Mighty Mouse and the Midnight Sun

Are you old enough to remember Mighty Mouse? And his theme song, “Here he comes to save the day!” Well, Alaska sister/brother in-law are our modern day Mighty Mice. Here’s the deal. It just frosts me that I’ve got all these ordered items arriving within minutes (7 days actually) and yet have a burning need for them now. Frankly, I thought more of the boxes we mailed would have arrived sooner, but don’t forget I didn't know about the haul road delivery when I mailed them. I wasn’t expecting a 4-6 week delay (I had figured on 2 weeks). So, I sent a list to Alaska sister-in-law…items I can’t live without for another week. I’m sure you’d feel the same way: coffee, toilet paper, toothpaste, laundry soap, garbage bags, mayonnaise. They threw in a bar of dark chocolate, which I desperately needed but didn’t know it.
When you buy a flat rate priority box for mailing, it doesn’t matter how much it weighs it costs the same. So the heavy items noted above were not too expensive to ship. Now comes the amazing part. They mailed it from Palmer at 1:30 in the afternoon and we got it the next day in Barrow. Clearly it made the evening flight to the Arctic. Nearly as mystical as Santa’s sleigh!

Last night was our first true experience with the midnight sun. We had spent the day shooting video of our various moments around
town. We drove out to the summer fishing/hunting camp where one household was having a barbecue and a bunch of folks had launched skiffs to go out hunting. It was a sunny day in Barrow (we haven't had a lot of those days, but when they come the town looks much like any beach town you can imagine). We were looking for particularly interesting venues to shoot that might get a spot in the global documentary that Ridley Scott is making.

The last moment we recorded was at 11:59 p.m. We wanted a shot of the sun "setting" over the Arctic Ocean. I captured a little piece of this Heaven on Earth, but there is truly no way to describe just how beautiful and amazing it was to be standing next to the ancestral sod homes and watching the sun move across the horizon (since it doesn't really set until November). An amazing evening and an amazing sky.