in alaxsxaq

billowy cloud, with aurora-like wispy edges... the skies in the tanana valley were beautiful.

smith lake, on the skarland trail on the university of alaska fairbanks campus. unknown mountain in the distance.

fringed grass-of-parnassus (such a good name), skarland trail, fairbanks.

The name 'Alaska' comes from the Aleut (Unangan) word alaxsxaq, meaning 'the mainland', or, more specifically 'the object towards which the action of the sea is directed'.

(Oh, the beauty of the specificity of deictic terms in the Inuit languages!)

In Fairbanks there was no sea, of course, but the sky was oceanic, with white-cap cloud waves and light past midnight. In summer you can't see the northern lights, but it's very comforting somehow to think of them still being there, just like Denali on the horizon, bluish and ghosty, hidden in the haze unseen but calm and there all the same.