A trip to Fairbanks, Alaska, 25 years in the making, turned into the experience of a lifetime for a Camas woman.
Seeing the Northern Lights, and capturing them on film had been on photographer Lois Settlemeyer’s “bucket list” for more than two decades when she finally pulled the trigger and scheduled the trip in the spring.
“Family and friends thought I was crazy,” she said. “Go to Alaska in the wintertime? Stay two weeks in frozen Fairbanks?”
Questions and concerns aside, Settlemeyer, 72, made the trek in March, during the Vernal Equinox. It is a time, she said, when the winter cold is beginning to lose its icy grip in Fairbanks.
“In mid-March, the sun becomes more active,” she said. “Flares containing fine particles are drawn to the earth’s magnetic poles to generate the Northern and Southern lights. A two-week window would increase the probability of seeing nature’s unpredictable aurora displays.”