Out of my element

I was nervous all day yesterday. I was finally going to Alaska. I had been talking about it for a long time and it always sounded so exotic as the name escaped my mouth. Alaska....For resaons known only to United Airlines, I had to fly from Seattle through Denver to get to Anchorage. That would sort of be like flying from Sydney to Alice Springs to get to Melbourne! So a journey that could have taken me about two hours took the whole day. Never mind. I dont mind airports and being in transit gives me space to read and write to people and email. But sitting for a few hours in Denver airport as the snow fell outside and flight after flight was delayed gave me time to think about my destination - Alaska. It gave me pause to think that if it was cold here in Denver then it was going to be even colder in Anchorage, and colder still in Fairbanks where I will spend 2 weeks. I started to worry that it would be so cold it might actually hurt. What if the whole experience, instead of being exotic and wonderful was just a painful epic of frozen nose hair and numb toes? And as we taxied out in our plane and they de-iced the wings with something that looked decidedly environmentally unfriendly, I thought 'Oh my God, there's a possiblilty that the wings could freeze and we could crash!' I NEVER have those thoughts when I fly. I'm a good flyer. Then miraculously we took off, didn't crash and in fact made it safely all the way to Anchorage. I realised at some point during the flight that the reason I was so nervous all of a sudden was that snow and cold are really not my element. In fact if you consider that the desert is my element then Alaska is about as far away from my element as I can get. Then I realised another crucial thing, people in the Northern hemisphere live like this all the time. They live in this cold, and much colder. They have to de-ice planes on a regular basis. They live and work and drive and go shopping in snow for half the year. And what do you know, I arrived in Anchorage, walked outside to catch a taxi and my nose hair did not, in fact, freeze. It was cold but the taxi driver was celebrating the fact they had had 5 consecutive days without snow fall. Alaskans are celebrating the arrival of Spring. I needn't worry.