It's 11 p.m.,

my girls are all asleep, and I'm watching two snowshoe hares bounce nervously around our acre in the light that will linger until tomorrow, when it will get brighter, and the white heat of the day will approach 70 degrees.

A Swainson's thrush sings from the big spruce by the back door. Sounds like a tin flute, spiraling upward. How can a bird make that wonderful noise? What miraculous plumbing is inside that tiny throat? The Swainson's is my favorite bird song, reminds me of being a ranger on the Yukon River, and the magic of Coal Creek, country so quiet it hums.

Summer, it seems, is here. Good night from Fairbanks, where all is calm.