THE NORTHERN LIGHTS
THE Northern Lights are a very common phenomenon of interior Alaska,
much more common than in the very high latitudes around the North Pole,
for it has been pretty well determined that there is an auroral pole,
just as there is a magnetic pole and a pole of cold, none of which
coincides with the geographical Pole itself. All the arctic explorers
seem agreed that north of the 80th parallel these appearances are less
in frequency and brilliance than in the regions ten or fifteen degrees
farther south. It may be said roundly that it is a rare thing in winter
for a still, clear night, when there is not much moon, to pass without
some auroral display in the interior of Alaska. As long as we have any
night at all in the early summer, and as soon as we begin to have night
again late in the summer, they may be seen; so that one gains the
impression that the phenomenon occurs the year round and is merely
rendered invisible by the perpetual daylight of midsummer.
[Sidenote: A GENERAL AURORA]
The Alaskan auroras seem to divide themselves into two great classes,
those that occupy the whole heavens on a grand scale and appear to be at
a great distance above the earth, and those that are smaller and seem
much closer. Inasmuch as a letter written from Fort Yukon to a town in
Massachusetts describing one of the former class brought a reply that on
the same night a brilliant aurora was observed there also, it would seem
that auroras on the grand scale are visible over a large part of the
earth's surface at once, whereas the lesser manifestations, though
sometimes of great brilliance and beauty, give one the impression of
being local.
One gets, unfortunately, so accustomed to this light in the sky in
Alaska that it becomes a matter of course and is little noticed unless
it be extraordinarily vivid. Again, often very splendid displays occur
in the intensely cold weather, when, no matter how warmly one may be
clad, it is impossible to stand still long outdoors, and outdoors an
observer must be to follow the constant movement that accompanies the
aurora. Moreover, there is something very tantalising in the observing,
for it is impossible to say at what moment an ordinary waving auroral
streamer that stretches its greenish milky light across the sky,
beautiful yet commonplace, may burst forth into a display of the first
magnitude, or if it will do so at all.
The winter traveller has the best chance for observing this phenomenon,
because much of his travel is done before daylight, and often much more
than he desires or deserves is done after daylight; while, if his
journeys be protracted so long as snow and ice serve for passage at all,
towards spring he will travel entirely at night instead of by day.
It is intended in this chapter merely to attempt a description of a few
of the more striking auroral displays that the writer has seen, the
accounts being transcribed from journals written within a few hours, at
most, from the time of occurrence, and in the first case written so soon
as he went indoors.
This was on the 6th of October, 1904, at Fairbanks, a little removed
from the town itself. When first the heavens were noticed there was one
clear bow of milky light stretching from the northern to the southern
horizon, reflected in the broken surface of the river, and glistening on
the ice cakes that swirled down with the swift current. Then the
southern end of the bow began to twist on itself until it had produced a
queer elongated corkscrew appearance half-way up to the zenith, while
the northern end spread out and bellied from east to west. Then the
whole display moved rapidly across the sky until it lay low and faint on
the western horizon, and it seemed to be all over. But before one could
turn to go indoors a new point of light appeared suddenly high up in the
sky and burst like a pyrotechnic bomb into a thousand pear-shaped
globules with a molten centre flung far out to north and south. Then
began one of the most beautiful celestial exhibitions that the writer
has ever seen. These globules stretched into ribbon streamers, dividing
and subdividing until the whole sky was filled with them, and these
ribbon streamers of greenish opalescent light curved constantly inward
and outward upon themselves, with a quick jerking movement like the
cracking of a whip, and every time the ribbons curved, their lower edges
frayed out, and the fringe was prismatic. The pinks and mauves flashed
as the ribbon curved and frayed--and were gone. There was no other
colour in the whole heavens save the milky greenish-white light, but
every time the streamers thrashed back and forth their under edges
fringed into the glowing tints of mother-of-pearl. Presently, the whole
display faded out until it was gone. But, as we turned again to seek the
warmth of the house, all at once tiny fingers of light appeared all over
the upper sky, like the flashing of spicules of alum under a microscope
when a solution has dried to the point of crystallisation, and stretched
up and down, lengthening and lengthening to the horizon, and gathering
themselves together at the zenith into a crown. Three times this was
repeated; each time the light faded gradually but completely from the
sky and flashed out again instantaneously.
For a full hour, until it was impossible to stand gazing any longer for
the cold, the fascinating display was watched, and how much longer it
continued cannot be said. It was a grand general aurora, high in the
heavens, not vividly coloured save for the prismatic fringes, but of
brilliant illumination, and remarkable amongst all the auroras observed
since for its sudden changes and startling climaxes. Draped auroras are
common in this country, though it has been wrongly stated that they are
only seen near open seas, but their undulations are generally more
deliberate and their character maintained; this one flashed on and off
and changed its nature as though some finger were pressing buttons that
controlled the electrical discharges of the universe. Yet it was noticed
that even in its brightest moments the light of the stars could be seen
through it.
