We've lost about an hour of sunlight since we've arrived.

The sun, itself, just the sun alone is pretty amazing.

The little, tiny bit that peaks up over the horizon in the south. For the last half of the week, the Norton Sound, water as far as the eye can see spreads out to the south, and these villages all rest right on the edge of the Sound.

Of course, they do, it is how they survive. One of us commented as we flew into Unalakleet the first day, "And why here? Why after we flew over hundreds of miles of mountains with not a sign of life underneath us, why a did a village settle here?"

"Two rivers meet here at it is on the edge of the sound." Craig said expertly. Of course. Fish, caribou, berries, aquatic mammals (yes, whales and walruses) all converge here.

And when I said earlier that the sun rises up over the water, what I meant was the ice. In Unalakleet (Look it up on google maps. Its there.) the sound looked frozen, but there were just chunks of ice floating together, and as we went village by village it became more and more frozen, until out here in Nome it was frozen as far as the eye could see.

Until this morning when a North wind came up and blew a bunch of the ice out into the Berring Sea. So this morning, you can see open water on the horizon.

(Anyway, I'm not able to assimilate my tangents as well on the fly here... as you can clearly see. Back to the sun).

The sun rises in the south and then hovers for a bit and then sets in the south. I think often of Wes because of his work with film and production. And how in the lower 48 if you want to get a sunset shot you have a VERY short window of opportunity. You have to be ready and then bam! you only get one or two shots. Hurry! Hurry!

But here... you can... well, literally take all day... so to speak. It is just one big long sunrise that turns into a sunset.

The tiniest bit of light starts to peek up over the horizon at maybe 10 am here in Nome. Then the full sun by maybe 11 or 12? Then the sun is setting by 4 ish? I'm sure there is a web page that would tell you exactly. Or an elder.

But to put some context into it. It was completely dark when we walked to church this morning at 9:45. Then we watched the sun set as we finished up lunch at 3:30 that afternoon.

The transition from Appleton to Anchorage to Unalakleet was not difficult for me. Three time zones. About 3000 miles northwest. Then another 400 miles northwest. That three day period was not tough for me. I think it was because when you travel like that you just -- or I just -- expect things to be crazy. but then from village to village. The flights were only 15 minutes or so. Probably less actual flying time. But we kept going WEST with no time zone change. And we are so far north that we are losing about 5 minutes of sunlight per day at this point.

So it SEEMED like things should stay the same. But the sun kept changing and changing. It would rise later and set later because we were going west. And it would rise later and set earlier because of the time of year. Is anyone else getting motion sick?

Phew. It makes me feel better about going home where it used to be so hard for me that the sun would be fully set by five.