Watching the sunrise this Sunday morning and the cool deep blue change in the light. If you haven’t seen it. Watch the cams here on the Permafrost Ranch. www.thesquirrelcam.com You will see what I mean.

Don’t anyone ever tell me that Fairbanks hasn’t changed. I spent a better part of my youth growing up here in Fairbanks. Living here always had a ever lasting impact upon my life, but Fairbanks has changed. I don’t remember reading these headlines as a kid but this morning in the Daily News Miner it jumped right out at me. “Teen found dead in South Fairbanks.” “This could be the second suspected exposure death in less than a week.” writes the author Chris Freiberg , Another young Native Alaskan life gone. We have come a long way baby, but we have lost something in the miles and years that have passed here in the Great Land.

The beauty of our Northern climate in the winter is spectacular, but it hides something just below surface. Even here in our beautiful fair city on the banks of a beautiful scenic river, there is something just below the surface and every once in a while it rears it’s deadly side. Another resident has died of exposure, “death likely caused by exposure” screams out from the headlines. How many times will we read that in our Sunday morning headlines over that hot cup of coffee this winter. Once, twice, three times. Will there be more. Will it jolt us from our warm comfortable lives. How many residents of our fair city are living on that edge. How many of the rest of us really care.