[Sidenote: A LOCAL AURORA]
The next aurora to be described was of a totally different kind. It
occurred on the 18th of March, 1905. The writer, with an Indian
attendant, was travelling on the Koyukuk River from Coldfoot to Bettles,
and, owing to a heavy, drifted trail, night had fallen while yet the
road-house was far away. There was no moon and the wind-swept trail was
wholly indistinguishable from the surrounding snow, yet to keep on the
trail was the only chance of going forward at all, for whenever the
toboggan slid off into the deep, soft snow it came to a standstill and
had to be dragged laboriously back again. A good leader would have kept
the trail, but we had none such amongst our dogs that year. Thus,
slowly, we went along in the dark, continually missing the trail on this
side and on that. We did not know on which bank of the river the
road-house was situated, for it was our first journey in those parts. We
only knew the trail would take us there could we follow it. All at once
a light burst forth, seemingly not a hundred yards above our heads, that
lit up that trail like a search-light and threw our shadows black upon
the snow. There was nothing faint and fluorescent about that aurora; it
burned and gleamed like magnesium wire. And by its light we were able to
see our path distinctly and to make good time along it, until in a mile
or two we were gladdened by the sight of the candle shining in the
window of the road-house and were safe for the night.
Now, one does not really know that this was an aurora at all, save that
there was nothing else it could have been. It was a phenomenon
altogether apart from the one first described; not occupying the vault
of heaven, streaming from horizon to zenith; not remote and majestic.
There was really little opportunity to observe it at all; one's eyes
were fixed upon the trail it illumined, anxious not to set foot to the
right or left. Save for an occasional glance upward, we saw only its
reflected light upon the white expanse beneath. It was simply a streak
of light right above our heads, holding steadily in position, though
fluctuating a little in strength--a light to light us home, that is what
it was to us. And it was the most surprising and opportune example of
what has been referred to here as the _local_ aurora that eight winters
have afforded. The most opportune but not the most beautiful; the next
to be described, though of the local order, was the most striking and
beautiful manifestation of the Northern Lights the writer has ever seen.
It was that rare and lovely thing--a coloured aurora--all of one rich
deep tint.
[Sidenote: A RED AURORA]
It was on the 11th of March, 1907, on the Chandalar River, a day's march
above the gap by which that stream enters the Yukon Flats and five days
north of Fort Yukon. A new "strike" had been made on the Chandalar, and
a new town, "Caro," established;--abandoned since. All day long we had
been troubled and hindered by overflow water on the ice, saturating the
snow, an unpleasant feature for which this stream is noted; and when
night fell and we thought we ought to be approaching the town, it seemed
yet unaccountably far off. At last, in the darkness, we came to a creek
that we decided must surely be Flat Creek, near the mouth of which the
new settlement stood; and at the same time we came to overflow water so
deep that it covered both ice and snow and looked dangerous. So the dogs
were halted while the Indian boy went ahead cautiously to see if the
town were not just around the bend, and the writer sat down, tired, on
the sled. While sitting there, all at once, from the top of the
mountainous bluff that marked the mouth of the creek, a clear red light
sprang up and spread out across the sky, dyeing the snow and gleaming in
the water, lighting up all the river valley from mountain to mountain
with a most beautiful carmine of the utmost intensity and depth. In wave
after wave it came, growing brighter and brighter, as though some
gigantic hand on that mountain top were flinging out the liquid radiance
into the night. There was no suggestion of any other colour, it was all
pure carmine, and it seemed to accumulate in mid-air until all the
landscape was bathed in its effulgence. And then it gradually died away.
The native boy was gone just half an hour. It began about five minutes
after he left and ended about five minutes before he returned, so that
its whole duration was twenty minutes. There had been no aurora at all
before; there was nothing after, for his quest had been fruitless, and,
since we would not venture that water in the dark, we made our camp on
the bank and were thus two hours or more yet in the open. The boy had
stopped to look at it himself, "long time," as he said, and declared it
was the only red aurora he had ever seen in his twenty odd years' life.
It was a very rare and beautiful sight, and it was hard to resist that
impression of a gigantic hand flinging liquid red fire from the mountain
top into the sky. Its source seemed no higher than the mountain
top--seemed to be the mountain top itself--and its extent seemed
confined within the river valley.
[Sidenote: A GRAND GENERAL DISPLAY]
There is only one other that shall be described, although there are many
mentioned with more or less particularity in the diaries of these
travels. And this last one is of the character of the first and not at
all of the second and third, for it was on the grand scale, filling all
the heavens, a phenomenon, one is convinced, of an order distinct and
different from the local, near-at-hand kind. There was exceptionally
good opportunity for observing this display, since it occurred during an
all-night journey, the night of the 6th of April, 1912, with brilliant
starlight but no moon while we were hastening to reach Eagle for Easter.
