Just another gosh-darn sunset

Given the Earth is kind of an established shape (oblate spheroid, aka 'round') and since orbital mechanics are known with literally astronomical accuracy, you'd think the time of dusk and dawn, hell whether there will even be a dusk and dawn, would have been pretty well nailed down. Like since the time of Ptolemy.

Go too far north though, and Google loses the ability to calculate these things.

The midnight sun was on my bucket list. I saw the midday night (twilight to the pedants) in Tromso in 1994, but that was disappointingly like normal night (twilight). Dark, mostly.

It certainly polarises people (boom boom) - I had variously heard it reported as 'just another goddamn sunset', or 'as a golden orb rolling along the ocean, setting fire to the sea'. I was intrigued by which I would find, so north I headed. And further north, and further north still. It was a race of VW Golf against time, as each day saw the Earth swept along its orbit, and the North Pole rotated further away from the sun. Rovaniemi, gateway to the north, and smack bang on the Arctic Circle, had had its solitary day without sunset three weeks past, and was again subject to brief nightly interludes of sunless twilight.

So I left the Arctic Circle and then Finland altogether and carried up into Norway to the town of Kirkenes just west of the Russian border and only 225km drive from Murmansk.

I checked again - sunset at 11:30pm. What. The. Fuck.

I was running out of options. Perhaps Nordkapp would still be in permanent light and I could overnight there? Failing that, what? Rent a boat? I could row to Svalbard if needs be.

11:30pm came and went, and I was turning in, closing the comfortingly opaque blinds (the Finns really need to seek advice from the Norwegians on this) when I noticed a peculiar orange glow against the building opposite. Looks rather like sunlight that. I Google again Kirkenes dusk. Yep - it is now officially night. I bring up Google Earth. Yep - the terminator is well north of me and Kirkenes is shrouded in darkness.

Except it wasn't. And that *is* sunlight.

I slipped on my boots and coat (but crucially, not my cap), and headed out past the buildings to the end of Kielland Torkilsens Gate.

The Sun! Shining bright as day! Literally!

It was only just above the gentle slope on the opposite shore of Bokfjorden but it most resolutely Had Not Set. Well, if I couldn't get a Midnight Sun, I'd make damn well sure I got a Quarter to Midnight Sun. I headed north down Parkveien to the much better positioned, and nicely alcohol-stocked Thon Hotel, bought myself a pint, propped myself on the railing over the water, and settled in for the show.

But, after a few minutes, the sun still hadn't moved. At this proximity to the horizon, the sun can (if only just perceptibly) be seen to move, but this one hadn't. There it was, still hovering an outstretched pinkie above the opposing slope. I squinted, studying more carefully. It *was* descending, only it was also skidding sideways, down that gentle slope. I looked at my clock, 11:50. It's not going to make it!

There's no daylight saving in Norway is there? It turns out there is, but with Norway on a single timezone, Central European Time, and with Kirkenes so far east of the large (by Norwegian standards) population centres, this simply correctly aligns Kirkenes' clocks with its solar day (for the rest of the year, it's out by about an hour). It most definitely is Not going to make it! With striking geographic convenience, the midnight sun bottomed out just after midnight, fully visible in the low point in the hills opposite Kirkenes.

Holy shit. The. Midnight. Sun. I was looking at the midnight sun!

What did I see? A Rubin vase. Mostly I was looking at a sunset. But for one brief moment I was instead standing astride the top of the world, watching as it rotated on its axis beneath me. *That* was worth it.

Just to make sure I hadn't screwed this up, or the sun wouldn't reverse course and start descending again as soon as my back was turned, I waited another hour until it was clear another day had begun, and the heat loss through my uncapped bald spot was causing my teeth to chatter. While I watched, the sun did actually temporarily disappear, as its upward trajectory swept it behind the steeper easterly hill, but that is a sunset in letter only and I am disallowing it.

I saw the Midnight Sun.

Mosquitoes

Australians think themselves a tough breed. We laugh in the face of the world's most vicious animals (for otherwise we should cry). We persist in this belief because we have not faced Finnish mosquitoes. They are the Biggest, Meanest, most aggressive Son-of-a-Bitch sanguivores on the planet.

I should have been suspicious when I saw a country the size of Finland having a population of only five million. If a region of low population density is adjacent to regions of high population density, there is usually a very good, very entomological reason.

