Midnight Sun

Since I read a book called Arctic dreaming, I have been enamoured with the place. One of the last great wildernesses on this planet, it has held a strong draw for me. The question had always been how to get there. How to visit this gem without months of planning and a second mortage on the house. Not that I had a house to mortgage, but it costs a bit. The solution turned out to be patience. Get a job connecting internet “Simply anywhere” and off we go. Sadly, from a purely co-ordinatary point of view, I did not cross the arctic circle. Yet, I was within spitting distance of it and there is no difference in the land one side or the other. Indeed the sun even stays up 24 hours a day this late in June. The photo you see above was taken at 00:07, seven minutes past midnight, looking almost due north.

I got to walk out of camp one night, out of the valley we were in an onto the plains above. Truly, it felt like another planet. Aside from the lichen and snow, I honestly felt like I was on Mars. After my interest in the various Mars missions and seeing amazing photos from that planet, I felt like I was on a different world. A little rover moving around looking at rocks would not have been out of place here at all.

The other thing that you are struck with up here is the space. For 2 hours we droned north in a twin otter over endless waterlogged tundra. Endless. From horizon to horizon, flat like the sea. For two hours of flight, almost 450km. Not a living soul, not a hut, not a road, just tundra. And then a camp, in the middle of nowhere. We flew low most of the way, really low. We buzzed the camp at only a few metres above the ground and pulled an amazing turn, out wing tip only metres off the tundra.

The place has infected me even more, like I thought it would, and I eagerly anticipate return with more time and friends.