Northern lights were a deciding factor when I moved to Alaska.
I'd first read about them in the Golden Compass, a young adult novel by Philip Pullman. In the coming-of-age story, the young female protagonist leaves her home when children start disappearing. She travels north and eventually learns why. The aurora borealis is part of both the setting and the plot, and I was fascinated.
I grew up in Massachusetts and while children were not disappearing around me, I also wanted to go north. My friends had helped me get into hiking and I wanted to do more of that, but most of all I wanted to be somewhere so extreme in the world that I could see northern lights.
A friend and I scraped the money together to buy tickets to Alaska. I was 17 when we left and he was 18. Our parents made us leave a detailed printed itinerary, including our flight numbers, the date and time we would take the train, the names of the places we'd stay and when, and phone numbers (cellphones weren't a thing yet). We headed north, disposable cameras and printed-out plane tickets in hand.
At a one-story hotel in Fairbanks, we set an alarm for every hour of the night. Every time the alarm went off we'd roll out of bed and shuffle outside to gaze up at the sky. At first, it was too light to see anything. But then, probably around 1 am, we saw something -- some low green haze with the occasional slight shimmer and movement. We had to squint. That was it for our trip; our big northern lights sighting. Still, I'd seen enough to know they were worth chasing.
When I got home, friends and coworkers asked "how was Alaska?" and because the 17-year-old-me didn't have enough social skills to realize they were only looking for the 10-second response I delivered an impassioned speech. Alaska, I told them, was even better than how I'd imagined it. The Gastineau Channel in Juneau was a strange, glowing green color; the air was cool and magical and felt like fall; the people were friendly and talkative and had great stories. And the northern lights were indescribable.
The next fall, I came back. This time it was with a boyfriend, who had one day offhandedly suggested we go to Alaska (I barely let him get through his sentence before agreeing). I'd been accepted into college in New York City but instead of starting in the fall, I decided to defer a semester, move to Seattle, and work three jobs to finance my second trip north. I bought my first stiff pair of Carhartts at an Army-Navy store as my major splurge prior to the trip.
Late that October we flew to Juneau and took the marine highway around. We slept in sleeping bags between chairs on an upper deck and spent the days talking to other passengers, playing cards or gazing out the windows at the passing mountains and forests. I re-hydrated many split pea soup mixes with free hot water, pleased with myself that dinner only cost two dollars. Every night, I looked at the sky for aurora.
Even when it was cloudy (which was most of the time) I hoped to catch a glimpse of something through the clouds. Nothing happened. Getting off the ferry in places like Skagway, late at night, with the wind dragging the clouds across the sky and a big moon illuminating the town and mountains, I still looked, my head craning up against my towering backpack. No aurora. I wondered if my boyfriend thought I'd made it up. Of course, nothing could stop me from enthusiastically and hopefully talking about it and wondering if the weather would allow us to see northern lights tonight. However, once we finally set foot on the plane that would take us away from Alaska, I was sad enough to shut up.
On the sunny morning of November 5th we sat silently in a Seattle parking garage. My white Toyota Camry that we would drive back across the country was filled with sleeping bags, clothes, groceries and my bicycle on a rack on the back. We were ready to go, but sat silently and still listening to John Kerry's concession speech on the radio. We didn't say much of anything as the speech ended and we started to drive away.
Later that day we drove across the Cascades until the sun set. From there, time, miles and days flipped by quickly. There were very cold mornings. There was both terrible and wonderful coffee, music and a kind of peace with the fact that the Alaska adventure was coming to a close, and that I was going away to school. I was both sad and happy that the miles left were fewer and fewer. Neither of us said it exactly but the relationship was also going to end.
We were driving through eastern Canada on our last night. I was leaning forward and focused on the road, sick of driving and whatever music we were listening to. There wasn't really anything left to look forward to at that point except home. Then, in the darkness, there was a crack in the windshield that hadn't been there before. The sliver started to open up. It was green. I pulled over and we both stepped outside the warm car into the cold November air on our respective sides of the car and watched northern lights light up the sky for what felt like an hour, at least.
They were green, bright and moving in sweeping columns, bunching into brighter slivers of light at points and then running across the sky only to dissolve in corners of haze and re-unite in a different direction. It was probably 15 degrees outside and I was only wearing a sweatshirt, but I didn't feel cold. I'm not, and have never been, a religious person, but the lights felt bigger than me. This was a good feeling for a teenager whose big adventure and relationship was ending as she headed off to the big unknown of college in a major city. The aurora was something beautiful and stunning that I could barely comprehend; it felt otherworldly..
Now, more than 10 years later and in Alaska, it's fall and the lights have been amazing -- visible even over Anchorage. I lived in New York City during college a long time ago, I eventually got married and now I don't have to work three jobs in order to afford chasing northern lights. I only have to force myself to stay up until 2 a.m. and then sit out on the roof.
It's worth it. It's just as amazing, if not more, as it was that first time in Fairbanks, then in Canada, and now in my backyard. Watching northern lights, my life and problems feel just as reassuringly tiny now as they did then; the lights are just as otherworldly, and I love that. The Golden Compass is still on my bookshelf.
Aurora viewing tends to be better in shoulder seasons, and guess what -- we're in one! Check out the forecast at gi.alaska.edu/AuroraForecast
Alli Harvey works, lives and plays in Anchorage.