Silly Girl, Chasing Sunsets
Monday 08/06/2007 3:53 PM (In Finland: 10:53 PM)
I lost track of time Friday night at the coffee shop and when I left at 9:15, I learned that all the grocery stores in Rovaniemi closed at 9. I wandered around looking at the menus different restaurants posted outside their front doors and realized I really wasn’t very hungry at all yet. I decided to head back to my hotel, look for a snack machine, and plan to have a big breakfast in the morning … and then I saw bright pink in the sky.
The sun had come out Friday and all afternoon I’d been thinking that I needed to write a blog entry entitled “Silly Girl” … silly for thinking that the sun just didn’t appear this far north at this time of year. As it turns out, the sun is alive and well at the Arctic Circle in the beginning of August. And … it sets.
When I got to my hotel, I thought that if I could just get past the treeline, up on a hill or something, I’d probably have a spectacular shot of a sunset. So I kept walking. And then I turned off the main road and saw a bit more pink in the sky. And then I got my map out and kept walking toward the colors. Every time I passed the trees that I thought were in between me and my beautiful sunset photo, I discovered more trees. Several kilometers later, I recalled all of those trees I saw between Pori and Rovaniemi and it occurred to me that I would end up at the Gulf of Bothnia before I found a tree-free photo.
So I turned back, frustrated and a little too grumpy to even enjoy the walk, especially after I tried taking a photo of what I thought would depict the sun’s taunting me, to accompany my defeated post to this blog. I’ve had this camera for years and I’ve never bothered figuring out how to adjust the light settings on it, so everytime I tried to take a photo of the wedge of pink behind the trees (upon trees upon trees), I ended up with a big black photo of nothing. Here is one of them, brightened up a little bit in Photoshop:
I decided I was finally gettting hungry so when I got to the road to my hotel, I kept going instead of turning onto it. I’d never been on this part of the crossroad before, and I realized a block past my hotel road that it was going to give me a better view of the colors in the sky than I’d had all evening. I found a parking lot for the Arkitkum that looked like a deserted hangout spot for local teenagers -- there were homemade skateboard ramps scattered around it and this spray-painted on one of the walls:
I walked to the far side of the parking lot and discovered a better view of the sunset:
Being in a parking lot for the Arktikum meant I was near the Arktikum, which meant that I was near the bridge that crossed the Ounasjoki river, which meant that I was getting closer to my spectacular shot.
So I found the Arktikum, and then I found the bridge, and then I realized that there are walking paths running under and around the roads leading to the bridge, but no actually space for foot traffic ON the bridge. I ignored the walking path signs, crossed the highway (I saw less than a dozen cars the entire time I was off the walking path), and started toward the bridge. I never actually needed to get onto the bridge and over water – I got my spectacular view from the side of the road just before the bridge started.
After taking several shots while holding one finger over the flash to try to block the light from it, and nearly all of them turning out badly, I decided to hit the “MENU” button on the back of the camera. Sure enough, there’s an option for light settings and when I reset it for dark, and I ended up with this, which is pretty close to the amount of light that was actually in the sky at the time:
So I take it all back … all my silly wondering about whether or not the sun is visible at the Arctic Circle in August, all my grumbling about the trees being in my way, all my statements on postcards about missing sunsets (though I did, at the time, miss them, it was only because I was too ignorant or sleepy to find them. It was 11:45 pm when I took these last photos, and I’ve been locked away in my hotel room by then on every other night).
After I finally came down from the side of the bridge road, I walked back into the town center for food, only to find that the few places still open were bars and they weren’t serving food this late on a Friday night. So I headed home satisfied that I’d conquered the sunset and the camera, but hungry. A couple of blocks from my hotel is a McDonald’s, which I’ve ignored, aside from being disgusted by its presence here in the thick of my Arctic adventure (as I was with Starbucks in London) … but it was open. I was certain that everything behind me was closed, and there weren’t any lights ahead of me, except for a few flashing traffic lights and a couple of fluorescent hotel signs, so I went inside. It turns out they have a better (or at least different) selection than the McDonald’s in the US – I ended up with a salmon patty sandwich (I don’t remember the actual Finnish name for it), and the fries you get are potato wedges instead of the regular ole McDonald’s fries. All things considered, I think it’s the best damn McDonald’s meal I’ve ever had in my life. And they gave me a postcard version of this poster (hanging in their front window, which I didn’t notice until I was walking out) to send home:
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