Melting Memories: Disappearing snow in Matanuska Valley and Eagle River, Alaska
By Mariah McCoy
It was in the middle of my 14th interview, at the local reindeer farm, that I realized the subject of discussion was actually present, surrounding me on all sides. Snowpack was visible in the mountaintops of Matanuska Valley, it was pumping up from the underground aquifers to water the herd, running in the stream nearby, and it was latent in the snow machine sitting under a tarp in the driveway, next to the pair of old skis. In Alaska, snow means something to almost everyone, and I wanted to know what my community, the Matanuska Valley, Alaska, so closely situated and connected to mountain snowpack and runoff, thought about it. This inquiry was particularly timely, as this year yielded extraordinarily low snowfall in south central Alaska. With the additional stress from the global crises of climate change and ecosystem degradation, the ways in which communities interact with snow and the ever-precious runoff provided throughout summer by mountain snow-pack will be permanently changed. Our communities will have to adapt.
I chose an ethnographic approach, seeking to answer a set of questions centered on deficient snow packs such as; what are the material political economies of weather and snow? How does climate change disrupt power relations by shifting local relationships? What is snow — a luxury, commodity, natural resource, or gift? What dynamic cultural geographies and relationships with nature will emerge out of changing snowpacks? How does my community conceptualize climate change? By asking questions such as these of various community members who experience a variety of relationships with nature, I hoped to create create a meaningful oral history of the Matanuska Valley community, centered on the political and cultural economy of snow.
This project, conducted in tandem with Professor Brent Olson in Utah, brought me into the homes of various community members, various watersheds, mountain passes, and nigh-on every local coffee shop. I aimed to sit down with folks from those parts of the community closely connected with snow, and to allow the interviews to snowball from there (pun intended). I ended up speaking with local backcountry skiers and snowmachiners, who were appalled that the borough consistently funded the low-level trail construction at Government Peak, when the only decent snow in the past decade has fallen at the higher elevations of Hatchers Pass. I spoke with kayak guides and employees of the Office of Boating Safety who were concerned about the danger of changing rivers and unadaptive recreational habits. There have been 6 deaths this year alone that can be contributed to unusual snowpack, water levels, and log jams in the spring. I spoke to old “sour dough” trappers and mushers, who acknowledged the past 3–4 years as terrible for snow in the valley, but found it to be part of a regional weather cycle, not climate change. They said the Earth was simply too big, and I wonder if living in spacious AK influenced their perceptions of the changing climate. I was informed this year would be a cold one because the Mountain Ash are over-producing berries, preparing for hungry hordes of Bohemian Waxwings. I learned that local snow removal companies are selling plow trucks in order to buy sanding units, and that snowmachine dealers have 2-year-old sleds in stock because no one is buying them. Snowboard shops are switching to marijuana. Everyone was concerned about fires, which started earlier than ever this year. I learned that local farmers are rejoicing at the added 2–3 weeks of unfrozen earth, as it has allowed the Matanuska Valley to corner the highly lucrative international peony market — $8 a stem.
People believed snow was a force of nature, a commodity, a nuisance, good for mental health, and a blessing. I heard from local park rangers an echoing fear for safety, as the public access to trails this past year was unsafe without cleats, and even then various days the trails closed and school groups and tours canceled, with unprecedented ice and freezing rain. The warm and dangerous “Chinook” winds that usually appear once in mid January seemed monthly this past winter. I learned people in the valley are losing boats in neighboring harbors, when the abnormal freezing rains fill and sink their boats. Many recreationalists, such as mushers, snowmachiners, skiers, and even new parents who want their children to have a “real Alaskan childhood” are considering moving out of the valley to other Alaskan cities with more snowfall. I learned that many, many people were happy about not having to shovel their driveway this year. All these conversations and more demonstrated to me the rich variety of knowledge and experience in our verdant little arctic valley, and the many way in which people were already altering behavior in response to changing snowpack.
The first stage of this ethnography was to provide a space for storytelling, complaining, opinions, and discussion. Now that the interviews have concluded, my goal is to spend time writing and synthesizing this research, learning from it, and employing it as a tool to understand other mountain communities. I hope that by mapping the concerns of Matanuska’s changing snowpack, I will create an empirically rich and theoretically sharp study relevant to other similar communities. Understanding the local culture, community, and relationships with snow is an important step in adapting to the snowpack deficiency and crises ahead. After all, in the Matanuska Valley snow is above us, running beside us, beneath us, and a part of everyone’s lives, and as it begins to disappear it will undoubtedly alter local systems of power, behavior, and knowledge. It has already begun to do so.
