Winter Wonders

  The Northern Lights

The Northern lights are the pinnacle privilege of an Alaskan winter.  They evoke gasps from even the most wrinkle-eyed old-timers.  Seeing them is a prize that outhouse-goers laud over those with running water (the outhouse is one of the only reasons you might wander outside at three in the morning in negative thirty) and a serious point to consider when deciding where to live.  Their activity is tracked in the Daily News Miner, and occasionally they make it on the front page.  

The Northern Lights from the front page of the DNM http://www.newsminer.com/view/full_story/12304647/article-Solar-flare-fuels-spectacular-aurora-in-Alaska?instance=home_lead_story

The northern lights make you think of others.  A good show is a widely accepted excuse to call friends at two in the morning. They are a temporary cure to cold fingers and noses.  They are something that you want to capture and share.  But camera phones can’t cut it.  To get an impression of the Northern lights, you have to set up a long exposure on a steady platform.  I will try for you.

When I first heard of them, I imagined that the northern lights would be a theatrical performance, like an Imax movie preview shown at the planetarium.  It would be awesome with a capital “A.”  The colors would dash, the tempo of the music would pick up, soaring panoramic shots would swoop you straight to the edge of a cliff. In that first moment of silence that marks any good fall, you discover that you have wings.  And those wings are the fluttering lights.  Well it’s not really like that.

I first saw the lights from Pat Stanley’s yard along the Yukon River in the summer of 2009.  At first I mistook them for movie premiere skylights, but quickly dismissed this given that my feet were planted in Fort Yukon, an Athabascan village located above the Arctic Circle and 150 miles from any sort of town with big lights.  As comprehension dawned, I was surprised at how quiet and normal it seemed.  Instead of a star wars soundtrack, I heard the gush of the Yukon.  Instead of flying, my urge was to plant my feet and sway.  Instead of a laser light disco, the lights looked like big, silk curtains, rippling in the chilly September sky.  They looked more natural than I had expected- like a cave drapery in the Carlsbad Caverns.  As Pat and I stood on her porch and watched, I was reminded how unnecessary our human need to embellish, decorate and complicate that which is already whole, natural and beautiful

I see the aurora as a show opener, a teaser, a path to a way of living that is conscious of all of the miracles around us.  It is a suspension of belief that we explain through science.  I am told that the aurora occurs when supercharged electron particles from the solar wind interact with elements in the earth’s atmosphere.  Solar winds take 40 hours to travel from the sun to the earth, at a speed of 1 million miles per hour, and they follow the magnetic pull of the earth’s core, straight to the north (aurora borealis) and south (aurora australis).   The green lights that I see in Fairbanks are oxygen and the pinks and purple are nitrogen.

I prefer more poetic versions.  Stacey told me that the Saami people of Finland believe that the lights came to be when the fox ran across the night sky, sweeping the heavens with its tail, and leaving behind a spectacular glow for the people of the north to see.  In the case of the northern lights, seeing is believing.

Sounds of a cabin

The gentle ticking of the battery-powered rooster alarm clock that my mother sent to me this summer when I had no electricity.  Back to the old days, I smiled.  Now I leave the batteries in, a wasteful act justified by my love for the simple, soothing sound.  Knowing its there, keeping the beat.

The hiss of water spilling out of the cracks of our old, white tea pot.  The one that we got from Jen as she left for the Amazon and that we later saw its sibling occupying space in Barb Miller’s garden.  It is old and rusty and when you remove the cap you can see that water only boils in patches.  But we fill it each morning, warming water for tea, oatmeal, and the wooden bowl that is our face wash.  Probably contracting cancer, but addicted to the simple oldness of it.

The whir of the Toyotomi stove sitting at the couch’s shoulder.  Its fluctuations have come to mean warmth, and safety.  The old stove is the best seat in the house.  I spend a lot of time sitting on the floor atop a half-finished rug that Sara is weaving out of old sheets. 

The gentle melody of Bon Iver, Amos Lee, or Daisy May that wraps around the small glowing room in the evening.  The “talk of the nation” that seeps into our 7:32 dreams and pulls us into a new day. 

The whimpering of Chandalar dreaming, his legs spinning and his ivory fur glowing by the light of an omnipresent candle, like a Caravaggio painting.  

The late night kerr-unch of a moose on our porch, sampling our ancient frozen jack-o-lantern bate.  The sound drifts into my dream as a parrotfish munching on coral, stripping Velcro.  Speaking our excitement through shining eyes, Sara and I tiptoe lightlessly to the kitchen window, where we watch the impossibly long legs and triangular sloped back of a moose calf through our very own fishbowl.

Night Skiing

I think that skiing is making me a better dancer.  It is one of those rare and perfect forms of balance.  Not the self-assuring mind balance I wrote of this summer with the log bridge, or the flat-footed balance of my morning yoga pose when I stand on one leg and arch the other in the air behind me, like a judo ballerina, reaching forward to the day.  It’s a feeling of controlled oscillation.  A slow adjustment of your body played out on your feet: the rolling pressure: arch to ball to heel to side.

Skijoring is balance in that you feel that you are a glorious utilitarian: maximizing the circumstances of slippery snow.  Instead of the fighting, sinking of your studded running shoes, with skis you peacefully embrace the ground.  Unlike mechanical machines, the dog in front of you needs only food and a warm place to sleep.  He can turn around at any point and senses far more than your eyes.  Sometimes, in particularly dense woods, I look more at Chandalar’s ears than the nooks around me to detect moose.  You can feel the dog’s steps glide your hips and together you are invincible.  You feel as if you are gliding through an endless portrait, witness to the evolving colors that the sun paints the sky.  The gliding comes our like singing.

Night skiing is a matter of rhythm.  Terry Tempest Williams wrote: “peace is the perspective found in patterns,” I would add “skiing is the key to the patterns that produce peace.”  Any movement over the snow creates a squeak, and it is impossible to ignore the scratchy melody you create.  On one hand it is the sound of productivity, and I feel the warm blood flowing through attentive, engaged limbs.

On a warm night, the clouds cover the sky like a down comforter, and in their mist the light pollution from the city creates an odd sheen, it is as if the world is dangling in a perpetual dawn.  A component of my brain resents this light for its false nature, but another honors its beauty, and urges me to embrace the urban beauty, the complexity of change in my stark clean world.  This light sweeps into the cracks and prints of the trails, momentarily suspending their imperfections and my usual caution.  I can focus on the soothing rhythm of my skis.  Liberated from the duality of day and night, I breathe in a feeling of endless possibility. 

On a lucky night, the cloud blanket sheds snow.  I glide slowly, my gaze fixed upwards as the droplets of ice descend and fill the porous land with their subtle light.  In boggy areas, miniature spruce pose stoically from under hoods of snow, like a giant game of chess, waiting for spring.  On a clear night, the air is crisp and the moon shines strong.  As we traverse a thin spruce-lined trail, I ask my friend Brad what he would do if the world ends next year.  He sighs and I imagine his smile behind me, “honey, I’m already doing it.  This world is heaven, people just refuse to see it.” Embarking into the cold night, I question my sanity, but returning I never feel quite ready to go back inside.