My new computer must be too full of pixels to stop spewing them out. LOL.
Sleep patterns tend to be a cultural matter, IMHO. My wife doesn't buy my advice about just closing her eyes, either, but she was raised as a city girl. Her parents worked the 8 to 5 routine, as did everyone she knew. Whereas, I grew up on a ranch in southern Oklahoma, the cultural center of the universe, so to speak, and I saw people working from "can see to can't see" for a schedule. Care of livestock, doesn't go by a clock or a watch. You work when you need to, and sleep when you can. So depending on how a person is raised, will have a good deal of how that person deals with the 24 hours of daylight in the north.
In Alaska, as Bill mentioned, most locals switch over to what is called "Indian time" in the summers. The original residents of Interior Alaska, that consider themselves to be by heritage, Athabascan Indians, tend to work with nature, not create ways to fight it. When your next winter's food supply is primarily based on hunting, gathering and fishing, you fish when the salmon run, in the summer time. You don't look at your watch and "ah", the weekend is here and I don't have to fish or hunt. If you hope to eat next winter and feed your family, you go at it every hour of the day and night you can do so.
Several summers I worked as a commercial drift net fisherman on the Yukon River. You fished however long the Dept of Fish and Feathers would allow. If the opening was for 72 hours, that is what you spent in your boat. The first 24 hours weren't too bad for staying awake but after that it was tough. I usually would hire one of the teenage boys from a close by fish camp, to fish with me and his only job, was to stay awake and to wake me up as needed as we drifted.
Drift fishing the Yukon is interesting to me. In places the middle and lower river, are between a half mile and a mile wide, slow moving current, much like the lower Mississippi River. (about the same color too) So a fisherman in a river boat will lay out about 300 feet of net, with a lead line on the bottom and a cork line on the top, across the current. Then the outboard engine is used to keep the boat drifting downstream at the same speed as the net. At the end of the drift, after anywhere from one to three hours, you pull in the net, take out the king salmon caught and run back upstream to where you started, and do it all over again. So I would get the net set, the engine set to hold the boat even with the net, and try to go to sleep for the time it took to do the drift. My young employees job was to wake me at the end of the drift or if we snagged the net, or a drift log was going to hit the net. After 2 or 3 drifts, I would catch enough sleep to be able to run the youngster back to where his family was fishing and he could catch some sleep, while I picked up his brother or went back to fish alone for awhile.
Not sure the human body ever gets completely used to sleeping in segments or not. But much of my life, I have done this due to the job I had at the time. So, enjoy the north country as much as you can, while there, as you can sleep when you get back home.
My last job, before retirement, was as a deputy coroner in western Colorado. I don't remember ever signing a death certificate listing "lack of sleep" as the cause of death.
😄A few from guys that told their wives, "you won't pull that trigger" or "hey, everybody, watch this".
joe b.
Stuart Florida
Formerly of Colorado and Alaska
2016 Fleetwood Flair 31 B Class A w/bunks
www.picturetrail.com/jbpacooper
Alaska-Colorado and other Trips posted
"Without challenge, adventure is impossible".
