I convulsed, lurching up. A pandemonium of sounds and light. Where was I? What is happening? I couldn’t understand anything. My head was panning back and forth without seeing anything. But before anything clicked back into focus, it was over. The wild blaring of the semi-truck’s horn, the roar of its engine, the whooshing of the recent rain on the road as it was swallowed up and spit out by its tires – all of it indistinct and terrible – all of it soon gone. Then silence and blackness. There were no streetlights here.
My head throbbed, and my back ached. I looked out into the darkness and wanted to curse. It was the middle of the night. My chest hurt and all I wanted to do was lose consciousness again. What was I doing out here? As I laid down flat again, no pad or pillow, in the back of my SUV, it slowly came back to me. I was an hour north of Healy, Alaska. Following the tip of a bartender earlier that night who said there might be Northern Lights later, I eagerly awaited them from my motel window. But as the darkness gathered, it was clear they’d never come there -- all I could see was clouds.
I was exhausted. Coming out of 12 days of backpacking the Arctic, I’d hoped to rejuvenate once I got to Denali, but in the four nights since returning to electricity, running water, and cell phone service I’d found myself sleeping less than I had in the wilderness. I felt ill at ease back in civilization with all its noises, energies, and expectations. And yet, that night, I finally felt tired enough to close my eyes and sleep despite it all.
But, then again, what about the northern lights… Afterall, wasn’t the dream of seeing those lights dancing across the sky, and the words I spoke to my grandmother on her deathbed (“Where will we go on our next adventure? ... To see the northern lights.”) what set me off on the road in the first place? If they were out, I needed to find a way to see them.
So, despite my weariness, I felt giddy with excitement. I eagerly drove north for over an hour until I found a clear patch of sky. I pulled off the highway onto a large shoulder area and got out of the car. Looking up, I could see faint stars amid the darkening sky. “Was the blackness tinted green?” I wondered aloud, “Or is that my desire painting the sky?” It was nearly 11pm, and green or no, I saw no dancing lights. Give it time, I thought, if it is what I hope, later it will only grow more brilliant. I resolutely decided to wait it out. But I didn’t make it long. After crawling into the back of my car for what was supposed to be a 5-minute nap, I fell hard into a dream-filled sleep.
Now, after 1am, surrounded by the stillness again, I knew from looking out the back window the lights were still not out. Post nap, the darkness looked only black, not green. This wasn’t safe. I needed to get back to the bed I’d already paid far. I crawled out of the back hatch and despite knowing what I’d see, I looked hopefully up into the sky as I walked back to the driver’s side door. Some stars, wisps of gray, whitely lit clouds (the moon perhaps?), but still no dancing lights.
Driving south, my mind whirred, but rarely forward, just in loops, asking the same questions over and over – the delusions of a man near dreams, but who imagines himself on the cusp of profound insight. “Wasn’t I owed this? It’s all been so cinematic these last six months. The way people appear. The way I always survive. The vistas which have opened up. Isn’t this the part where the thing I want comes into being simply because I want it? Come on now. I’m owed this…” of course, upon reaching the motel, the sky was unchanged.
The following day a waitress asked me: “Did you see the northern lights last night?” I wanted to laugh. Was she joking? Had I slept through them? Or were they merely the still, “moonlit” clouds? Had doctored photos and Hollywood lies become so grand that after seeing so much of the fake fantastic images, the real thing is now doomed to feel like anti-climax?
“No, I didn’t.” I responded with a shrug. Maybe it simply wasn’t my time.
All week I’d been agonizing how long to stay in Alaska. So much has happened, and yet, things were starting to echo and repeat. Maybe this was the sign that it was time to say goodbye. Not wanting to wait any longer, I grabbed my laptop, logged onto the restaurant’s wifi and bought a one-way ticket home in a week’s time.
Since then, I’d heard rumors that there might be one more solar storm coming. But I didn’t want to get my hopes up too much. Afterall, maybe when they did, it’d be a rainy night. Or perhaps I’d already seen all the lights had to offer?
All week, I watched the forecasts. Knowing last night would be my last chance to see them on this trip, I eagerly refreshed the weather all week to see where (if anywhere) I might be able to go to see them. But as I feared, the forecasts called for clouds. Everywhere I looked -- from Seward, to Anchorage, to Willow, to Cantwell, to Denali, to Fairbanks – all of my apps said 80+% cloud cover. The further north, the higher the probability of cloud cover.
What was I to do? Realizing it’d probably be a repeat of the week before I felt crestfallen, but also felt unwilling to give up. Acknowledging it’d probably be a waste of time, I decided to take a chance and simply start driving north away from the city lights, hoping beyond hope that even if the night was predominately cloudy, perhaps a patch of open sky might blow across the sky at a pivotal moment.
