Alaska Field Note: On the Edge of the Cooler Season
August in Alaska is still summer, but it no longer feels endless.
The evenings have begun arriving a little earlier. The light sits lower over the mountains. The beautiful pink fireweed has turned to white puffs. I notice the shift the most in the early mornings, when the sun used to greet me but now, the darkness has settled in earlier and earlier.
Nothing has stopped. If anything, August has felt extraordinarily full.
brown bear viewing with Wild Coast Excursions in August
There have been salmon pulled from their run and laid across the deck during the Golden North Salmon Derby here in Juneau. Bears moving along the shoreline anxious for a salmon and we linger by the fire just a little longer, soaking up the sun as it sets.
This is one of the things I love about August here. Alaska does not gently empty itself into fall. For a while, everything seems to happen at once.
The salmon are still running. The bears are feeding. Boats are still leaving the harbor in the morning. The trails are green. Wildflowers remain in places. There are still days warm enough to make you forget what is coming.
And yet, you can feel the change.
the ‘berry patch’ cabin by Eagle Beach
It is there in the colder air beside the water and in the way a fire feels less decorative now than it did a month ago.
Maybe that is what makes this part of the season so beautiful. August still offers almost everything we wait for during an Alaska summer, but there is suddenly an awareness of time inside it.
You stay outside a little longer because you know these evenings are becoming finite. You look harder when a whale surfaces. You stand beside the fire after the sun drops and understand that the warmth matters in a way it did not in June.
a black bear walking by the stream hunting for salmon right at dusk
August camp fire right at sunset - I can feel the shift in the season
While the summer season has not ended just yet, it has simply started reminding us that it will.
Perhaps late August is beautiful precisely because, for the first time all season, you remember to notice.
