It seems all of us volunteers have been struck by the sunshine lately. So much so that we’ve reflected on it again and again and again.
But it was not only the extended days that hypnotized me; it was the way in which they arrived. Wasn’t it just a couple weeks ago that I was skiing out on the thick, solid sea ice? Now it has revealed its translucent weakness in patches. Change seemed quick. Sand reappeared on the shore, the ravens are no longer the lone birds in the sky, and the sound of rushing rivers and trickling streams have replaced the roar of snow machines.
It wasn’t until the sun hit me straight in the face (giving me my first Alaskan tan, by the way) that I realized the world around me was changing. But of course, change had always been happening. We’ve been gaining daylight since December. The change itself has been gradual; my senses were just untrained in noticing it.
Just a few days ago, a letter from a friend back home got me thinking about how these past nine months have changed me and I struggled to pinpoint specific ways in which they have. Have I become more patient? Less fearful? A better listener?
The truth is, I have felt rumbles of change shaking my core day-by-day, month-by-month. People here have a way of sitting on the edge of life, their feet dangling over the edge, redefining “impossible”. They’ve brought me up and down hills I didn’t think I could climb, they’ve filled our freezers with soup, caribou and fish, and they’ve sent handwritten song request notes and care packages. When you live among people like this, you can’t help but feel a shift in your way of thinking and being. It’s a subtle shift, an unidentifiable one, but it’s there just underneath the surface.
Change, I’ve come to realize, means the return of the sun minute by minute. It means exposed tundra surrounded by patches of waist-high snow. It means ice shifting and cracking beneath your feet. Change is gradual, subtle differences that are hard to see as they’re happening but even harder to ignore when they’ve reached their peak. It means not really knowing what you’re about to become (shout out to Jenn) but knowing that you’re becoming something and that maybe one day it will be as powerful and clear to you as the day when the sun struck.
