When It's Dark All the Time - #7715
Friday, August 5, 2016
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The lady in the airplane seat next to me was from Norway. And I knew she had experienced something I needed to know about-winter months with very long nights and summer months with very long days. With our Native American team planning some major summer outreach among Native young people in Alaska at that point, I was especially interested in what our days would be like up there. My neighbor from Norway made the answer very clear-they'd be endless! She said that even after all the years living there, she could never sleep much in those northern days where there is virtually no dark. I thought, "O-o-o, it should be a lot of fun getting our team to sleep at night, when there is no night." But then I was curious to know about those December days when we have only about nine hours or so of daylight. She told me about a time when it was, in her words, "almost always dark" where she lives. It's hard for me to imagine weeks where you basically never see the light of the sun. It's not hard for me to imagine the way my Norwegian neighbor said many people feel during that time - really depressed.