“Did you feel it?” a friend asked on June 20th, at about 9:45 p.m. on a sunny Alaska night.

No, it wasn’t another earthquake. At that moment, the sun paused on its journey around our northern horizon, and we, for a second or two, experienced summer solstice.

Solstice is the precise time when the top of the world nods deepest toward the sun. Here’s what it’s like when solstice (a word derived from Latin words meaning “sun standing still”) arrives in Alaska:

Darkness, our old friend, has vanished. Even in Southeast, a person can read a book outside at midnight without a headlamp. Forget the aurora; it’s still there, dancing in the upper atmosphere, but we can’t see it. Stars, too, are a memory.

Male songbirds fill the forests with melody. Mother birds warm millions of little eggs, in nests from Attu to Annette. Alaska is bursting with migrants, here to exploit one of the richest populations of insects on the planet. Ravens, chickadees, and other winter comrades share the boom...(more)