• A long-legged, long-track speed skater - bedecked in orange, with a name with six Js and five Os - training diligently on a frozen lake in the far corner of Lapland.

• A Yup'ik gentleman - armed with a dowel rod, a lead weight and a pocketful of smelt - pulling tom cod out of a hole in the ice.

• A disillusioned Cubs fan, sadly turning off the final game of a three-game playoff sweep, throwing on a sweatshirt and walking briskly without direction or hope into the eye of the hurricane.

Most of all, I thought of October. For if there's ever a time to embrace the true spirit of uitwaiien, it's just around the corner.

One second you're praying to Buddha, or Raven or the half-finished gin and tonic on the table for one last glimpse of Indian summer. The next moment you're in the icy maw of the wintry doodsluipaard - Dutch for "death leopard."

His claws tear at your flesh. Your lips are steel. Your face is frozen.

You do what everyone does: You stare up at the mountains and distract yourself by waiting for the snow.

Oh it's out there, in the same way that the pockets of enriched flour are barely sprinkled on the crusts of the potato bread.

The backcountry aesthetes among us betray themselves by their barely concealed joy. They're like a bottle of pop that's rolled down Gold Street.

The Behrends Avenue homeowners are the ones nervously laughing. They hope this isn't the year the doodsluipaard saws off the nose of Mount Juneau and sends it tumbling through the Highlands.

Or do they?

I wondered why there wasn't more abject fear last March, during the peak of the avalanche danger, when the city opened the Zach Gordon Youth Center for evacuees. Then I hung out on a porch with two guys who live in a typical rental house on the side of Mount Roberts.

You know the type. Wood construction. Built into the side of a rock wall. Car-size boulders looming above. Questionable support system purporting to block "scree."

When the volcano comes, and these people are buried in 12 layers of soil, archaeologists will have a marvelously preserved Pompeii-style case study of what Southeast Alaska dinner parties were like in the early 21st century. With luck, there will even be some gouda left.

These fellows, like many of those in the Highlands, didn't seem too concerned about sharing their hors d'oeuvres with the curators of the future. Granted, they're two of the aforementioned backcountry aficionados. So they're fairly bursting with fizz.

For them, living in an apartment clinging to the side of a slippery rock wall in the shadow of a 3,819-foot mountain is like skiing down a quadruple, black-diamond drop-off every time you grind the coffee.

I have to say I admire their passion, their hardwood floors and their view. It certainly beats the pants off anyone who lives in the Behrends death-chute.

But I wonder if the Dutch have a word for "living in mortal danger for fun." Personally, I prefer walking in the wind.

• Korry Keeker can be reached at 523-2268 or korry.keeker@juneauempire.com.