afieldnotebook

We seem to have skipped spring. I don't know if it's the constant sunlight that accelerates the season shift or some global warming thing, but after a long winter spring has been foreshortened as the temperatures leap, the snow retreats at an alarming rate, and Tromsøya (the island Tromsø is on) turns green. Even the snow on the mountains is vanishing, and and every day exposes expanding patches of dark earth and stone. And in the city, fleets of toddlers in neon vests go on field trips. Elderly women have taken up sunbathing.

Tromsø is pretty close to the roof of the world, and up here the year starts to feel like a strange wheel. There's something about it--when I got here in January the sun hardly existed, and now it's like that old country song: that lucky old sun just rolls around heaven all day. The middle of the night could be the middle of the day, and maybe it is: birds call, I sit up at my desk because I've lost track of time, or wake with a start to check the clock and discover it's 3 am, despite the clean light and blue skies. I miss the night, a little bit. There's something I love about summer nights--"show a little faith, there's magic in the night," to quote Springsteen--and up here summer is defined by the absence of night. Which is, on the other hand, freeing in a different way from the summer nights I'm used to: I can leave the house at night to go out walking and not worry about the encroachment of darkness. It makes time, and the day, feel infinite. Everything blurs together, and the sun rolls across the sky in a narrowing gyre.