Anchorage wakes senses

When I lightheartedly suggested to my husband that we fly to Anchorage last February, weather didn’t even cross my mind. Or his.

A couple of weeks before we left, I idly asked, "Do you think it will snow?" After a long look during which a pair of matched lightbulbs went off over our heads, he grabbed the laptop to check Anchorage weather and I began digging under the bed for my mainland clothes.

Yes, it was winter in Alaska and colder than I’ve ever in my life experienced. But I’d return without a qualm.

I have a theory that our eyes and minds become accustomed to the colors and shapes with which we live. A change from these creates true respite.

Hawaii: glowing greens, azure blues, bright pastel splashes; rounded shapes — curved bays and shield volcanoes and hula hands.

Alaska in winter: sparkling whites, stone grays, deep greens, dull browns (moose, bear, roadside snow and dirty cars); sharp-toothed mountains, narrow houses, trails deep and straight in snowy fields.

It did, indeed, snow, a couple of times. Lightly. That was pretty, especially watching the flakes sparkle as the lights came on around Town Square next to the Alaska Center for Performing Arts. There, huge ice sculptures — a Crystal Gallery of Ice created by teams from around the country — refuse to melt throughout January and February.

From the window of our 10th-floor room at the Hilton Anchorage, we checked the sign on a nearby bank each morning — single digits, usually 3 degrees at dawn and dusk.

Those same windows offered us a view of the breathtaking Chugach Mountains forming the city’s eastern boundary in the half million-acre Chugach State Park.

A selling point for Anchorage is how quickly you can lose yourself in nature. Many city dwellers walk, bike, hike or fish after work in summer, and ski or snowboard every winter weekend.

We’d fetch supersized Americanos and a paper from the lobby Starbucks, then relax until the belated sunrise, about 8:30 a.m.

Driving was no problem. The streets were well-scraped, the intersections and parking lots graveled and we didn’t venture into the country. Only when we visited our children, in an unplowed neighborhood, did we have to take a little care driving.

We were pretty much cold whenever we weren’t under the covers, sometimes painfully cold, tremblingly cold.

But downtown Anchorage is a compact place and we could generally get wherever we wanted to go in minutes (and find on-street parking!). We just couldn’t endure more than two blocks’ worth of walking.

Anchorage is not a particularly pretty city. But there are many parks, including block-wide, five-block-long Delaney Park (aka the Delaney Park Strip), which over the past 100 years has been variously a fire break, a golf course and an aircraft landing field. It’s now a recreation center, with facilities ranging from soccer fields to horseshoe pits, a fitness center and numerous memorials and historic sites.

Oh, for something like the Tommy Knowles Coast Trail in Honolulu! Even in winter, brave souls pound their way along this 11-mile route, a paved walk-run-bike path that borders iced-over Cook Inlet on the city’s western edge.

You’ll find some place names familiar in Anchorage because we were visited by some of the same explorers, most famously Capt. James Cook. See his statue at Resolution Park, a lookout on Third Avenue. Great picture-taking of Mount Susitana in the far distance.

Husband, uncongenial to cold, spent the bulk of the trip indoors. But I wanted to see animals, shop and experience whatever I could. However, I soon learned that many attractions reduce their hours, or close altogether, in winter. Call ahead.

I very much wanted to visit the 200-acre Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center 60 miles south of the city, where you can see animals roaming free, fenced in but not caged. The animals are orphaned, ill or injured rescues. But the center is open only on weekends in January and February.

So I drove a few miles south to the Alaska Zoo, where I wandered virtually alone one weekday morning. A drowsing polar bear allowed me a distant view. A pair of foxes touched noses as though they were kissing and chased each other with betwitchingly delicate steps. Wolves eyed me through the fencing of their wooded home. The lone moose turned his back to me — pointedly, it seemed. (Maybe it was those moose pajamas I bought.)

Most amusingly, a young bear had my camera clicking as he played with a blue plastic ball, cradling it to his belly, hurling it into the air over his head, chasing after it. What joie de vivre! He’d looked not much larger than a stuffed teddy in a gift shop but when he shambled over to look at me, he got bigger. And when he began digging under the fence, I got nervous.

You don’t need to go to the zoo to see animals in Anchorage, however. One day, we were at a traffic light on busy, four-lane Arctic Avenue and a moose came shambling along, taking up an entire lane. They come into town in winter scrounging for food.

Our camera was the only one in evidence. Everybody else just steered around him. Ho, hum. But do be cautious at night. Every year, about 150 moose are hit by cars in the Anchorage city limits and it goes ill for all involved. (Moose stand an average 6.5-7.5 feet and weigh between 1,200 and 1,500 pounds.)

