshield in just a few seconds. The heat of the defrost had only worked for a moment, then the cold of the morning air won out and the thin sheet of water that was still on the glass performed icy miracles. It was actually rather pretty, if I hadn't needed to see through that glass. It's a good thing that traffic is nonexistent in North Pole. But now I'll know better when it's zero degrees Fahrenheit outside.

Oh, and by the way, I realize things like this happen in other areas of the world, but "Something that happens in the coldest parts of the world such as Alaska, Canada, Greenland or Scandinavia" sounds much less catchy than "Only in Alaska," don't you think?