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Earlier this month, after the season finally turned and the leaf buds were starting to bulge, my neighbor Mark waved to me as I drove down the street. His gestures got more emphatic as I got closer, so I stopped. Right there in the middle of the road.

“Hey,” he said. “Look over there. Can you see it?”

I got out of the car. I could do that because ours is not a busy street. We live downtown in one of the residential pockets tucked between Lathrop and Cowles, Airport Way and the Chena River. Looking in the direction of his finger, I asked what he was pointing at.

“A raven’s nest in that tree,” he said. “They’re back. I watched a couple of babies learn how to fly last year.”

We talked a bit about birds. About the habits of ravens, which I thought were known for roosting by the hundreds in a black spruce stand outside of town. We joked about whether they were starting their own colony, right here in our neighborhood.

This is what I always wanted. To live in a place where people stop and chat about what’s going on in our own backyards. I dreamed of getting gardening tips over the fence, but also receiving warnings about current events, whether it was a rash of broken car windows or an injured moose holing up in a nearby field.

That example really happened. Over the winter, a moose was hit and sought shelter in a yard in my neighborhood. Somebody called Mark’s wife Mikki, who happens to be the block captain for the town’s burgeoning Neighborhood Watch program.

She knew the landlord and was able to warn the tenant, so he wouldn’t walk outside unprepared, right into the path of an angry moose. Then she tracked down some relief. “I think the Troopers came out and took care of the moose.”

I grew up in a Neighborhood Watch zone. Those scary signs featuring a hooded burglar straight out of the Spy vs. Spy feature in Mad Magazine were kind of confusing. Like something out of the novel 1984, where people were encouraged to turn in their neighbors for thought crimes. On the other hand, our streets were safe. Kids played in huge roving packs and traffic slowed down in the development.

For years, Mikki said she asked around about starting up a Neighborhood Watch here, but she was told, “We don’t do that anymore.” Then a few years ago, several agencies in Fairbanks teamed up to get a federal Weed-and-Seed grant to pay for coordination.

The goal is to weed out the bad elements and start seeding something good, like crime prevention and revitalization. In our neighborhood that means keeping an eye out for suspicious behavior. Getting to know our neighbors. Cleaning up vacant lots and lending a helping hand. Like the folks on Sixth Street who took turns watching over a local home when a resident died recently and his daughter couldn’t get back to Fairbanks right away.

This is what neighbors do. It’s what the police can’t and maybe wouldn’t even want to do, as busy as they are cruising high-traffic areas and responding to more serious crimes. Mikki worries that people will be focused on the spying. That they’ll think this is a troop of vigilantes. She said it’s mostly about communication.

“There’s stuff going on that we don’t even know about,” she said. “If this expands and people like us start talking, we can be more aware. It’s about taking control of our own safety, not expecting government to solve all your problems for you.”

Not everybody can live in our neighborhood, practically unchanged in the 23 years Mikki and Mark have been here. I noticed their house right away, with its manicured lawn and wooden cutout of a woman bending over in the garden. I don’t know how many times I’ve been fooled by that one, waving when I walk by.

The Fairbanks Volunteers-in-Policing program is hosting a series of organizational meetings in the next few weeks. So far people haven’t been flocking to these. Mikki thinks the best way to reach residents is by getting outside and talking to people on their own porches and driveways. She sends e-mails when there’s something to report.

A couple of Neighborhood Watch signs showed up on our street in the last few weeks. They seem to have a mind of their own. We often find them toppled over, whether from the wind or a mischievous passer-by, we’ll never know. Mikki says they’ll soon be installed permanently.

In the meantime, I’m going to keep my eye on them. So I don’t trip.