The first time I saw a moose was on a 2008 springtime visit, when we encountered one at the Alaska Native Heritage Center on the Glenn Highway, a little north and east of town.

Touring the 11-year-old nonprofit educational and cultural center was the sightseeing highlight of that trip.

Unfortunately, the center is open only on certain Saturdays in winter. But don’t miss it. Hawaii has nothing like this — not even the Polynesian Cultural Center has the same, authentic feel.

The experiences of Alaska’s 11 major cultural groups are communicated through filmed and live dance, song and storytelling sessions on the Gathering Place stage. There are museum-quality displays in the Hall of Culture. Best of all, elders sit around tables or in enclosures working on various art, craft or toolmaking projects. Though self-effacing and soft-spoken, the crafters reward genuine interest with friendly interaction.

The few minutes of Alaska native dancing I saw moved me as hula does, even though I had no frame of reference for the words or gestures. Though the movement is less uniform, the choreography less complex (more like South Pacific dance) than hula, the performances are soulful and the ornamentation exquisite — wood-carved masks, beaded headdresses, feathered fans, colorful cloth parkas called kuspuk.

The heart of the center is a ring of dwellings scattered among the trees that surround Lake Tiulana, representing six of the key cultural groups. Each is distinct, the architecture and furnishings cunningly tailored to Alaska’s widely varied climates and to the pursuits and practices of each people.

Walking through these shelters — most were communal, accommodating not just family groups but in some cases entire small villages — tells the story as no film or lecture could.

It’s one thing, for example, to know that a people lived among the deadly polar bear. You understand in a new way when you to stand in a dim and not overly roomy half-underground shelter, peering into a dark tunnel that represents the traditional doorway. Other tunnels were for escape, or dead ends where children were hidden in times of danger. The guide revealed that the tunnel was built just wide enough to accommodate a pregnant woman in her third trimester — but not a polar bear.

You stare up to the one, small dim window of translucent seal gut and hear the stories of how polar bears would climb the roof berms and peer in while hunters snuck out the tunnels and came up behind them, risking their lives for meat, and the safety of their people.

Also a window on Alaska’s past was the Anchorage Museum where we saw a photographic exhibit on a slice of history of which we were unaware (the Aleutian Islands campaign, which had thousands of military squatting in muddy quarters for several miserable years) and another of majestic landscapes seemingly as large as Alaska itself. A very enjoyable hour. (And the menu at the cafe looked interesting.)

What was left?

My two favorites no matter where I go: Shopping. And eating.

On the hotel TV, check out the excellent Alaska Channel, which alternates paid advertorials with guidebook-type information. A segment on Qiviut Alaskan handknits so interested me (a bad but enthusiastic knitter) that the crafter’s cooperative, in its tiny converted house, was my first stop. There, the same young woman I’d seen on TV introduced us to quiviut fiber, the finely combed underwool of the musk ox, light as a marshmallow and warm as a puppy’s breath. The lovely knitted lace, in repetitive patterns based on nature, reminded me strongly of the watermarks and printing on Hawaiian kapa.

Later, in the hotel, where a native crafter was selling them, I restrained my yearning for a kuspuk, a cloth outer garment worn most frequently by women — a sort of shapeless cross between a parka and a long blouse or skirted dress, often with a hood. Usually made from calico, in tiny, bright floral prints, with rickrack for trim, they may also make use of more contemporary prints, such as tie-dye. But they can be very elaborate, made of velvet with fur ruffs.

I stumbled on a treasure trove in Title Wave, a book store that reminded me of my very most favorite such store, Powell’s in Portland, Ore., and turned out to be the country’s second largest second-hand book store behind Powell’s. (A downtown store recently closed; go to 1360 W. Northern Lights, just south of the city center.) Comfy chairs, no one bothers you, and, if you’re staying long enough, you can turn in a past purchase for credit on another.

An outlet of Kaladi Brothers, the Starbucks of Anchorage, is just down the way (free WiFi password: "community").

But it was the T-shirts, sleep shirts, pajamas and other souvenir tchotchkes I found everywhere that amused me. Anchorage ought really to be nicknamed Punlandia.

First, you must understand that Alaskans feel about their moose the way we feel about our gekkos, loving and identifying with the huge animals in spite of their foibles.

The punning starts with moose and continues on through the entire Alaskan animal world: bear, otter, salmon. "I moose have a hug." (And a dozen other plays on must.) "Does a bear sit in the woods" (on a shirt showing a bear sitting on a chair in the forest). "Alaska: You otter be here." "Life’s a fish and then you fry." Even the shops are punny: Moosellaneous Gifts. Once in a Blue Moose.

My last purchase was a T-shirt that said, "I moose have a kiss" with moose all puckered up on it.

And I moose return to Anchorage.