Think Scotland. Scottish delusions of national toughness are justified not by any particular martial prowess (massively overrated in my opinion), but by their masochism in enduring all those bloody midges. I'm certain Hadrian built his wall for keeping out the midges rather than their tartan-toting food supply.

My first encounter was at a road-side toilet stop. Which was occupied. Never mind, Australian males laugh at the frivolous luxury known as a dunny. I descended among the trees, unzipped, and proceeded with my business.

It was like the X-Files.

With a degree of coordination entirely improbable from their brain sizes, over a score of them struck. Some targeted the face, others my exposed neck, and some heroically even managed to penetrate my fleece. The truly evil bastards, however, went for bits that were not, shall we say, normally exposed to the environment.

Now that. *That* is just not cricket.

First, I squealed. Like a girl. Then I swatted, like I've never swatted before. With wild gesticulations, I disrupted their attack. But... Piss. Flying in all directions. Hither. Thither. All over my trousers. I tried holding it in, but that half litre consumed an hour beforehand needed out, and I was committed. It was a *very* long minute.

By the time I could safely flee, the bastard hogging that critical necessity known as a dunny had departed so I could lock myself in, the mosquitoes out, and scrub away. I wasn't wholly successful, but escaping with only urine-stained trousers, I considered myself lucky.

After a few days of rarely venturing from my car, I bought a mosquito repellent with a frighteningly incomprehensible active ingredient and that made my face sting like a bitch. But that was far, far better than the alternative.

Santa's Air Space

Santa Claus doesn't live at the North Poles. Careful empirical studies by nuclear ballistic missile submarines smashing through the sea ice have demonstrated this. But rather than abandon the myth wholesale, some slight adjustments sees him living on the Arctic Circle, about 10 km north-east of Rovaniemi (uphill, if anybody else is stupid enough to cycle). 

Truthfully, I can't confirm he lives there because there's no way I could angle a 39 year old guy seeing Santa without being irredeemably creepy. But there were signs. There was his Post Office. And there are dozens of shops selling Christmas crap to crappy Christmas carols. In July. 2015 is forecast to be the coldest summer in 50 years, but that does not a Christmas make. (2014 was apparently the warmest summer in 100 years.)

Santa also has huskies. Beautiful, beautiful doggies, though a little too wolf-like, with steel in their marvellously blue eyes. I wonder whether all dogs were like this before their lives degenerated into the indolence of 15 year vacations. The huskies can demonstrate their abilities, even in summer, but they need visitors to justify this, and the 'worst summer in 50 years' meant too few, alas. One could only wander among their curious ten-sided cages and observe the wholly superfluous 'don't stick your fingers into the cages' signs.

But Santa's reindeer - they are the best. Literally. By personal decree, reindeer are now the best animal. Not the smartest, apparently. According to their Saami owner they're 'not really very smart', with a contemptuous expression that would been accompanied by 'they're thick as shit' had his English been better. But other measures maketh the beast. They lack the skittishness of deer or the compulsion to eat your clothes of goats, and the 'please don't kill me' feeling you get around larger animals. Their hooves are too big (natural snow shoes?), their legs are too skinny (apparently maintained at a lower temperature), their faces are lovably goofy, and even their antlers look friendly. They fall off every year and grow back (which makes you feel better about those antler souvenirs), and harden later in the year into something more suitable for the righteous violence beloved of males of all species, but in summer they're soft and furry, and touch-sensitive (which irritates them no end (tee-hee)). Santa chose well.

Being at his essence an air freight logistics system, it's logical Santa would take security seriously. The previous day I had heard the distinct tearing of low-bypass military turbofans, without ever sighting the source. Now, crossing Santa's parking lot, it returned, followed moments later by a lone Hornet rocketing past, shooting vertically up into the cerulean blue, doing a split-S and then immediately following it with a barrel roll. It was an F/A-18C of the 11th Fighter Squadron of the Finnish Air Force's Lapland Air Command, stationed a few kilometres away at Rovaniemi airport. For the next half-hour it burnt through an obscene sum of fuel with a full, if solitary, airshow. Nominally, the fighters are there due to large Russian forces on the Kola Peninsula. 

This is bullshit. To me the message is clear - 

'Don't Fuck with Santa.'

