It's Cold, It's Dark, It's Alaska

People ask now and then  how I put up with the darkness and cold during the winter while living in Alaska.

That is sort of a misconception held by many in the lower 48. It is not dark all the time, at least not in Hooper Bay, Pitka's Point, or Noatak. Yes, it does get cold, but it gets cold in Independence also, albeit not for as long or perhaps as cold.

The sun usually came up around 11:30 a.m., and sat around 4:30 p.m., until the last part of December and then started to gain a few minutes of daylight every day. The only strange thing to me about that was the way the sun traversed the sky.

The sun appeared on the southeast horizon and then scooted along the southern edge of the earth until it eventually sat in the southwest. Purists and those who have lived up there for a long time could give you better coordinates, but you get the picture.

Some of the teachers really did have a problem with the whole thing , however, and my best friend up there suffered tremendously. So much so that he planned on only staying one year. He went into a depression about November and did not come out of it until around March.

I kept telling him it was because he was from Wisconsin and he couldn't make it to a Packers game, and the cheese he got up there was not the same, and beer was nowhere to be found at a reasonable price.

His wife installed indoor lighting designed to fight off the depression but it not work very will

It really is a problem, and I was blessed by not having the malady. The villagers seemed to adjust well and you never heard about any of them suffering from the problem, but sometimes I wonder if the higher-than-normal suicide rate and alcoholism could have been attributed to latitude.

I had the reverse problem with the sun. When I was teaching summer school it did not get completely dark until 1 a.m., and then the sun seemed to be shining like noon at 4 a.m.. This played havoc on my sleep cycle.

It is a strange sensation to be sitting looking out the window at midnight and not having to turn on the lights to read a book. Give me the dark and just a few hours of daylight anytime.

I guess if any natural happening effected me at all it was the lack of seasons. I have a brother who lives in Columbus, Ohio, and one of the reasons he moved from Tucson was that he missed the change in seasons.

There did not seem to be seasons in the places I lived in Alaska. There was winter, then a little less winter, a mild winter, and then winter again. Now and then the temperature rose to near 70 in July or August, and people complained that it was too hot and many of the kids cast off their clothes and jumped into the Bering Sea, Yukon or Noatak Rivers.

The cold is something you needed to deal with and deal with seriously. The Alaskan winter can be unforgiving.  For instance if I wanted to go outside let's say for 15 minutes I would have to do the following. I slipped into a set of silk underwear and flannel pajamas I then put on a pair of insulated socks and carefully stuffed the tops up under my leggings. Over the flannel PJ's I put on a pair of jeans and a sweat shirt and top it off with a waterproof nylon set of bib overalls. I would bend down the best I could to put on insulated boots, tie them with bated breath, waddle to the closet and squeeze into my Colombian coat with hood, certified to 50 below. I'd don gloves, face mask, eye protectors, and skull cap. Putting on all that stuff did keep me warm and I hadn't been cold yet.

Some villagers now and then could be heard to say it was really cold out but did not complain. They were used to the cold and knew how to dress and survive in temperatures that fell well below the zero mark.

Besides if it gets really cold they told me they just stay inside. Very ingenious.