Land of the midnight sun

I watched the moon rise over China Poot Bay a few minutes before midnight last week. The sun had only set an hour before, so it was still bright in the west. When the moon rose and added to the light, the world took on a soft glow.

Already, a month before summer solstice, there are nearly twenty hours of visible light every day. The stars make only a brief appearance each night. Even then, they don’t glow against the black background of a dark sky; they peak through the twilight of the early hours of dawn.

Long days in late spring invigorate nearly all forms of life in Alaska. The silence of winter has faded and been replaced by a symphony of a world recently woken. As the symphony reaches its crescendo, the world will continue to increase in color, light, and sound.