Alaska's Scarcest Winter Commodity: Daylight

     There is nothing I love more than summer in Alaska when the days last forever. The flip side of that are the short, short days of winter. We don't have it as bad as those who live in the true North, like Barrow, where the sun never rises for months.
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     But it sort of felt like it when we were kids and we'd leave the house for school when it was dark and head home in the skiff as the sun was setting over Prince of Wales Island, as in the above picture. School got out at two-thirty and it would be dusk by the time we got home. We lived by kerosone light in those days.
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     Today we have 12V lights hooked up to a battery system, which is much better for our eyes, but the days are still short and I hunger for summer.
     Fortunately, every day now, since the winter solstice on December 21st, when the earth's northern hemisphere was tilted furthest away from the sun, we are gaining daylight.

     Because of my bad signal, I'm keeping this short with only two photos. The top photo was taken facing southwest at three-thirty pm, December 23rd. The Bottom photo was taken the same day only minutes later facing the northeast (that's a bald eagle in the upper right corner).