Alaska: The word itself is beautiful, the idea of it too vast and faceted to be easily held. Alaska: largest of states, and in some ways the most varied, from shadowy rain forest to the most frigid, light-filled tundra. In my mid-20s, at a time when nothing was certain for me—indeed, when my I-can-do-anything bravado was crumbling—I had a dream about Alaska: a sky-blue sparkling landscape, a place of many colors, more beautiful than any I’d seen. Of tall, snowy peaks; of slanted sunlight and the clearest lakes; of vast meadows of wildflowers.

         I awoke dazzled.

         There was no question beyond when I would go. The timing was tricky, because I had what was considered a good job at a newspaper in Oregon, a position I’d worked hard to win. The pay was generous, the schedule relentless. To my dismay, I neither liked nor excelled at the work. So I kept my head down and saved money. When I had what I thought was enough, I quit the job, drove to Seattle, and caught a ferry north. I left my car with friends, figuring I’d improvise when I reached the end of the ferry line.

         “Improvising” turned out to be hitch-hiking. On the ferry from Vancouver Island, I met a feisty German woman with laughing blue eyes who went by the nickname Mausie, and we decided to travel together. Standing on the road shoulder alongside her, I felt much safer. Mausie had no such fears. She’d explored much of the world with her thumb.

The storms—all three of them— drifted along what was at first a novel route, then a frighteningly familiar one. An unusual wave in the jet stream helped spin them up and toss them off like meteorological cannon fire. One by one they passed over Quebec and moved off the coast. Their slow drift, coupled with the air plunging toward their cores, generated winds more long-lasting and powerful than any seen along the Maine coast for decades: southeasterlies of up to 70 miles an hour, with a few gusts to 90.

           The damage was among the worst ever suffered on the Maine coast. Immediately afterwards, some people swore they’d rebuild the wharves and docks and seafood packing houses they’d lost. But it’s becoming clear that this winter’s trio of tempests may have forever changed fishing communities here.

            When the first storm arrived on December 18th, Mainers everywhere felt its power. Ferocious winds left hundreds of thousands of households without electricity. Heavy rains pushed inland as far as Farmington (near Sugarloaf Mountain), where massive flooding shut down the entire city.

All that water swiftly ran for the sea. I

We’re past the season of the lowering, as I’ve come to call it, when the sun sits slightly deeper with each passing day in Maine, even at noon. By mid-December, rather than arcing across the sky, it merely rolls around the edges, never climbing more than a fist’s width above the horizon. The trees cast thin, stretched-out shadows that stand out starkly when there’s a cover of snow. The sun rises about 7:00 and sets just after 4:00. I try to make as much of those nine hours as I can.   

In late 2018 during our first full winter in Maine, I dreaded the shortening of the days. Not quite a year had passed since we’d left the North Carolina Outer Banks as some of America’s earliest climate migrants. We’d pulled up stakes and launched ourselves into a new life up north, hoping we wouldn’t find the cold and the long winter nights oppressive. To my great surprise, the fading light made me feel settled in and safe. We’d managed to make a major life shift much sooner than we’d planned. The reverberations from that explosive act were still with me. Nothing seemed certain. But the winter dark somehow comforted me.

Early one clear autumn morning I go down to a dock just off a narrow river on the mid-coast of Maine. Two slim wooden boats are tied here—rowing dories shaped like slips of moon, each awaiting a handful of rowers and a coxswain. There’s a thick cover of dew. It’s cool enough for sweatshirts but not too cold to row. The rowers chat as we take our positions, but this is not a social hour. We ready our twelve-foot oars and await the coxswain’s orders, eager to slide onto the calm, winding river.

            I’m new to this rowing group, and somewhat new to this village. Before this year I’d never really rowed. The waters of my former long-time home, the gale-plagued North Carolina Outer Banks, would have been too choppy and dangerous for such narrow, tipsy crafts.

            I am a climate migrant, among the first in the U.S. Jeff and I left the Outer Banks in 2018 after three decades of watching sea level rise and tropical storms turn the thin, once-scantly settled barrier islands into a heavy-equipment operators’ playground. It’s hard enough to hold a sandy reef together in normal times, given that the ocean constantly pushes it west. Now sand-scrapers and backhoes often work around the clock to try to block the ocean’s advance—and to save the lavish houses that line the once-open shores.

            It’s all futile, of course, and what’s coming is going to make it even more so. Things are getting worse by the year on the world’s sea coasts.

Late one winter afternoon, I walk crunchily down a road on a forested point of land that thrusts into Merrymeeting Bay. My snowshoes make more noise than I’d like; I certainly won’t be sneaking up on wildlife today. On either side of me is water, glimmering through the trees. Tides and currents have broken the ice that covers the bay into jagged bits. These catch light from the lowering sun, throwing up rays of rose and purple on one side of the point, yellow and gold on the other. I stand and watch the shimmering colors for as long as I dare. The Northern Lights, I think, the terrestrial version. The sky deepens to purple and I hurry on, ahead of the looming dark. Cool air sings through my lungs, fresh and sweet.

During any other winter I might have missed this show, tethered to my desk as I finished the day’s last tasks. But I can dispense with all those later this evening—may as well, in fact. There’s not much else to do.