Fragile is the Night

Grab-a-line fast write activity from Owl Moon by Jane Yolen

Our feet crunched over the crisp snow, like Styrofoam being cracked and crumbled under the weight of my stride. In the Arctic, the air is dry, sucking every ounce of moisture from the snow like a vampire needing the sustenance to survive. Ice crystals growing on everything as the dark days wore on. November the sun starts to disappear below the horizon longer and longer each day (hibernating somewhere near Fiji or Tahiti, I think). Only to return bright eyed in February, refreshed and ready to warm the Arctic. But in this cold, there is life. Snowshoe rabbits hop about striping the bark off the thickets and alders in which they make a home. Ravens swooping in quietly to pick from the over turned smoldering trash barrels. Caribou graze, looking for the few exposed rocks still bearing unpicked lichen. Wolves hunt and scavenge, taking Marten, Rabbit, and sometimes Caribou to share with the pack. Below the ice, fish lie unfrozen, yet in a cryogenic state of slow motion, available for anyone brave enough to bare the cold to catch. And Man, he lives here to. Making his home in the Arctic, somehow surviving for thousands of years. Banding together and surviving as a tribe. Yes, it was cold, but tonight was no different from last night. Is thirty below really that different from forty below, or fifty below- no, not really. Cold is cold. Is it a dry cold? The Elders tell me it used to get really cold. Like sixty and seventy below kind of cold. I would suppose the difference between thirty and seventy below is forty degrees. Growing up in Virginia I could surely tell the difference between ninety and fifty degrees (above that is), also a forty degree difference. But those temperature differences occur in totally different seasons. Does that mean when it rises from seventy below to thirty below everyone is pulling out their silk Hawaiian shirts? How many more layers of fleece, polypro and Carhartt could I possibly wear? To think the slightest tilt of the Earth and I would be digging for my flip-flops in the boxes of summer vacation cloths stashed way in the back of my closet. And in the summer this frozen tundra becomes a soaked sponge, home to thousands of microorganisms, but not today. Today it was cold.

Tonight wasn’t any different from last night. Yes, the cold was mundanely repetitive- but oh the spectacle when you look up. Banners, curtains, streams of green light danced across the sky. From North West to South East one flowing beam of color waved under some unforeseen current of magic. I awoke shortly after 3am as I do nearly every evening now- stoking and adding wood to our stove. Peeking out side, hoping for a sight like this. Quickly I shook Gretchen awake, telling her the Aurora was out again, and better then ever. She grudgingly said I said the same thing last night as the night before that, rolling over and quickly falling back asleep. I donned my warmest parka and shut the door on the way out. Standing for what seemed like hours, but merely minutes- watching the show. God’s good time I like to call it. A psychedelic spectacle redressing the night sky from something dark and dreary into something unique, beautiful. On a clear night stars and galaxies hold your attention for a moment. Quickly picking out my favorite constellations before retreating to my cabin, out of the cold. Yet tonight the evening has awoken. Ooo’s and Ahh’s barely make it off my cold lips into the night, but hang suspended in my mind for eternity. I set out my tripod and begin my best to capture what my eye sees. Taking off my gloves for only seconds at a time to work the aperture, shutter speed, and remote trigger to fire off shots. Quickly putting my gloves back on I wait thirty seconds as the digital eye records what I see. I hear the shutter close and remove my glove, repeating the same steps, slightly tilting the tripod in another direction as a new more vibrant banner of green has shot of in another direction. I know I have to get up and teach school in the morning, but I become lost in the work of capturing the northern lights. Mesmerized and unwillingly to leave for fear the light will become greater, changing color, making a new shape I have never seen before. Until finally the cold begins to eat away at my mind. Some how slowing even the very thoughts inside my head. I know the lights will be back tomorrow night, as they were last night, and the night before that. And the price of a ticket only the constant threat of frostbite and neck cramps.