Cliff House, one of the Lodge cabins, covered in snow
Today I spent most of the afternoon looking at the sky and
reading on the deck. Often, when I talk with people about Alaska in the winter,
they ask how I deal with the darkness. I usually reply a bit defensively, “Even
during the winter solstice the sun comes up for about six hours, and we have
eight hours of light.” Although this is true, it doesn’t really paint the
picture of what an Alaskan winter day at the lodge looks like.
View from the deck looking back into China Poot Bay
Many people who hear this statement picture sunlight as they
know it where they are from, but here the sun is different. In the winter, it
runs almost parallel to the horizon working its way just above the mountains
for a few hours each day. If it’s a clear day, the sun does light up the
landscape, but everything still casts a long shadow. High noon does not exist.
Looking across the bay from the dock, 1 p.m.
Today, sitting on the deck, I contemplated how the low
rising sun makes the world glow. There are few hours during the day when the
sun doesn’t cast the colors of sunset into the sky. My father, who just visited
the lodge for a week, hurriedly grabbed his camera one day to “catch” the
sunset. As I watched him do so, I thought to myself, “What’s the rush?” Sunset
and sunrise in the winter last hours here.
This is not to say that it’s not valuable to watch every
minute of the sunset. To the contrary, the long sunsets enable the viewer
to see every subtle color as it makes its appearance and fades away. Sometimes
I miss the Colorado sun that I grew up with, but I truly love the glow of
winter in Kachemak Bay.
