Alaska's Aurora

Come out to see the aurora, he said. I stopped preparing supper, slipped on my down jacket, donned my warmest hat and gloves, and stepped into felt-lined pacs. Glancing out from the cabin's porch into the spire-like spruce, I did not see him at first, melting into the trees. In a worshipful stance, his arms were raised to the skies. Often working outside, he was at home there.  A goddess's beacon of light, the aurora winked through the thin tree limbs like dark lashes on a flirtatious night sky. The aurora seemed to appear and disappear on a capricious whim.

 I pulled up my down coat to my nose and buried it like a husky in a tightly wrapped tail of welcoming warmth. Far below zero, the cold clenched my breathing and pinched my nose tightly, as I slipped farther out into the Alaskan darkness. My boots broke through the drift's stiff coating and through to its soft underbelly. Looking back at the beckoning light of our cabin, how tiny it appeared in the unforgiving, cold, black, Alaskan night.