Chapter 14

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.

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.