Savoring the darkness in Alaska

In my part of Alaska, not far from Anchorage, winter solstice is always a dark day, but not because of the lack of light. Instead, I lament the impending loss of winter’s long nights, with all their calm and beauty.

This makes me a contrarian amid all the hoopla over returning light. Yet, as we freefall into a climate-changed world, it seems more people are giving darkness and its benefits a fresh look.

We begin feeling the loss of darkness only a few weeks after solstice. By February, the low-angle lighting that has graced our lives since November is gone, chased off by a sun that arcs higher each day. Some years, if the weather is too clear, it ends even earlier.

I’m no curmudgeon, and I think sunshine has its place. In summer, I like to grow a few potatoes, and I appreciate birdsongs and the general flowering of things. Still, the dark of winter just makes me happy.

I’m cheeriest on nights like tonight, when my walk home from work is brightened only by streetlamps and lighted windows reflecting on snow. Unseen flurries melt against my face as I pass our snow-quieted ballfields, where an owl gives a lone cheer from her bleacher seats high in a cottonwood. Sometimes I hear coyotes in the woods beyond. They remind me that lynx, hares, moose, and others remain busily active in the dark.

On clear nights, my little eyes can see over 2 million light-years to the Andromeda Galaxy, or even nearer neighbors like Betelgeuse, the Pleiades and our local bear, Ursa Major, overhead. Sometimes there’s the aurora, too, flowing and even lancing across the sky, backlighting snowy peaks and the ghoulish crowns of ancient hemlocks.

Even by day the darkness seems comfortingly near, as my shadow attests. While in summer it cowers close, hiding from the sun, in winter it freely wanders the snowy hills with me, stretching far ahead like a comically slender space alien as we cross fields of diamonds. Beyond, low-angle light tints the mountains pink and purple.

My town is full of walkers. In the dark, we don headlamps and reflective vests, while our dogs sport lighted collars. We look festive, like our homes at this time of year. And while I’m all for safety, I cut my light when there are no cars. My pupils swell to drink in the night’s ambient light. Snow illuminates the world and trees become silhouettes among the stars.

The beauty of all this captivates me, but darkness offers more than aesthetics. With sleep hygiene back in fashion, we know dark nights promote healthy sleep, the deep kind that recharges our bodies and reboots our minds.

In these hot times, the coolness of the dark is also gaining value. In the north, winter’s long nights help protect our snow, which insulates glaciers, permafrost and sea ice. Each is an essential component of our local landscapes, but they are globally important, too, for maintaining sea levels, storing carbon and moderating weather.

It’s true in the temperate zones, too, where winter’s reprieve from the sun helps the Colorado and Columbia rivers and all their tributaries maintain the cool temperatures that native fish need throughout the year.

In summer, every minute of darkness helps preserve that coolness, slowing the evapotranspiration that increasingly taxes lakes, rivers and wetlands. It even helps desert soils and plants like the saguaro, which wisely opts to flower and transpire only at night. Wildland fires often abate in darkness, too.

Darkness also increasingly shelters workers from heat, the top weather-related killer of Americans. Especially in agriculture, the extreme heat now plaguing the Southwest and Pacific Northwest increasingly forces agricultural workers to clock in before dawn or during evenings.

But in an insidious twist, climate change is warming nights faster than days, contributing to longer autumns, shorter winters and less relief from heat stress for people, plants and animals. In a recent example in Arizona, once-sturdy saguaros dropped limbs or toppled over after experiencing record-high nighttime temperatures.

All this points to a rising need for the cool and calm of night, and the many benefits brought by darkness, dormancy and cold.

Tim Lydon is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He lives in Girdwood, Alaska.

Northern lights Alaska, Image Tim Lydon