What an amazing photo of the sun and moon at the North Pole!

It made me remember my own experiences of the far north when I was just out of high school. 
My girlfriend Joyce had some connections somehow and told me where to go and apply.  It was
at a place called Echo Bay on the edge of the Great Bear Lake,  20 miles from the Arctic
Circle.  There was/is a silver mine and a small mine settlement.  It was fascinating to me! 
The miners worked deep in the ground and I went for a tour.  I have samples of all the
different ways they would find the silver expressed.
I think it was October through to January that I was there.  The winter nights were so crisp
and beautiful!  The hoar frost would be inches long...crystals stretching outwards...
I learned to curl up there and I was pretty good.  My mom was a curler for many years and
skipped her own team.  She won many trophys and even an eight-ender!
 My mom also won awards for her marksmanship.  She said she learned to shoot by hunting gophers when she was young.  It was a way to earn some spending money.

The people who choose to live in the far north are a strange bunch.   When the rest of the
world is so far away the focus of the peoples lives becomes much narrower and it is the
immediate, day to day events that governed the conversations... with a lot of strong
emotional currents over-lapping or slipping by...

Linda Westrom