Arctic Darkness

Since we had the kids the darkness and isolation of midwinter can really get to me. I do my best to remain cheerful knowing that its the best thing to do. I remind myself constantly that it’s a temporary thing. Starting Dec. 1, I always do a very serious countdown to solstice when I know things will start to turn around and go the other way again, towards the light.

Its springtime in Alaska now and I’m busy sewing things for the webstore and making jewelry again on our sunshiny table in our home surrounded by garden starts under a grow light and glaring sun coming in all of the windows. The following topic of darkness seems a long way away now but it does happen every winter and I can’t tell you about it when it’s happening because I’m off in the wilderness with no internet communication. So the following are some of my thoughts and feelings at the time of deep winter in the Arctic.

Before Sydney and Blaze came along it was a lot easier for me to ignore the darkness. I spent my time mostly outdoors during ”daylight” hours which really helps combat the seasonal depression. Its just not realistic to expect to be outside very long with a one year old and a three year old when the average temperature is -10. I spend most of my time indoors midwinter right now and it isn’t easy. Not only am I more confined but I also don’t have the luxury of doing activities that occupy my own mental space… like a long relaxing yoga session or being totally immersed in a though provoking book. I barely have time to put pen to paper. I am a bush cabin domestic queen, eat your heart out Martha Stewart. I hand wash laundry from water pumped from a picture pump well….nearly everyday. I change Blazes diapers. I cook the meals from scratch every day. Sometimes the process of cooking a meal from scratch begins with going out in -20 weather, walking over to the smoke shack with a handsaw and cutting off a length of moose leg for a good bone broth stew. I decorate the house for the holidays with the kids making our own decorations. I make fur boots and mittens for the kids. I read LOTS of children’s books. I make my bread in an Amish oven that sits on top the woodstove. Though I keep very busy its just not the stimulation that I’m sometimes craving. I started living this lifestyle because I love daring and adventure. Its been hard to adjust to domestic life sometimes….especially when Its perpetually dark outside…and you don’t have good old electricity.

It’s so so dark today, I wrote back in Dec., just a week from the solstice and we can reverse this. It starts to get dark at 2 pm It starts to get light at 930am…starts. Sydney is a little confused by all of the darkness this year. She has trouble knowing what time of day it is. In the mornings she asks …Is this morning now? Even though we will be surrounded by darkness for a few more hours. I stick to a fairly rigid routine with the kids to reduce confusion/. Most midwinter days we wake up and have our breakfast, after breakfast we have play time/craft time/learning time. Then its lunchtime. After lunch (usually leftovers from the night before) we head out to have some fresh air and go sledding, work on our snow fort, and hang out with the dogs if they happen to be home. After outside time, its nap time. It’s already getting dark when I lay the kids down for nap… and total darkness when they wake up and hour or two later. While the kids nap I often read a book. It’s my free time and I take advantage whenever I can. I love reading in the winter time. The kids play while I cook and Tyler gets home around that time. We all enjoy each others company and have our dinner then cleanup. I will often sew while Tyler does the dishes. We’re usually in bed by 930. The evenings are really long…6 or so hours spent in the dim artic evening. The appearance of the northern lights help to break up the monotony of the darkness and so does the amazing view of the stars but ….it’s still so very dark. I can’t wait till the end of January when I can see the sun again.

Everything looks better in the sunshine. It’s like when you have a nightmare and you feel more vulnerable and anxious when you wake in the black of night in a cold sweat. It feels like you will never get back to sleep or forget your nightmare but then that beautiful morning sun streams in the window and you are brought back to reality and you can’t even remember what that silly old nightmare was about anymore. Everything is more serious in the dark. Life seems heavier. You feel more vulnerable in the dark, it’s a natural instinct. Hats off to those who work nightshifts!!!

