SKY WRITING tales of contemporary life
on the road
White Nights To: Editorial@Delta-Sky.Com From: roger toll SUBJECT: THE LONGEST DAY IN ST. PETERSBURG midnight in st . petersburg on the year’s longest day—the summer solstice—and the sun lies low on the northwest horizon, as though reluctant to go to bed after being away so long all winter. It’s disorienting. Two hours earlier, it was behaving well, properly off in the west where it’s supposed These are not to be. But now it’s really late, and the sun doesn’t seem to revelers, but have dropped much at all. Finally, at 12:40 in the morning, magic creatures, it teeters from view. Then the magic of the White Nights beentranced by gins. the shadowless 1:30 a.m.: The northern sky is as bright as it was when the set an hour ago. Buses pull up alongside the beautiful light that seems sun Neva River, which runs through this stately, noble city, past to enfold us. the lemon yellow and lime green palaces of the tsars. The drawbridges that span the Neva yawn open, allowing barges to begin their journeys to distant river ports in interior Russia. And people are coming—from dinner parties, graduation celebrations, bars and restaurants, outlying towns. Dressed in summer finery, they line a mile of the stone embankment two and three deep, laughing, drinking beer, taking photographs, walking arm in arm and dancing. The air is almost balmy. 3:20 a.m.: The light of the sunset has become the light of sunrise. The crowds have long since boarded the buses and been whisked away as though they had never been, but the ghostly barges still slip along the river in the opalescent night. I walk peacefully through city streets I share with other strollers, occasional bicyclists, a few cars looking to catch a fare, a couple with a baby carriage and three in-line skaters. These are not revelers painting the town red, but magic creatures, somnambulists perhaps, entranced by the shadowless light that seems to enfold us. The world is the color of pearl, as though lit by a silver sun. Sky June 2002
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