Lia came home from the hospital to Chugiak in a Christmas stocking 33 years ago today. She is still a December enthusiast so long as there is snow, which has meant toting her cross-country skis on Seattle public buses to ski golf courses on rare winter days during graduate school at the University of Washington. She earned her PhD in oceanography tracing the pathway of trace metals in the equatorial Pacific, where she encountered a rare snowstorm atop Mt. Wilhelm in Papua New Guinea. She’s slept in snow caves, hotel floors, mountain huts, bivy bags, and leaking (1.5 cattle troughs full) guest houses. She’s now a visiting assistant professor of environmental studies at the University of Alaska Anchorage, and is happy to stay there as long as she doesn’t have to spend the night.