Endless Summer and Coping with the Midnight Sun

A case study from the Eskimo and the birds in Alaska (1973)

Hi,

Summer, with it’s beautiful long days, is just around the corner. I’ve written a lot about darkness and how it is necessary part of every day… but what about the endless summer days of the extreme latitudes, when the sun never sets?

Author Jean Craighead George.

Here’s an excerpt from author Jean Craighead George’s experience with experiencing these long Arctic days as an outsider. The interesting thing to me was she brings up 3 specific health practices:

1. Drinking glacier water

2. Burning fats through a ketogenic diet

3. Adopting a biphasic sleep schedule (half of sleep at midnight, the other half at noon)

Here’s the story in her own words:

Almost immediately, [the author’s son] Luke discovered that there was no running water in this hotel and that the ice in the drinker had been chipped off an iceberg. (The salt settles out of these oceanic glaciers and leaves them as fresh as a frozen spring.)

That night when we dined at an Eskimo restaurant, I ordered whale, and Luke ordered reindeer soup. …