Yesterday I meandered through some comments about the toll Alaska summer takes. I feel it now as I write. Worn out. It seems nuts that one would long for winter, but I do.
It is true I love the summer here. It is magical and I am not complaining. I love the long days too much and that is the problem. Because one can work ridiculous hours, one does. Because the light makes it easier to awaken in the middle of the night, one does, and pays for it.
I remember driving home from the airport in June 2019. Some of the "red eye" arrivals are at 2 AM and there was a luggage issue so it was 4 AM before we turned off the four lane highway for the last half mile before home. The sun was bright directly in the windshield and I looked down at the dash. It told me we were heading N.
N as in North. But I am staring at the sun! What gives?!
Google knows everything, or something like that. So I googled and found this:
"Azimuth," it turns out, means (layman's terms) the degree of the sun on a 360 flat layout. In this case 180 would be perfect due north (or south) and the sun at peak is only .01 degrees from that.
Except this is a winter photo and he is showing the opposite from summer solstice. Degrees would be the same, only opposite.
Now I am out of time and I am not sure I have this right. It is hard for me to believe the sun actually rises and sets at all-but true north or south at the solstice. But it may be.
I know it is close. I saw it.
Beautiful, wonderful land of the Midnight Sun.
[Correction] I think the issue is the sun peaks at due north or south, depending on which solstice we are dealing with. It does not follow that it would also rise at opposite degree. I need to study this more. All I know is it rose pretty close to true North and that was mind-warping.
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