Time is going by much faster than I thought it would.

Sometimes it's a shame to go to bed on a beautiful sunny arctic evening. Summer up here is so short, you just want to savor it as much as you can.
For the first few nights I counted the days I would see my husband instead of counting sheep. Now I'm counting the hours in the day hoping I have enough time to get everything done! We typically work 10 to 14 hour days, and some people probably work more. It just becomes natural when there's 24 hours of daylight: it's hard to explain but you just don't feel as tired when it's 10 PM and the sun is shining over the lake and the mountains are glowing to the southeast and songbirds are flying about and the yellow billed loon pair that lives here are singing their weird, wolflike duet as they glide over the water like an old married couple taking an evening stroll together. On such evenings the grad students and REUs are kicking up the dust of the camp pad in shorts and tee shirts playing a lively game of soccer in front of the lab trailers, and some people usually end up the next day wearing bandages or duct tape on their glasses.

Two days ago our beautiful 70 degree weather was washed away by cloudy skies and a strong gale that hammered away at the tents early in the morning. The wind was so strong it shook the platform under my bed, and I scrambled to look out the window and saw the through the curtains of rain that the ground around our tent city was covered in a few inches of water. It subsided, but ever since the weather has been chilly, rainy and foggy. The flowers that were so profuse and colorful have begun to fade, and were coated in droplets of bright cold water that reminded me of October in Chicago. I took my camera while collecting samples and tried to capture images of the droplets covering the foliage like tiny diamonds, and I realized how much I love it here, rainy or foggy or bright and sunny, windy or still and humming with mosquitoes.

We have not seen the mountains for the last 48 hours. The valley has been ringed by thick clouds that look like they are touching the green tundra just a few hundred feet away. When you can see the Brooks Range it is probably going to be a decent day. In about seven days the sun will begin to drop behind the horizon and we will have a taste of the long darkness to come.