Two pieces of advice I’ve received since arriving in Nome:
“Don’t forget to look up.”
“Remember to look down.”
Seems contradictory to me.
My eyes are very busy here, torn between the ground and the sky.
On the ground, there’s the threat of ice. Even when I’m looking out for it, it takes me by surprise. Last week, when it was especially rainy and icy, I had my first wipeout as I overenthusiastically power-walked to get a Subway sandwich. Needless to say, I turned around and, defeated, ate some leftover pasta.
But despite its potential maliciousness, ice is a beautiful thing. It sits in slabs on the beach and catches the light; it cracks in spider web-designs over puddles; and, from the sky, it looks like a fragmented layer of glass over the sea, slowly expanding its hardened reach.
Looking up, there are absolutely breathtaking sunrises and sunsets. Every single day is better than the day before. The sun rises and sets within the normal workday hours now, so I catch a lot of the sky from my office window, which means I also catch my co-workers gawking as well.
And of course, there are the Northern Lights. The brightness of the stars here is a spectacle in itself, but when you add the dancing green (and sometimes even pink) spontaneous, fleeting and elusive streaks of the Northern Lights, it’s enough to make anyone stop in their tracks.
Or, if you’re part of the KNOM house, it’s enough to make you take the car out of town to get a better view.
We drive out and find ourselves heeding both pieces of advice, walking the fine line between looking down at the precarious, icy roads and looking up at the glowing green sky.
And in that moment, the advice no longer seems contradictory.
In Nome, there are two humbling forces: one that keeps me firmly footed in the reality of this place, looking down and looking out; another that lifts my gaze upward and makes me believe absolutely anything is possible. It’s a pull, simultaneously upward and downward, a tension that teaches us how to live in that peculiar space between the ice and the Northern Lights.
