Dark

This has happened to me before — arriving in Anchorage in December from the East coast, I am awake and up by 4am Alaska time because of the time change (and that’s sleeping late for me! Many times I haven’t been able to sleep past 3am that first day or two) and because Alaska’s time zones were compressed in the 1980s to artificially keep the state not quite so far behind the rest of the country, in December the sun doesn’t rise above the Chugach mountain range until after 10am. 10:01am today to be exact. And it sets at 3:43pm. But in the old days, the 1970s when I was in high school here, in mid December the sun set at 2:30pm just as school got out. So we kids were pretty used to going to school in the dark and going home in the dark. I don’t remember minding it at all; it was just a fact of life.

As an adult who’s used to sunrise on the East coast at around 7:30 or 8am even in the winter, and some warmth to the sun, even in January, I’m not sure I could live here through the winter anymore.

But I do love the dark. Just maybe not quite this much dark.

My favorite thing to do when I get up in the pitch dark is to light some candles. There is something so soft, so comforting in flickering candlelight surrounded by immense dark. It’s cheering and hopeful. In December, with Christmas coming, it makes perfect sense to put lighted candles in windows, or outdoor lanterns or maybe a string of little white lights along the yard. Cheerful and hopeful. Some people up here in Alaska take it a bit far with some pretty elaborate outdoor lighting displays, but hey, I can’t fault them in the least!

I have to laugh, remembering a Christmas trip up to Anchorage in the mid 1990s when our daughters were still young. We were all awake and having breakfast by 4am and then we waited and waited and waited for it to get light. My youngest asked, “Mom, does the sun ever come up here?” At least it was snowy then, as it is now, and the blanket of white snow makes it not quite so dark after all. And we had brought our headlamps which shone soft white light on the snow as we went for an early morning walk.