The harsh blaaaatt of the Super Cub’s prop in flat pitch cut through the string band’s rollicking turnaround, and we all paused to look up. He hadn’t been high to start with, and was now only a couple of hundred feet up, nose down in a hard slip, diving on the pasture just behind the back lawn where the scattered assortment of mismatched chairs had been set up for those who would rather sit than dance. Within a couple of seconds he was at grass-skimming height, wagging his wings, then up came the nose and he climbed sharply away, banking right to avoid the high tension wires running along the edge of North Farm. Just another neighbor, stopping by for a howdy on his way home. The sky said late afternoon, but my watch put it closer to 10:30 p.m.  Welcome to Fairbanks.

I’ve been to Fairbanks a few times before, but somehow always only mid-winter, when the entire place was locked in a stiff -40F blanket of ice (now – wait, not entirely true: the internet reminds me that in 2021 I showed up at the end of March, when it was a toasty positive 20F, but still got socked by a spring snowpocalypse. Regardless, I’d never been to Fairbanks when you could actually see the ground.)

But last week I was emailing back and forth with an old Antarctica friend whose family was spread across Alaska and now lived – when she wasn’t scaling mountains to track wolves or perching at the Arctic ice edge working whale surveys, on the edge of town. It came up that she was helping organize a solstice shindig at her sister’s farm next weekend. Music starting at 3:30, square dance around 8:00, and jam afterwards until sunset, or folks got tired.

Sounded delightful, and I showed her note to Devon, wistfully. Devon, ever the cautious rational one, glanced at the calendar and said something like, “Why not? We’ve got a ton of frequent flier miles, no actual commitments next week, and I’ve never been to Alaska…”

And so, five days later, there we were, whooshing our way north and west to the land of the midnight sun.

Modulo the logistical and engineering miracles of modern commercial air travel, there were a few hiccups – flight cancellation 12 hours before departure, a couple of hasty rebookings via a connection through Anchorage, then delays on our new flight. The rental car company giving us that worried blank look when we showed up to claim our car (yes, I’d called, and online they said that they’d hold the reservation for 24 hours of scheduled pickup time). But within five hours of our original intended arrival we were rolling out of town, ready for adventure.

First stop, prior to even checking in at our hotel, was west, to swing by the Malemut Saloon, on the edge of town. Fans of Alaskan literature and/or doggerel verse will recognize the slightly-respelled Malemut as the setting for Robert Service’s The Shooting of Dan McGrew. Readers who aren’t familiar with Robert Service may simply note that Paul McCartney claims that the poem was his inspiration for Rocky Raccoon. Readers who aren’t familiar with Rocky Raccoon may… wait – how do I even know you if you’re not familiar with Rocky Raccoon?!?

Sure, we’d arrived five hours late and hadn’t even had a proper dinner. But I’d only ever seen the Malemut when it was boarded up, mid-winter, and I couldn’t resist coaxing my bride along to grab a celebratory arrival beer and check out the band that we’d heard would be playing.

In short, it was all I’d hoped for: moose antlers and dogsled runners hanging from the ceiling, peanuts on the floor, a timeworn wooden bar, and footstomping tunes from “Raisin Holy Hell” at the back of the room. And a panoply of tie-dye-and-Carhartt revelers stomping the boards to old-timey string band renditions of Sublime’s What I Got, and the like. Pure Fairbanks.

But we’d had a long day, and tomorrow was going to be – cue the knowing wink to Solstice – even longer, so we finished our respective beers and headed for our hotel at the other end of town.

Morning – can you really call it “morning” if the sun never really went far enough down for it to feel later than early evening? But we waited until a respectable’ish hour and headed out for breakfast and pie with my old UAlaska friend and colleague John, who’d helped me get aboard Sikuliaq the first time I sailed on her.

Speaking of the sun, it’s fire season in Alaska, as it is elsewhere in the country. When I’ve experienced fire season down in the lower 48, it’s always been in the form of the sun turning red, and everything just smelling smoky. We had that here, too, but at times there was also actual ash falling from the sky. And, once a day or so, everybody in the room’s phones buzzing in unison to alert us of the latest fire in the area. Just call it a summer Saturday.

We got to the farm, bouncing down the long, bumpy dirt road (“This is probably not in the rental car contract”) just in time to help a little with set up, then settle in for the start of the music. Local musicians, friends of the family, neighbors and more established bands took turns as everyone who wasn’t playing or dancing either settled in to listen or congregated around the food tents.

The Honeybucket String Band brings it all

Oh, except the kids. There was a constant dust-devil of free-range kids of all ages swirling through the place, chasing each other, climbing each other and anything else that stood still and looked like it could bear their weight for more than a moment. Launching off down the road, or into the deep grass of the back pasture. Pausing to circle and comfort the littler ones when they fell afoul of the natural obstacles, or each other.

Music. Food. Dancing. A whole hog getting roasted down around the side by one of the cousins. More music. And at one point, a neighbor dropping down out of the sky for a noisy howdy in his Super Cub.

We didn’t stay much past midnight. The sun was gone behind the hills at this point, but the sky was still summer suppertime light, and bright in the reds and yellows of a smoky sunset.

Of course, we were back up godawful early with that same sun streaming through the adequate-under-ordinary-conditions hotel room blinds. There were going to be naps in our future, no question.

Finding surprisingly little promise of coffee where we were staying, we hopped in the car and drove back to the west edge of town. We’d been told that Flossie & May’s, across from the Malemute, was the place to be for breakfast, and it was. Kat Moore, keyboard player for last night’s headliner, was spinning tunes at piano and guitar, and by the time we’d finished our coffee and baked nibbles, it felt like half the musicians from the jamboree had filtered in to caffeinate, sing along, and maybe sit in for a tune or two.

Kat and Jason switching off mid-song

We filtered out some time after 1:00, with the music still going strong, to head down to the river for our Obligatory Riverboat Tourist Activity. Which was every bit as touristy as expected, but still a delightful way to spend an afternoon. Staged riverside activities – a (different) Super Cub taking off and landing beside the boat on floats, a pause by the famed kennels of the late Iditarod legend Susan Butcher for a mushing demonstration. Caribou grazing and a quick – still riverside – demonstration of Athabascan salmon drying techniques. Plus reindeer chili and hot dogs on board and samplers of the company’s own canned salmon. Cheesy (literally – the salmon spread was a 2-to-1 mix with cream cheese) but, as I said, still a delightful way to spend the afternoon.

There were still plenty of things we would have loved to do, but by the time we made it back to our room, all the activity and lack of sleep had kind of taken the stuffing out of us. I have a vague recollection of making it to bed, but then it was morning, and there we were on our way to the airport, packed and headed for home.

About 12:30 a.m., Saturday “night”