Stars and Something

They say everything is bigger in Alaska. The bears, the salmon, the mosquitos, the mountains, and the isolation. All bigger.

It’s a lonely place to be in the winter months, which can span from September to May. The light is scarce, and the dark is long. But darkness comes with the territory. Nobody goes to Alaska afraid of the dark.

I go to adjust my ball cap and my hand feels air where my brim should be. I feel exposed without my hat, as if my eyes are unable to hide the feelings that are usually shielded by the brim—and the dark. It’s July in the Brooks Mountain Range, and there’s light for nearly 24 hours. I don’t know why I worry about my feelings being exposed. I’m certain I’m the only human for a hundred square miles. But the midnight sun is burning my face and lighting my vulnerability.

Interior Alaska will do that. She’s a bipolar bitch. Half the year she smothers you with stars and envelops you in her dancing aurora borealis. The other half she tests your will with endless light and mosquitos big enough to show up on the FAA radar.

I’ve been hiking for several hours before I reach Agiak Lake. I lean down to wet my hands and wipe the sweat off my face. I swear, for a second, I see stars reflected in the deep, calm water. I might just be sun-sick and wishing for stars.

The stars are where I look to remember her.

I was twenty-two and didn’t know the first thing about the night sky—or love. She taught me both. We were in our senior year of college when we met in a field techniques class. The culmination of the class was a field week in Glacier National Park. An international Dark Sky Park, as I quickly learned.

By day we hiked and took soil samples; by night she came alive, showing me constellations. I was enamored by the way she pronounced their names: “Andromeda. Perseus. Orion. Cassiopeia.” I knew some Greek mythology, but the stories she wove into the stars as we lay in the bed of my pickup truck made me feel drawn to her in a way I had never felt before.

On the last night of our Glacier trip, the stars really put on a show. The white of her smile lit up the dark as she looked at me and yelled, “Draco!”

Draco, the dragon constellation, was special because it wasn’t always visible. Conditions had to be just right. And on that late May night, they were perfect. We watched the faint line of stars curl between Ursa Major and Ursa Minor—making the outline of a dragon.

I set my pack down, the thought of stars and that perfect night making my legs feel weak. I heard a splash beside me. Draco had decided to take a swim. It was warm for Alaska. He came out of the lake looking like a drowned rat, his long Aussie hair dangling from his hind legs where his usual “fluff butt” would be.

My watch says 12:41 a.m. My body is tired, and Draco looks ready for shut-eye.

I can’t sleep. One foot out of my sleeping bag, sunglasses on—I’m reasonably comfortable, but my mind is summiting mountain peaks.

One of my closest friends once told me, “I think we only get one soulmate, but that we aren’t always meant to be with them.”

I’ve thought about that a lot. I was thirty-three when I left the Lower 48 and called interior Alaska home. I was chasing solitude and darkness. And I found it.

She couldn’t stop smiling the whole drive down from Logan Pass. She was electric after seeing Draco light up the night sky. I was trying to watch the curves of the road, but I couldn’t help sneaking glances her way.

When we got back to our campsite, we both sensed it. Something had changed. We were teetering on the edge of something unfamiliar.

I glance at my watch. 3:12 a.m. I really need to sleep. Draco is sprawled at my feet; a bear could wander up and he wouldn’t care. It’s been a long day. Days? The endless light makes it hard to track time. There’s no normal circadian rhythm out here. Time is just a construct.

I try not to think about what she’s doing now. Literally, she’s probably asleep—it’s dark out where she is. But symbolically? I wonder. Is she happy? Does she think about me when she looks up at the night sky?

I killed the engine and we stepped out of the truck. She shut the passenger door softly and shuffled toward me. Her body pressed into mine, and I stumbled back against the side of the truck. We held each other for a moment, then finagled our way into the tent.

What we had was best blanketed by the night. In the light, we had obligations and expectations that pulled us in opposite directions. There’s something about an infinite night, full of stars, that quells the darkness. Something.

The last time I saw her was at a packed outdoor concert. Thousands of people around us, and yet everything froze when our eyes met. I don’t know what you call that. But I’ve been running from it ever since—from the overwhelming sense that if we stayed in the same place too long, the world might cease to exist around us.

Draco rises from my feet and stretches into a lazy downward dog as I say, “Big stretch.” He’s still kind of damp from the lake. Now seems like as good a time as any to pack up camp and start the trek toward the rendezvous point. I’m reluctant to leave the isolation the Brooks Mountains provide, but in losing my hat in the creek crossing, I seem to have found the clarity I came out here looking for.

In time, I’ve come to think of that “something” as our orbital path. We all have our own gravitational pulls. It’s hard to say what influences our trajectories, but for me, it was something about her and the stars.

Fleeting, but endless.