I am fascinated, living so far north, about the northern summers. It is
9:38 pm and I am sitting in a north facing room which is about 10 feet long.
I have direct sunlight shining through my north window and landing upon the
south wall. (For those who don't understand ask yourself when the last time
you had sunlight even coming through your north window, much less shinging
on the south wall.) Having spent my life further south, the way the sun
behaves up here, day by day gaining or losing 4 minutes of daylight per day
(2 hours per month) is astounding to me. One can clearly understand from
this the movement of the sun through the sky in a way that one never can
appreciate further south.
The downside, to me, is the fact that it never gets dark and that the birds
sing until around 11 pm (they are still flying and carrying on) and start
the morning raucus at 3 am, often waking me up. Wildlife seems to adapt to
this, although I am not. Sleep is hard to come by even with blackout
curtains because it is still light in the bedroom. A guy from Vienna
visited my office today and he commented on how light it was at 3am. He was
surprised and Vienna is at around 45 deg. N. Even the difference from London
to Aberdeen is impressive. Sunset in London tonight was 9:20. Sunset, here,
is at 10:06 almost an hour later. At 9:50 the flying insects seem to have
disappeared even though it is still extremely light and the sun has not gone
down yet. While I hear that people go crazy in the winter night north of the
arctic circle, and I have seen a bit of depression in me and my wife in the
winter, one can go a bit crazy in the summer for lack of sleep. How
wildlife adapts, I don't know, but they do.
500 miles north of here, in a week, the sun will not set at all. Even now,
when I awake in the middle of the 'night', if I look out at the northern
horizon at 1 am, the sky is light blue, looking like Dallas about 15 minutes
after sunset. Only the very brightest stars, and only those to the south
will appear in the sky tonight. Astronomy is prohibited in a land like this,
at least summer astronomy.
I am glad that in a few days, winter will be coming instead of going.
Darkness brings sleep.
glenn
see http://www.glenn.morton.btinternet.co.uk/dmd.htm
for lots of creation/evolution information
anthropology/geology/paleontology/theology\
personal stories of struggle
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