I have some hypochondria tendencies that tend to crop up in the dead of winter. I read a memoir at the beginning of Dec. about a woman who lost her 33 year old husband to brain cancer, her father to lung cancer and had a miscarriage all within a 6 week time span. Not good December reading for me. Now every time I strain to see something in the dimly lit cabin and my eye feels strained I’m thinking I hope this pressure in my eyes isn’t a brain tumor…I really need to see my babies grow up. Darkness can put your mind in really dark spaces. Your headlamp becomes a near constant forehead accessory and you start to think about old coal minors and deep sea divers. We are in a sea of darkness for about 8 weeks.

Whereas a dimly lit cabin looks quaint and cozy from a television screen it’s not always that way while your experiencing it for two months straight. Though Tyler and I have never owned a television, we do occasionally watch a movie or a show on a little portable DVD player with a 7” screen we have. We love to watch shows that portray times long past. Little House on the Prairie, old westerns, Apple Dumpling Gang, Swiss Family Robinson etc. The elements of basic living are similar to our personal lifestyle. We always notice things in shows that are off a bit or don’t make practical sense. The Kerosene lanterns are always being run improperly. Nearly all the time we are noticing blackened globes on the lanterns which is caused by having your wick too proud and then it will smoke and fog up your globe. You don’t want a fogged up globe because you will lose a lot of light with a dirty globe. Best to keep your wick nice and humble and keep your globe bright and clean. When we were filming the last Alaskans the camera crew was always messing with the lanterns and turning the wicks up too high thinking they would get more or better lighting that way. Tyler and I did a lot of globe cleaning if they were around. In Little House on the Prairie you can see outdoor light between the rafters of the roof. When the girls are headed to bed in the loft you can see all the light coming in, that makes us chuckle every time, those poor little ones with that cold prairie wind just coming right in, hahaha.  We also have a good laugh about women in movies that are traveling by horse and buggy and always seem to have washed tidy hair, shaved legs and a touch of makeup? Tyler says? Why aren’t you like that Ashley, haha? In a show that is supposed to portray a trapper bringing his furs in to sell they are usually ragged looking pelts that are clearly already soft and pliable/tanned. Fur isn’t and wasn’t sold to a fur buyer already tanned. Furs are sold after they are stretched and dried and have a very stiff and rigid appearance.

I’m not trying to be a downer about all of the darkness, but it’s a real thing to get through if you choose to live in an Arctic region. To me it’s a fair tradeoff for the other aspects of my life in Alaska. The 2 months of darkness are definitely a marathon of endurance for a light lover like me. Have you ever heard the old Cornish folk story called “It Can Always be Worse.”, about the villager asking the wise man what to do about his tiny house? He desires more space and the wise man keeps advising him to take in his hen, then his pig, then his goat, etc. Eventually he is overwhelmed and when he goes to see the wise man once again he finally advises the villager to put all of the animals back out and the villager now feels like he has ample a space and he is finally content in his humble little abode. The darkness has a similar affect on my feelings about other aspects of weather and nature. After the lights are turned off on me for a couple months, anything seems more tolerable. Rain, wind, snow, extreme cold, no problem, just please don’t turn the lights off again. Its true you can’t truly appreciate things unless you’ve earned them. Deprivation helps to focus on the basic things. Your reminded not to take anything for granted. During the dark times I am very grateful every day for what I do have; two healthy tots, a man that loves me, food, shelter, water, and firewood. Being thankful for your blessings is very important.

When the sun comes back, the experience is one of such joy and awe. It’s not very bright at first, just on orange glow on the horizon like the very end of a sunset so it’s comfortable to just sit and stare at it. You experience a childlike joy just to behold it.

It takes a few weeks before it’s high enough to shine into a window and leave a sunspot on an interior wall of the cabin. This year there was nothing more entertaining than watching our one year old baby boy run up to the first spot of sun on the wall, pat it with both hands, then shake his hips in a impromptu sun dance. Then at the end of his sun dance he starts kissing the wall. Sunshine and Happiness prevail!

I finally figured out how to get videos on my website that will play at a decent speed! I had to do it with youtube feed. This video is our son displaying his joy and love of the son on January 31st 2021. Sorry, he needs a diaper change, and his shirt happened to be up because we were working on some potty training that morning, haha.