All the Alaskans we talked to seemed to regard the Homer area as one of the jewels of Alaska, earning it the nickname “The Cosmic Hamlet by the Sea.”
We spent the early morning enjoying the view from the beach, which had cleared of the drizzle and fog of the night before to reveal sparkling mountains and a sleepy village seated on the hill behind us. The rocky beach was littered with driftwood and snake-like seaweed that had scared the crap out of us in the dark, and in the light were merely grotesque and kinda phallic.
Darren tames some phallic snake-seaweed
Brad engages in his daily morning chop
Before leaving Homer, we stopped in at the local meadery and brewery for a taste of the famous local brews, then were on our way to Seward, a city on the other end of Kenai Penninsula, named after the Secretary of State under Lincoln who, in 1867, negotiated the purchase of Alaska from Russia for 10 Chuck-E-Cheese arcade tokens and some pocket lint. Because of the influx of Russian Orthodox missionaries to Alaska during the years of Russian rule, much of the native culture in Alaska is still infused with Russian Orthodoxy. We stopped by a beautiful Russian Orthodox church on a hilltop on our way out of Homer.
At this point we’ve been in The Yukon and Alaska for nine days and hadn’t yet seen the fabled northern lights – many evenings have been overcast, and we didn’t camp outside during our time in Anchorage. Tonight, however, at a snowy campground about 30 miles outside Seward, the sky was cloudless, the moon was in hiding, and man-made lights were nowhere near. Conditions were perfect. After dinner, we decided the wood we’d gathered was too frozen for a fire, so Gordon and Darren retreated to the tent as Brad and I stood outside scanning the heavens for those unmistakable blue-green ribbons.
The Big Dipper was dipping, Mars was piercing and orange, and the Milky Way ran overhead like a galactic superhighway. Aurora Borealis c’mon dude what are you waiting for? We’re standing on a picnic table in Alaska, freezing our tails off, what more do you want? Do your thang, solar particles.
There Brad and I stood.
And stood.
And stood.
The stars were nice and all, but I came to Alaska with three explicit but attainable goals:
1.) See a moose
2.) See the peak of Mt. Denali
3.) See the northern lights
We’d seen a moose a couple days ago, and Denali was still coming up on the trip, but we were running out of nights to see these stupid lights. Every time we stopped in a gas station store and saw pictures of the northern lights all over postcards, books, and posters, taunting me, I’d get a bit angrier at the lucky photographers who were enveloped daily by streaming solar particles, and a bit anxious-er that we’d leave Alaska and not see the heavens open up and fart out those beautiful streaks of galactic green.
The northern lights were being shy, or jerks, or both. A piece of Wikipedia vandalism perhaps stated it best:
A few hours into our stakeout, a bit delirious from the cold, Brad and I spotted a light splash slowly appear on the horizon. Was that it? It wasn’t green, but it also wasn’t moving like a cloud would. It was just a bright smear absent any moonlight, and it sort of fazed in and out of existence.
“Is that it? It definitely is. What else could it be? Yep, that’s definitely the northern lights.” I tried to sound confident and convincing to Brad.
“No, we’re morons. It’s just a cloud.”
“…But no, clouds would move. It’s definitely the northern lights.”
This went on for a half hour before we decided to run over to where a light from a nearby barn seemed to be right under the phantom northern-cloud-lights. Upon reaching the light, we could no longer see the bright spot in the sky. We’d been duped by a barn light and some mist. We’d been just two suckers standing in the cold, borderline hallucinating, wishfully imbuing clouds with aurorial mysticism.
Brad (aka Kyle from South Park) rubs his feet for warmth as we wait out the northern lights
Although Brad even then wasn’t totally convinced of what we had or hadn’t seen, I said I’d had enough and we huffed our way into our sleeping sacks, pissed off at the Sun and the magnetic poles for failing us yet again.
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