Twice I was able to ignore the rising sun and drift back to sleep for, a further, three hours, but each time I awoke groggy and more tired than if I had just gotten out of bed in the first place. So when it happened again the other day, I stared at the ceiling for twenty minutes, and fed up with that, swung my legs over the edge, got my bearings, and headed for the front room.
It is worth noting that many people wake much earlier than usual at this time of year. The mid-June sun puts itself to bed around 9:30pm and peeps over the horizon again at 4:45am, so we only see darkness for approximately 7 hours instead of the average 12 we experience through the winter months. Although Dave and I have room darkening blinds and shades in our bedroom, we sleep with the door open. We tried closing it, but that experiment came to an abrupt halt the night I walked into it, during one of my half-awake trips to the kitchen for a sip of water. There are large windows throughout the rest of our home, and the living room brightens the moment the first rays of sunshine appear. It doesn’t matter how tightly I squeeze my eyes shut, the light filters through, and since I can only hide under the covers for so long before I have to come up for air, I eventually give up and get up.
So anyway, there I was at 5:40 in the morning, sitting in my chair, keeping an eye on the TV weather station, and watching the clouds move in grey and heavy. There was exhaust coming out of the neighbour’s smokestack, but I was not willing to put the heat on in the middle of June - that would have been declaring defeat - preferring instead to pile on a few more layers: a blanket over my legs, a sweater for my shoulders. The rain was wonderful and so needed, and I didn’t care that the forecast high for the day was only 9 degrees Celsius! (My mother, who has been chafing at the bit to get the rest of her annuals into the ground, did not share my enthusiasm. Strange.)
Because I used to farm, I know how crucial adequate moisture is to crops and pastures, and I can still remember three-day soakers where we ended up with enough rain to replenish the sloughs. (I also recall trying to throw the heavy bales we cut from slough grass. Not fun!) We are definitely not to the point of having enough water to fill the dugouts, but I know that will happen. We just have to wait out the dry cycle and maybe, just maybe, this year will be the turning point. I’m not getting too excited as it is a little early to count chickens, but it looked promising as I watched the rain come down that morning. And as long as it keeps it up - a half inch/1.25 centimetres here, an inch/2.5 centimetres there - the fields and gardens will do well.
Now, of course, it is quite possible that this moisture will also encourage our little blood-sucking mosquito friends to flourish, but luck works both ways. When I was 9 or 10, my father took my brother and me out west on vacation. Dad took the back seat out of our car, and Mom created a bed for Richard and me to sleep on by putting down boards and a double mattress in its place. Our feet, food and clothes filled the trunk, and Dad slept stretched out on the front seat. Of course, today, he would have been fined rather severely, and our car towed away had an officer stopped us, but back then, we thought it was a wonderful way to travel. We had a Coleman stove, pot, and frying pan, and although I don’t recollect everything we ate, I am sure we had enough to keep body and soul together. I’ll never forget the cloudy day when we pulled off the road at a rest stop to have lunch and were so inundated with mosquitoes that we were literally surrounded by a grey curtain of buzzing insects. We sprayed, we swatted, we slapped, (I screamed), and finally giving up, we huddled in the car, chewing on plain bread and cold wieners. I didn’t care. Anything was better than being eaten alive.
And so it goes. In Saskatchewan, it is always a trade-off. Warm and windy. Cool and calm. Wet with mosquitoes or dry with grasshoppers. The sun that keeps us awake at night provides us with magic at sunset, and the clouds that darken the sky bring us the rains. The afternoon of my early rise found me dozing on the couch just long enough to catch up on the sleep that I had lost, and that night my sleep pattern returned to normal. Give and take; it all works out in the end.
- Liz Cameron
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Disclaimer: opinions expressed are those of the writer.