That afternoon, I heard about mountain pass about an hour and half north of Anchorage (Hatchers Pass). Perhaps there I thought -- better than the side of another highway. And so, not knowing more than its name. I began to drive toward it in the gathering darkness.
The pass is a 20-mile dirt road, switch-backing through the mountains. At its highest point, the road reaches 3,885 feet above sea level. Its far outside of cell service, and for the last few miles there are no street lights to guide the way. So, as I approached I simply drove blindly on, stopping at each pull out to look up into the sky, and see how much of the horizon was still obscured by mountain tops. Finally, upon reaching the actual pass, and not wanting to go any further, I pulled my car to the side of the road and waited for something to happen.
But, just like before, nothing happened — not once my eyes adjusted to the darkness; not after the last of the gloaming had faded from the west; and not after an hour, or two, or three.
And just like before, by 1am, I’d given up. I hadn’t even taken a single photo or seen anything that remotely resembled what I’d heard the northern lights were supposed to be. Was it happening below the mountain ridges? Behind the clouds? Was the solar radiation not actually as strong as they predicted?
Trying to put on a brave face about the whole thing, and not to let the whole night be a waste again, I decided to at least take a few photos of the stars between the clouds. Opening the door to my car, I tripped its alarm. The headlights sprung on, flashing rhythmically, the horn blared on and off, on and off, on and off. I fumbled for my keys. I pressed buttons at random. I sheepishly looked to the left and saw the vague outline of a woman in a car next to me glaring at me. Then looking right, I saw four people in a pick-up truck also angrily staring. I started the engine. I pressed more buttons. Finally, it stopped.
Getting out of my car, I grabbed my equipment, turned on my flashlight and started walking away from the cars into the darkness as quickly as I could. It was cold, the stars looked dim, and there were certainly no lights. After a minute of walking I saw another headlamp approaching. A man and woman, carrying sleeping bags and pillows – frustrated and cold looks on their faces. They stumbled back toward the cars as I set up my tripod.
I took a few pictures. They were awful. All of them. So, I began packing up to head back to find a warm place to sleep. No one could say I didn’t try I told myself.
I’m not sure why, but in that moment, a little voice whispered to me. “Take a picture of the darkness to your left. Sometimes the camera can see things the eye can’t yet perceive.”
Why not. I have nothing else to lose I thought. I re-opened my bag. Set the tripod up again, and released the shutter.
It was then, before the shutter had even closed, as if the act of faith alone called them into being, that I first saw them. At first it was just a lightness, no color behind the mountain. Then greenish. And finally rippling, dancing waves of green light, visible only in a small pocket of the sky above the mountains and below low-lying clouds. I have no analogy for it, but to say it felt like watching a cosmic ballet - the movements writ so large, silent and elegant. Divine and fleeting. How is it that a thing can seem both so shapely and weightless? The light seemed to expand from nothing, taking on form, swelling, pirouetting, twirling, folding into nearly nothing then swelling again before disappearing altogether into blackness.
The dancing brilliance lasted only a few minutes before disappearing behind the clouds again. Though those dancing, glistening, beams of beauty never returned, in their place a pale green glow began to surround the mountain ridges. For two more hours, I stood there, hopping up and down to keep my toes from going numb. Seeing my light, an Indian couple living in San Jose joined me for bit. Later, one of the men from the pick-up stumbled out and asked to see my pictures, pronouncing them “dope.”
By 3am, I felt delirious – tired, full of wonder, but also a bit choked up. I stumbled back to my car. There were almost a dozen cars pulled over around me but no one (except the 3 people I mentioned) had left their cars at all. Had they all been looking through the glass? As quietly as I could, hoping not to trip the alarm again and wake anyone who might be sleeping, I slipped my equipment into the passenger’s side door and gently closed it. Then, opening the driver’s door and turning back for one last look, I peered back out toward the ridge. In so doing I realized that from this angle, the gap in the clouds where I had been the dancing light was impossible to see. All of these people, who drove up to this obscure place, and were sleeping in their cars, had seen nothing at all. And yet, had they only walked a few feet away, they’d have seen it all.
I’m sure I could philosophize about that – fate, luck, providence, the nature of adventure, and the like -- but for now as I pack my things and prepare to leave Alaska tomorrow after almost 2 months, I have no desire for that. I want only to sit and admire these feelings of gratitude dancing around my mind like aurora -- gratitude for the miracles I saw in the sky last night, for the absurd gift of having this time to explore when I’m so young, for the sublime shapes of wilderness, for the ways it’s tried to break me, and most surprisingly to me, for the dozens of people – fellow travelers, guides, bus drivers, yoga instructors, waiters, fishermen, and a hitchhiker - who I will forever carry with me as I leave this place and make my way south once again.
