Creativity and the Land of the Midnight Sun

Alaska is a land of extremes. Most people know it for the summer—the midnight sun, the salmon runs, the festivals and bonfires, the laughter of friends gathered around fire pits, and the electric hum of life surging through everything. That’s the image most travelers carry: light, energy, abundance.

But summer in Alaska is brief. Three months, if we’re lucky—June, July, August. I like to say we have two seasons: cold, and colder. Tourists are often surprised by how chilly even our warmest days can feel. You can spot them by the layers—puffy North Face jackets, fleece, beanies—while we locals are out in tank tops and flip-flops, soaking up every last drop of sunlight. A 50-degree day? That’s beach weather to us.

You have to seize it when it’s here. Summer is our harvest. It’s when the fish are running, the plants are blooming, the kids are barefoot, and everything feels like it’s exactly as it should be. But that joy—the wild, irrepressible life of summer—is only possible because of what comes before it.

Nine months of darkness. Nine months of struggle.
That’s the part most visitors don’t see.

Winter in Alaska is long and hard. It’s going to work in the dark and coming home in the dark. It’s scraping ice off your windshield while your breath fogs up your glasses. It’s the sun barely rising, hovering low on the horizon like it’s not sure it wants to be here. Some days feel like you haven’t even fully woken up—you just shuffled through the hours, heavy-limbed and quiet, waiting for light.

And it’s not just the cold or the snow. It’s the isolation. The sheer effort it takes to keep going. To show up. To stay hopeful. To believe in spring again.

But that’s Alaska. And honestly, that’s people too.

We like to show each other the summer parts of ourselves—the light, the warmth, the joy. But we’re the winter too. We are the ones who rise in the dark. We are the ones who trudge through, who hold the line for our kids, for our families, for the possibility of something better. Joy doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s born out of perseverance. Out of contrast. Out of the places inside us that were cold once, and waited, and waited, and bloomed.

My creativity is rooted in that cycle.
The darkness.
The bloom.
The return of the sun.