Living in Alaska you hear many complaints about the dark and the cold. I don’t know if I’m wired different because I was born here or maybe I’m just weird, but I enjoy the dark and I don’t really mind the cold.   

 Sure there’s a few months where I only see my sheep by daylight on the weekends. But the moon and the stars give off a bit of light which reflects off snow, making for some awesome “mood lighting”. And let’s not forget the Northern Lights. It’s hard to focus on chores when they are dancing across the sky. 

I rate the cold into 3 catagories: 40-20 above zero is just a little cold. 20 to zero is cold. Anything below zero is pretty cold. I wear the same clothes every day regardless, so it really doesn’t matter what the actual temperature is, I just work a lot faster when it’s pretty cold. 

Perception is everything. So I choose to perceive winter as one long candlelit dinner. It seems appropriate since my sheep, dogs, and chickens are always eating in the dark when I see them.