It’s hot.
Bright light lances across the evening sky like javelin spray, and the sun’s goldenrod power glistens above the treetops of the nearby ridgeline. It’s more than enough light to do quadratic equations, if you are so inclined, but at the moment I’m engaged in a different but equally challenging pursuit. I shade my eyes and line up a potential birdie putt on the 10th hole of the world’s northernmost golf course.
It’s midnight.
Appropriately, the course is named “Midnight Sun.” I’m just north of Fairbanks, Alaska, pursuing one of many exotic travel activities possible here beneath midsummer’s tireless sunshine. This well-known phenomenon is one of those experiences that simply can’t be grasped until you are there, like riding an 8-foot wave in Hawai'i or traipsing across a glacier.
Oh, the sun kind of dips below the northern horizon enough to be sort of out of sight for a while; Fairbanks is about 140 miles south of the Arctic Circle and there technically is a sunset. It’s a gentle event, a vague dimming of the light as if Sol turned itself down a few watts.
“A day without sunshine is like, you know, night,” quipped the master of deadpan irony, comic Steve Martin. Night is what interior Alaska residents get most of the time in the three months of dead winter, so by and large they celebrate with abandon when midsummer’s diurnal reversal arrives and they get days with nothing but sunshine.
This occasions all sorts of typical Alaskan tomfoolery which, if the visitor does not care to partake, is still a wonder to behold.
Runners Line Up at the Starting Line of a 10K Race in Fairbanks—at 10 p.m.
That’s designed to bring the majority of runners across the finish line right around midnight. Thus the name: “Midnight Sun Fun Run.” As a former runner, I never found running to be fun, exactly … but as a visitor, it’s dandy fun watching hundreds of dedicated souls frolic across the line at midnight.Paddleboarders Set Off on the Chena River
Back to midsummer in Fairbanks. The Chena is a mid-size stream that meanders peacefully through the city—a perfect path for paddleboarding, with a gentle current (less paddling needed, folks), no rapids, few underwater obstacles, and a watercourse where the surrounding urbanity is largely out of sight.It is, among other things, a fantastic wildlife-watching venue. Ducks and ducklings, geese and goslings, swans and cygnets prowl the oxhide water. Beavers splash in and out of their bankside dens. Fairbanks does exhibit signs of metropolitan status (second largest city in Alaska) such as the largest Costco store anywhere, but it is in the center of the Alaska wilderness. Moose are common visitors, for example.
It’s not a moose that we spy halfway through our voyage, though; it’s an enormous elk, poised high above the river, massive antlers lifted to the sky’s crystal infinity.
“Hmmm. Not an indigenous species to the Alaska interior,” observes our guide, Nick.
That depends on how you define indigenous species: This elk is a statue atop the Fairbanks Elks Lodge, so, well, one could call it a wildlife sighting of a sort.
Reel In Monster Fish in Yukon Backwaters
Along the Yukon River, in the wilderness far from Fairbanks and any other city, the lowland waters near Ruby hold 3-foot pike in profusion. Here in the placid oxbows of the Nowitna Wildlife Refuge, the heavy summer air is so humid and hot, the forest so dense and lush, the overall aspect so tropical, one might as well be in the Amazon.
‘You’re Blind as a Bat, Ump!’
The legendary Goldpanners Baseball Midnight Sun Game starts at 10 p.m. on June 20—summer solstice exactly—and long after midnight there’s more than enough light to determine that the umpire cannot see right, midnight or no.Do Whatever You Want, Any Time You Want
Go for a hike atop nearby hilltops with clear views into the Arctic. Take a midnight walk through the boreal birch woods at Creamer’s Field, Fairbanks’ exceptional in-city wildlife refuge. Enjoy a midnight supper Barcelona-style, on the outdoor decks of the city’s numerous riverside restaurants, watching paddleboarders drift by. Play disk golf in the campus course at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks. Finish with a wild berry cone at Hot Licks, the immensely popular homemade ice cream venue near the college. Head off to a massive block party. Write a novel in longhand outdoors.
Intriguing as these hijinks may be, there’s a much more spiritually profound aspect to the Midnight Sun that I treasure most. The sun is the fuel for all life on Earth, and suns in general are almost certainly the fuel for all life in the universe. To experience its power and might so lavishly yet gently as midsummer in the Alaska Interior offers the opportunity to bathe in it, to gulp and grasp and goggle at it like the infinite bounty of existence it represents.
Are there drawbacks? Some people simply can’t sleep without darkness, but most lodgings have blackout curtains that fend off the brightness. It can be exceptionally warm, even hot, an aspect magnified by the fact the sun is blazing high and strong from 3 a.m. to 10 p.m., and still makes its presence known between those hours. And yes, this is usually peak season for the infamous “Alaska state bird.” The only answer is DEET, trust me; herbal concoctions are no match for sub-Arctic mosquitos.
Late evening and early morning light are universal throughout Alaska from mid-May into July, but Fairbanks is the Midnight Sun capital. It doesn’t get dark for 70 days in that period. If you like light, this is paradise.
As for that midnight birdie putt at Midnight Sun Golf Course—yes, I struck it fine and true and the ball whisked itself right into the cup as if it had eyes. In the amber light of the evening’s endless sun I saw every inch of its journey.
At midnight.
