Having two homes of our own, neither in either of our home towns, we are often asked what time of the year we tend to be in which part of the world. I’ve always replied that there’s no real pattern. Hmm. I think I’ll have to change my answer. We have greeted various New Years in England, in Ireland, in Alaska, in Seattle… But as more of those years pass, the draw of spending the season of winter holidays at home with family grows ever stronger, so it’s become habit to start and finish each year in Anchorage. My parents still live in the house they designed, built, and moved my siblings and me into when I was 10 years old, and it’s an easy walk from here to a huge network of ski trails in the state park nearby.
This has turned into a really nice way, each year, to get grounded before we set out on our travels once again.
After Anchorage, we usually head for the Pacific Northwest. Neither of us has any family around here – at least not that we know well – but here is probably our most extensive network of friends and fellow musicians. We also have a little bit of property here where we can park our campervan and ourselves in between gigs, so we put up with the rain and the occasional wet snow for a few months, or, sometimes, jump in the camper and head off to play some gigs down the coast. Or off across the Midwest, but honestly, in Jan/Feb, we’re more likely to go for the California option!
March is a great time to be with musical friends because of the St Patrick’s Day festivities. The long lists of Irish music we need to refresh from previous years before showing up for a 12 hour gig means a good excuse to spend a LOT of time playing diddly tunes and singing big choruses together beforehand.
Once St Pat’s is over and done with, it’s time to fly to Ireland. The house has been sitting empty all winter and there is almost always some damage control and maintenance to do when we get there. Last time it was broken pipes in the house and a hole in the barn roof. Who knows what it’ll be this time! We also have a car parked up here, so we load instruments and head for a ferry to the UK to play whatever shows our dear friend and agent over there has managed to scrape together for us. Now, of course, we’re on Mike’s home ground, and whatever open time we have between shows is spent trying to catch up with widely scattered friends and relations. Southampton to Aberdeen – no wonder we sometimes go for years without seeing some of them! We try.
Then it’s back over to Ireland. (Sometimes we make more than one journey across the Irish Sea, but the ferry fares are pricey in the summer, so we try to keep it down to one.) Whatever is left of the summer is spent working on the old farmhouse, going to sessions, learning tunes and spending time with our friends here and whichever of our friends get adventurous enough to come see us in our partially restored, nearly habitable, home.
When Autumn comes around, at least until we get some source of heat in the house in Ireland, it’s time to head back over to Seattle where, with any luck, we’ll have a bunch of holiday shows booked and a flurry of rehearsals with our favorite music partners to get ready for them. The past couple of years we’ve been building up a wonderful December pan-holiday show, which we hope to keep bringing to bigger and better venues each year. (Thanks to Stewart Hendrickson for the photo!)
Those finish before Christmas, when we want to be home again in Anchorage. And, somehow, another year has disappeared!
We've missed it the last couple of years. Though the week before Thanksgiving 2010 saw us covered in more Western Washington snow than we usually see, that 
wet, slushy stuff is no substitute for the dry, crystalline faerie dust we're used to drifting through in Anchorage. And although there was always some white stuff on the ground during our Alaskan winter solstice homecomings, its hold seemed tenuous, with bare ground threatening to reemerge from under the seasonal carpet of white.
Not this year. The world was well blanketed when we arrived in mid November. More snow arrived soon after. One forceful windstorm blasted in a wave of rain-soaked warm air early in December, leaving us mired in a foot-deep layer of slush, which then re-froze to a thick base of solid, rutted, slippery ice. The next covering of snow couldn't come too soon after that! And then came another. And another. And another... It got to be habit to allow time in the morning for snow removal, and the first reflex when we woke up was to look outside and see how much had fallen overnight. If it looked like more than six inches, then the first job after breakfast would be to fire up the snowblower.
Mom's usually the first out the door to go and get the newspaper. She started almost every day shoveling away the snow on the front step and walkway. Even mornings without new snow, these sparkling, dry snow crystals fly on the lightest breeze, forming drifts everywhere. Whenever Mike and I were running the snowblower, Mom grabbed a snow shovel to lend a hand. No amount of telling her that we could do it all more easily with the 
machine, and that she should go back to her coffee and newspaper in her comfy chair would dissuade her. Well, I have to respect her resolve to keep getting as much exercise as she can. But she could at least have stopped to put boots on, instead of coming out in her slippers!
We bade a sad farewell to all that lovely snow, not expecting to see any more after leaving Alaska. But Washington had a surprise for us this weekend! Ok, so it's the wet, heavy, Pacific Northwest stuff, but it's still pretty.
