Giesie – Summer (July)
The summer begins in the north with the summer solstice end of June. The trees are green now and the flowers begin to blossom. The days are warm and you can see the midnight sun. You can go for a walk in the mountains because, finally, the snow is gone now. It isn’t only me who likes to go to the mountains at this time of the year, the reindeers also prefer to be in higher altitudes to escape the mosquitos. Now their calves are earmarked so that it is easy to see who is the owner of this reindeer.
Since summer is so short in the far north, I try to spend as much time as possible outside and since we have eternal daylight in summer, it is pretty easy to turn night into day. Most of the time it is even more enjoyable to go for a walk during the night because it is colder than during the day and the light is duller and better suited for taking pictures. But, on the other hand, I get a rather irregular sleeping rhythm due to the eternal daylight and from July on I start yearning for the darkness of the night.
End of July the sun disappears under the horizon again for the first time. Then, it is still a nightless night and it gets dusky only for a short time around midnight. But when the sun now slowly disappears for a longer time each day, summer is also slowly disappearing and makes place for the late summer and autumn season.
There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.
By Robert William Service