Night and Day

 

A few months ago, my friend Lindsay sent me a list of topics she wished I would write about, including Living Where It’s Dark All The Time. For me, the dark wasn’t as much of a problem as Living Where It’s Light All The Time. Growing up in Seattle, there is a fair amount of darkness in the fall and wintertime, and the spring is often rainy and dreary so I feel like the Dark time wasn’t that big of an issue. My Portland apartment has great sunlight in the bedrooms but the living room is often a dark tomb. Who knew what a help that would be for me!  I like the dark.

When I moved here in August, it was light all the time. It was fun and exciting to see the sun up after 11pm during my training time in Dillingham, and when I moved to Togiak everything was awesome so it didn’t matter that the days were sixteen hours long.

Now that it is past spring and inching toward the Summer Soltice, the days are stretching out. When I get up, the sun shines into my kitchen. When I go to bed, the sun shines into my bedroom. I recently rigged up my version of "blackout" curtains by hanging the World’s Worst Blanket (probably a relic of the Civil War era made with compressed felt and the tears of Confederates) using thumb tacks and heavy paper clips over my Eastern-most window, but all that does is filter the golden sunlight into a light blue.

Sometimes I still have that sense of wonder when I am getting ready for bed, and see the incredible light shining down on the village. The pink clouds scudding next to the purple mists above the increasingly green tundra marvels me. But, by now, I am less enthralled by the constant light. Constant light means days stretch out. If it is a weekend, and I all I have to do is clean my apartment it seems to take so much longer when the shadows never seem to move. It’s like paddling against the current. I do stuff, I pass time but I never get the satisfaction of really feeling time pass. One night, I was starting a new book and found myself startled to find it was hours past my bedtime, because I had no visual clues that it was getting so late.

My students are feeling this excess of light also. I would wager that not a single one goes to bed before eleven and none are actually asleep before midnight. But they still have to get up and be in school awake and ready to use their brains at 9:30 in the morning. Some sleep through the morning, literally in a few cases. Some show up right around lunchtime. One doesn’t bother to come at all. The sunlight has somehow made him forget how to follow the rules and he spends more time under suspensions than not so his dad pulled him out rather than have to come and get him every day.

I find myself waking up in the middle of the night, usually around 3 am when it is truly dark. Or at least as dark as it’s going to get with the parking lot flood lights that never turn off. But from the living room, I can see all the way into the village and the amber street lights lining up the one road toward the school. Occasionally, there will be a car driving up the road. If it comes into the school lot, I know it’s the local cops doing their regular rounds. It is dark and nearly silent but for the hum of the freezer and fridge and the burble of the toilet. It calms me and I never have trouble falling back asleep when it is truly dark.

In less than two weeks, I will be in Seattle where the days pass, the shadows move and I can sleep at night because it is dark. Before midnight. What a thing!