We had made a new traverse from the Tanana to the Yukon, through two
hundred miles of uninhabited country, and had missed the head of the
creek that would have taken us to the latter river in thirty miles,
dropping into one that meandered for upward of a hundred before it
discharged into the great river. It was one o'clock on Good Friday
morning when we reached a road-house on the Yukon eighty miles from
Eagle. The only chance to keep the appointment was to travel all the two
remaining nights. So we cached almost all our load at the road-house,
for we should retrace our steps when Eagle was visited, and thus were
able to travel fast.
Both nights were marked by fine auroral displays, so extensive and of
such apparent height as to give the impression that they must be visible
over large areas of the earth. Both continued all night long and were
of the same general description, but the second night's display was
emphasised in its main features and elaborated in its detail, and was
the more striking and notable and worthy of description.
It began by an exquisite and delicate weaving of fine, fluorescent
filaments of light in and out among the stars, until at times a perfect
network was formed, like lace amidst diamonds, first in one quarter of
the heavens, then in another, then stretching and weaving its web right
across the sky. The Yukon runs roughly north and south in these reaches,
and the general trend of the whole display was parallel with the river's
course. For an hour or more the ceaseless extension and looping of these
infinitely elastic threads of light went on, with constant variation in
their brilliance but no change in their form and never an instant's
cessation of motion.
[Illustration: Photo by Paul Schultz.
THE SUN DOGS.]
[Illustration: "TAN," OF MIXED BREED.]
[Illustration: "MUK," A PURE MALAMUTE.]
Then the familiar feature of the draped aurora was introduced, always a
beautiful sight to watch. Slowly and most gracefully issued out of the
north band after band, band after band of pale-green fire, each curling
and recurling on itself like the ribbon that carries the motto under a
shield of arms, and each continually fraying out its lower edge into
subdued rainbow tints. Then these bands, never for a moment still, were
gathered up together to the zenith, till from almost all round the
horizon vibrant meridians of light stretched up to a crown of glory
almost but not quite directly overhead, so bright that all the waving
bands that now assumed more the appearance of its rays paled before it.
Then the crown began to revolve, and as it revolved with constantly
increasing speed, it gathered all its rays into one gigantic spiral that
travelled as it spun towards the east until all form was dissipated in a
nebulous mist that withdrew behind the mountains and glowered there like
a dawn and left the skies void of all light save the stars. It was a
fine instance of the stupendous sportiveness of the aurora that
sometimes seems to have no more law or rule than the gambolling of a
kitten, and to build up splendid and majestic effects merely to "whelm
them all in wantonness" a moment later. A particularly fine and striking
phase of an aurora is very likely to be followed by some such sudden
whimsical destruction. It was as though that light hidden behind the
mountains were mocking us.
Then from out the north again appeared one clear belt of light that
stretched rapidly and steadily all across the heavens until it formed an
arch that stood there stationary. And from that motionless arch, the
only motionless manifestation that whole night, there came a gradual
superb crescendo of light that lit the wide, white river basin from
mountain top to mountain top and threw the shadows of the dogs and the
sled sharper and blacker upon the snow,--and in the very moment of its
climax was gone again utterly while yet the exclamations of wonder were
on our lips. It was as though, piqued at our admiration, the aurora had
wiped itself out; and often and often there is precisely that impression
of wilfulness about it.
All night long the splendour kept up, and all night long, as the dogs
went at a good clip and one of us rode while the other was at the
sled's handle-bars, we gazed and marvelled at its infinite variety, at
its astonishing fertility of effect, at its whimsical vagaries, until
the true dawn of Easter swallowed up the beauty of the night as we came
in sight of Eagle. And we wondered with what more lavish advertisement
the dawn of the first Easter was heralded into the waste places of the
snow.
[Sidenote: SOUND AND SMELL]
There are men in Alaska, whose statements demand every respect, who
claim to have heard frequently and unmistakably a swishing sound
accompanying the movements of the aurora, and there are some who claim
to have detected an odour accompanying it. Without venturing any opinion
on the subject in general, the writer would simply say that, though he
thinks he possesses as good ears and as good a nose as most people, he
has never heard any sound or smelled any odour that he believed to come
from the Northern Lights. Indeed, he has often felt that with all the
light-producing energy and with all the rapid movement of the aurora it
was mysterious that there should be absolutely no sound. The aurora
often looks as if it _ought_ to swish, but to his ears it has never done
it; so much phosphorescent light might naturally be accompanied by some
chemical odour, but to his nostrils never has been.
Queer, uncertain noises in the silence of an arctic night there often
are--noises of crackling twigs, perhaps, noises of settling snow, noises
in the ice itself--but they are to be heard when there is no aurora as
well as when there is. It is rare to stand on the banks of the Yukon on
a cold night and not hear some faint crepitating sounds, sometimes
running back and forth across the frozen river, sometimes resembling the
ring of distant skates. Without offering any pronouncement upon what is
a very interesting question, it seems to the writer possible that, to an
ear intently listening, some such noise coinciding with a decided
movement of a great auroral streamer might seem to be caused by the
movement it happened to accompany.