Celestial gift wrapped in ribbons of light

FAIRBANKS, Alaska — It's tourism on the night shift.

Travelers huddle on an icy hilltop at midnight, searching the sky for what Japanese visitors call "Alaska's miracle," the aurora borealis — the northern lights.

Suddenly, ivory ribbons of light begin waltzing across the heavens.

"Aurora!" shouts Yasuko Ogoshi, a travel agent from Kyoto, Japan. "Oh, it is so beautiful."

At first the bands of light form a night rainbow, arching from horizon to horizon. Then they seem to turn inside out and glow like moving curtains of green jade.

"It is as if the sky is opening," says Ogoshi.

Alaskans have seen it all before, but they still marvel at these dazzling finales of solar storms that drift over Alaska's heartland on winter nights when temperatures are on the way down from zero.

"I moved here in 1976 and rented a cabin without indoor plumbing," recalls Cathy Schultz, a Fairbanks businesswoman. "One night I was carrying two buckets of water when I slipped on the ice and fell. I was drenched with cold water, but then I looked up in the sky and saw the northern lights. That's when I told myself, 'Now I know why I live here.' "

Visitors are advised to "get out of town," away from the bright lights of Fairbanks, for the best views of Alaska's heavenly light show. Top destinations:

• Chena Hot Springs Resort, about 55 highway miles north of Fairbanks. The specialty there is travel by tracked vehicles known as Snow Cats to the summit of 2,800-foot-high Spring Creek Mountain. There is a cozy yurt there for aurora viewers. Outdoor privies are heated, too.

• Mount Aurora Skiland, 28 miles northeast of Fairbanks. A ski and snowboarding area by day; an aurora gathering place on clear-sky nights. The ski lodge provides shelter for aurora watchers. Mike Matsuno, a Japanese-culture instructor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, guides tours to the 2,550-foot-high viewing area atop Mount Aurora. In the valley below, Leslie Goodwin takes visitors on dog-mushing trips to find the northern lights. She offers customers dinner at a local restaurant, then an aurora quest with her team of huskies.

It used to be that winter was a lean season for Fairbanks' visitor industry. No longer: Last year, the city of about 31,000 in Alaska's heartland counted thousands of wintertime visitors, including 8,000 from Japan.

Matsuno says his Japanese clients tell him the northern lights represent "a sort of spiritual pilgrimage. They love the romance and the mystery. I try to tell them the scientific reasons for how the auroras occur, but they don't want to hear that. There is something in the Japanese culture that is difficult to explain, a kind of worship of nature, and that is enough for them."

Matsuno, a fourth-generation Japanese-American, moved to Fairbanks from Hawaii five years ago to write a guidebook. Faculty duties at the University of Alaska and aurora touring have put the book project on hold. Matsuno and his wife, Stella, also operate a bed-and-breakfast inn a short walk from downtown Fairbanks.

The aurora-viewing season here stretches from September to early April. Some of the brightest auroras occur around the time of the fall and spring equinoxes, in September and March.

There are no guarantees of aurora sightings. Success depends on sky conditions. Best are dark, cloudless nights. Aurora experts suggest that visitors book at least three nights' lodging to better their chances of catching one of the celestial extravaganzas.

Most aurora tours depart hotels and B&Bs here about 10 p.m., and return at 2 or 3 a.m. Sleepyheads, who opt to forgo the chilly outings but still hope to see the northern lights, can even leave aurora wake-up calls with their hotels.

Fairbanks-born Stanton H. Patty is the retired assistant travel editor of The Seattle Times.