So I come to Barrow wanting to see the northern lights. It wasn’t the only reason I came to Barrow, but It was something I really wanted to see. It’s cloudy the first two days, so obviously I’m not going to see them. You can’t see the northern lights in the clouds, just like you can’t see a meteor shower in the clouds. On the last day — the day I’m leaving — I get a break: it’s clear outside. Crystal fucking clear. Not a cloud in the sky. A perfect crescent moon, the big dipper, the whole astrological nine yards. There’s only one problem: my flight leaves at 8:11pm, and the northern lights are best seen at night.
I talk to the woman who runs the hotel where I’m staying, and this is what she tells me: “To see the northern lights best, it’s best to get out of town a bit, away from the lights.” She goes on: “Where we used to live by the beach we’d see ‘em all the time. Just down the road.”
“You mean by Osaka?” I ask, mentioning a restaurant that’s on the beach.
“Exactly,” she says. “Right around there.”
“What time did you usually see them? Because my flight leaves at 8:11pm.”
“Well, I remember looking out the window and seeing them pretty much every night when it was clear, but I don’t remember ever seeing them before about 8 or 9 o’clock.”
(Mark reflects on the bitter irony of the situation and jabs a steak knife into his heart, not unlike the late singer/songwriter Elliott Smith*)
But all is not lost! “I’ve seen them from the plane, too,” she mentions casually. Of course! From the fucking plane! What better way to see a natural phenomenon that occurs in the sky than from the fucking sky itself? Which means there’s still hope.
“Well, even if I don’t see them here,” I say, “There’s still Fairbanks.”
“Actually, Fairbanks is the best place to see them,” she says. “When people come to Alaska looking for the northern lights, that’s usually where they go. It’s the best place to see them. The colors are brilliant.”
So there you have it. Sometimes this is how it works with traveling. Sometimes you wait and wait to see something, and then at the last minute it finally shows its face. Show your face, Aurora Borealis!
*This line is directly stolen from Chuck Klosterman
This entry was written by , posted on December 22, 2009 at 10:27 pm, filed under Alaska and tagged airport inn, ak, Alaska, barrow, chuck klosterman, killing yourself to live, northern lights. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
I think I have finally beaten my sickness. More snot than ever is coming out of my nose, and it’s coming out in great gobs, which means that my body is getting rid of the evil that once plagued it.
Things always come in waves for me, however. One minute I think I’m on top of the world, the next minute I realize my life sucks and I have very few friends. This, of course, is an exaggeration, but this is how I tend to think when things aren’t going well for me. The trick is to live in the moment.
Take what happened outside just now, for instance. I was so happy to have made it to school in a record amount of time, feeling more invigorated than ever by the dense Seattle air coursing through my lungs and filling every single blood cell in my body with rich, Puget Sound oxygen. I felt so good. And then I dropped my U-lock on my big toe.
If you’ve never picked up a U-lock before, they weigh about 4 lbs and feel like they’re made out of solid uranium. I was unlocking it, holding onto only the fat part where you put the key in, when the U part came unlocked and fell about three feet onto my big toe. After yelping for several seconds and huffing not unlike a frightened wildebeest, I finally sucked up my pride and finished locking my bike.
So this is why I tend to think that things come in waves for me.
But what a pessimistic way to view the world. I’m like George Costanza, in Seinfeld, afraid of any kind of success because I secretly fear that God doesn’t want me to be happy and will strike me down as soon as I achieve any kind of happiness or well-being. This, I know, is not the case. When things are going well, they’re going well. When things are going bad, they’re going bad. Because things are going well does not mean they’re doomed to go bad at any moment.
One might say I have an attitude problem.
But right now, sittiing in Odegaard about to listen to Radio Canada in French and think about how this summer I’m going to be lounging at an outdoor cafe in Quebec whispering sweet nothings into the ear of some unsuspecting Quebecois girl, I can only think that things are going to go well. I can only expect things to go truly well, because what other thing is it healthy to suspect.
So maybe this makes me a raging optimist. It’s always 50-50.
This entry was written by , posted on November 13, 2009 at 12:23 pm, filed under Morning Coffee Break and tagged chuck klosterman, party, university of washington. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.