It's the first day of summer and the sun shines off the cloud cover as it slides from left to right directly across the northern sky. As this is happening, the sound of noisy sea gulls fills the air. Here in this frontier town in the middle of the arctic, one can hear other sounds as well, but these other sounds are the loud obnoxious voices of the intoxicated as they drink themselves into delirious stupors.
Beyond the limits of this town are the songs of the enigmatic wood thrush which the increased population of those who hate the cold but need the pay have been slowing spreading like a strange sickness that creeped in during my eleven year absence has pushed the beautiful call of this wonderful bird way off into the remote bush where only the whisper of summer breezes cab be heard.
I would go up to photograph the midnight sun strung across the horizon like a string of golden pearls. However, that's a trophy I secured so many years ago. Now I'm being called by a voice almost as ancient as the midnight sun; it's a mysterious voice and most who ever may hear it just turn their heads away and carefully ignore the sound like those who think they hear a sound in a late night cemetery. It is truly what people suspect but they ignore and try to forget. For me it's a call from another world that can be heard only when the polar gates open for their brief time between June and August, after that the sound vanishes until the sun returns to open the gates once again.
Nothing here flourishes before these gates much less any creature or person. People avoid this place and few there be who allow the thought to come to mind.
I know what it means, yet its vastness is as much an attraction as it is a fear. I have waited three years and there is no one who can prepare to enter well enough; those who make the extra effort to prepare are exactly the same people who find that the shadows have grown too long and the sound of the closing gate is heard all so soon. Truly, the only stories about people and this foreboding place are always associated with accidents or life threatening emergencies, suicides or murders.
Telling the real story of this natural habitat to some children last fall was amazing as they understood all so well. I will never forget one little girl stand up and come with great earnestness in her voice as she said, "Teacher quick you must go back now before it's too late."
Even though it will be almost a year now, I will never forget her earnest insightful exhortation and now I lament my failure to heed the voice of one among a special group who know the secret of the place and what is beyond the gates guarding the way to something very wonderful that is deliberately hidden beyond the cold, dark, murky silence for which the gates are placed to protect.
Only they understand the secret and the way for a short time. It's sad to realize that very few of them can hold the secret key for more than about ten years, after which they forget the secret and lose the key and now after six seasons of the sun I find the key by accident while kayak camping last summer; but find it hard to hold. Time is too short and not even the lure of the midnight sun should distract my attention.
I went to survey the entry last week and as I emerged from the woods a great eagle spread its wing wide and took off toward the towering cumulus clouds boiling up to obscure the sun. It was the point of departure and now I'm certain and must make haste to gather the last few remaining items.
