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| The Alaska Highway really does stretch through Whitehorse |
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| With camera forced against an airplane window, I got this picture of a rayesd arc aurora from above the Arctic Circle. |
Skyward for March 2020.
Ever since I saw my first
major display of the northern lights on July 8, 1966, I have been fascinated
and delighted by this always-welcome show of greenish lights in the sky. But of all the displays I’ve seen, few can
match the thrill of watching them from an airplane cruising high above the
Arctic circle.
In January 2020 I was part of
the Aurora 360 experience, an event consisting of scientific and cultural
presentations surrounding the unique displays of northern lights than can be
seen often from the sixty-degree latitude of Whitehorse, in Canada’s Yukon
territory.
Whitehorse is a fabulous
town. It is named after a rock structure
on the banks of the Yukon river which resembles the mane of a large white
horse. Although it was in use for
thousands of years by First Nations cultures, it really got its modern start
with the discovery of gold in the Klondike in1896. The Alaska Highway, built rapidly during the
second world war, passes through Whitehorse.
To me, the city symbolizes
two things. One of course is the aurora
borealis. On the Saturday evening of our
trip we boarded an Air North 737 and took a never-to-be-forgotten flight from
Whitehorse to Whitehorse, crossing the Arctic Circle. The sky had been cloudy and very cold, with
temperatures hovering around zero degrees Fahrenheit. Looking out of an eastward-facing
window, I spotted a greenish auroral
glow the instant the plane cleared the cloud tops. As we headed north the glow brightened
rapidly, and soon there were rays, a bright green rayed arc, and dancing green arcs
splattered across the sky. As we entered
the “auroral oval” just above the Arctic circle, there was no spot in the sky
that was not covered by at least an auroral glow. The northern lights literally
surrounded all 360 degrees of the airplane.
The three-hour flight was stupefyingly wonderful. I have seen other great auroras, from the big
one at the Adirondack Science Camp in 1966, to an even bigger one that covered
the whole sky that September, and even a strong red display one night over
Tucson, Arizona. But the aurora 360 experience was unique.
What about the other claim to fame of
Whitehorse? The city is the centerpiece of one of the most famous poems in all
of Canadian history, Robert W. Service’s “The Cremation
of Sam McGee.” It tells the story of
Sam McGee who left his home in Tennessee to join the Klondike gold rush, and
who forces the poem’s speaker to cremate him if and when he perishes from the
cold. There was a real Sam McGee whom Service
met in a bank; his cabin still stands on the grounds of a Whitehorse
museum. My father, and most of our
family, could quote sections of the poem, but Dad’s brother (Uncle Sidney) knew
and quoted every word. And when I quoted the final two stanzas during a lecture
at the Yukon Centre of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, several people
in the audience quoted it along with me.
Several days after Sam McGee
dies in the poem, an abandoned boat, The Alice May, is used as a makeshift
crematorium. As the flames grow higher,
the speaker decides to open the furnace:
“…Then the door I opened
wide.
And there
sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the heart of the furnace roar;
And he
wore a smile you could see a mile, and he said: "Please close that door.
It's fine
in here, but I greatly fear you'll let in the cold and storm—
Since I
left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it's the first time I've been warm."
There are
strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The
Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The
Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that
night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.”
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