The Poem

Close, close all night the lovers keep
They turn together in their sleep

Close as two pages in a book
That read each other in the dark

Each knows all the other knows
Learned by heart from head to toes
- Elizabeth Bishop

So rang Terminals A and B of Kuala Lumpur International Airport at midnight Monday July 6th. Over and over again. Possibly the first time they have done so. Actually almost certainly the first time they have done so. The odd dozing traveller, noticed only when they stirred, and shushing me instantly to silence, are my only witnesses.

This was the Poem I read at the Wedding and by God I was going to get it right. I was already reciting it in my sleep. But how to get the intonation right? Is the emphasis on 'close, close', 'all night' or 'the lovers'. Still don't know. But I chose 'the lovers' anyway and kind of at random. Also had to get timing right. I can read out loud quickly. I *like* to read out quickly. It makes the whole thing go away just that much more quickly. But that wouldn't be appropriate. 10 seconds. Then 11 seconds. I finally got it out to 12 seconds. Though possibly by awkward insertion of forced pauses than a nice even pace.

I've got an odd relationship with poetry. Some I really like and actually 'get' (such as the superlative 'If'). Some is a little harder. Love poems have been a particular challenge. I'm far more comfortable with 'Afar the bugle blows to call me where I would not go... But since the man who runs away lives to die another day... Therefore though the best be bad, stand and do the best my lad...' but although possibly accurately representing the typical groom's state of mind, would certainly earn the undying enmity of the bride. Besides, it wasn't my choice, Elizabeth Bishop's unnamed piece it was.

Fast forward four days to Friday July 10th and I was doped to the eye-balls on approximately 5mg of Temazepam (accounting for a 12 hour half-life from a 3am 10mg dosage) and about three hours sleep. A reticence about booking a hotel room before I could pronounce the town's (Jyvaskyla) name (weird, I know), and a music festival in town had forced me into a converted student dorm shit-hole of a 'hotel' with all the charm, and approximately similar facilities, of a Cat C prison cell, and with translucent drapes wholly inadequate to the blocking of the summer solstice midnight twilight.

Not in an ideal condition for poetry recital.

By 3pm we had arrived by boat at the Wedding location. A truly beautiful location, it must be said, even if its crude wooden structures amidst the boreal forest felt like we'd ventured 'north of the wall' (good thing 'summer was coming'). I was a nervous wreck. Alcohol was out of the question as its reactions with temazepam can be... fascinating. I got strange looks from those around me as I constantly muttered to myself about turning in ones sleep and heads and toes. Worse the poem was beginning to fade from memory. Short as it was, lacunae were appearing, overwritten in my memory by the awesomeness of the wedding and restorable only by a few seconds of hard concentration. My smartphone was on hand, but hardly congruent with the setting. Then the Groom handed me an attractively bound Finnish edition of an Ernest Hemingway work. 'Thanks, mate!' But inside the front cover was the Poem, printed in large friendly letters.

The Bride's Sister came over to let us know we were up and looking sharply in my direction, presumably in response to my look of half-stoned terror, 'Don't mess it up'. The Bride's Friend went first, reading her piece, an extract from Captain Corelli's Mandolin, beautifully in Finnish. Then I was up.

In a loud, clear voice -

'Close,closetheloverskeepSTOPtheyturntogetherintheirsleepSTOPcloseastwopagesinabookSTOPthatreadeachinthedarkSTOPeachknowsalltheotherknowsSTOPlearnedbyheartfromheadtotoesSTOP'

Oh fuck. I think that was under 10 seconds. The Bride leaned over and whispered something to the Groom who shrugged helplessly. I found my place and waited for the earth to swallow me as I fixed those around me with a thousand yard stare. Oh well, 25 years is a good run for any friendship really.

It turned out not to be as bad as all that. The Groom's (non-Finnish) Father said it was all very 'Finnish' - which would have been even better had the actual Finnish been able to understand me. The consensus was that I was loud, clear and generally 'fine'. When pressed, someone ventured that I could have perhaps slowed it down a little, but that really, 'it was fine'.  The Groom assured me the whisper and shrug were unrelated entirely. My greater relief though was when the Bride spoke to me later. I can't remember what it was about, but She Spoke To Me. I hadn't ruined her day, and that was more than enough, and possibly more than I deserved.

And I'm so, so happy for the new couple.