I recently bought a computer that had a lot of problems, and so I called the support lines, which were most often answered by technicians in Alabama. One of the first questions they asked was my address. When these folks found out I was calling from Alaska, they inevitably gave a gasp of surprise. "Alaska!" they exclaimed with a combination of wonder, awe and intrigue. One man went so far as to become nervous, as if I were a celebrity he had the unlikely good fortune to be talking to, and he told me that his teenage daughter would be "so impressed" that he actually spoke with someone from Alaska in person!

As most of you reading this know, we are a collective mystery for many in the Lower 48. We live in a remote, vast land, physically removed from the rest of our fellow Americans. We live in the Last Frontier -- wild country, distinguished by towering mountains, polar bears, sled dogs and frigid temps. In fact, the second thing the technicians from Alabama predictably cried out was a series of rapid-fired questions about our winter: Isn't it cold there? How do you live with all the darkness? How long is the daylight? How cold does it get? What do you DO all winter? Don't you get depressed?

While the honest Midwesterner in me wanted to tell the truth, another part of me couldn't help but embellish. After all, there are days on end in the dead of winter when temperatures plummet below minus 20 and, here in the Valley, the wind-chill factor can reach an outrageous 60 below; there are days when the sun barely sneaks over the horizon at 10 am, and slinks back down not long after 3 pm; from some houses there hang icicles so huge that if they fell, they could skewer a man; and frostbit toes and noses are nothing to laugh about. When the technicians were properly cautioned into silence, I let loose with a breathy sigh. Then, I regaled them with a taste of the magic of winter: when the moose step lightly across the white mounds of snow in our front yard, tufts of warm fog snorting from their huge nostrils; when the Bohemian waxwings gather at the red berry bush outside my window, chattering in excitement; when the Northern Lights boogie across the night sky in pulsing, arcing, crackling streams of green and blue, and how last year the display of intense red lights that I had wished to see for so many years finally appeared, like some dream come true. I told them despondency only comes if you can't find the magic of winter; that winter's silent, white shroud is like a shawl of restful comfort, an invitation to creativity, to going within, to becoming quiet and peaceful and centered after our long, active, light-filled summer.

And when the technicians in Alabama didn't know what to say, I cradled an inward smile for all of us lucky enough to live here, in this most magnificent state of ever-changing seasons. We are the protectors of this land, ambassadors of northern mysteries, vigilant witnesses to the wondrous forces of nature.

Dawn Brunke is the author of Animal Voices ~ Telepathic Communication in the Web of Life, to be published in July 2002 by Inner Traditions International. See www.animalvoices.net for a preview.