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With the arrival of the summer solstice, some areas experience a lot of sun

A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:

Is there such a thing as too much summer? People who live in the far north are getting a lot of it right now. For example, Canada's Yukon territory, which borders Alaska, has about 19 hours of daylight.

PAVLINA SUDRICH: Pavlina Sudrich is a content creator who shares her life in the Yukon on social media.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

SUDRICH: After work today, I hiked all the way up a mountain to show you the summer solstice sunset here in the Yukon.

DEBBIE ELLIOTT, HOST:

That's one of her TikTok posts from earlier this week. She's a morning person.

SUDRICH: I might wake up at 5, 5:30, 6 a.m., and I hit the local ski trails here.

MARTÍNEZ: It's light outside, of course, since the sun rises at 4:28 a.m. today in the city of Whitehorse in northern Canada.

SUDRICH: You're never worrying about having to rush to meet the deadline of impending darkness. You just kind of have as much time as you need.

MARTÍNEZ: Here's the thing, though. Humans rely on darkness to fall asleep. And even though Pavlina has lived in the Yukon her whole life, she creates darkness to help her fall asleep when the sun is still up well into the night.

SUDRICH: I do have a double set of blackout blinds, and I'll close the curtains about 45 minutes before I want to go to sleep so my mind just has, like, a little bit of darkness.

ELLIOTT: Having this much sun during the summer comes with a dark side. In the winter in the Yukon, there are days with 19, 20, sometimes even 24 hours of darkness.

SUDRICH: It's almost like jet lag. Once the daylight starts really coming back, we almost just go too hard and forget to slow down.

MARTÍNEZ: Now, for some, this can be really disorienting. Visitors get surprised by how much they can fit between dawn and dusk. But living like this on a daily basis is exhausting.

SUDRICH: Closing time at the bars - it's a bit of an experience to be kicked out of a bar and walk out into broad daylight.

MARTÍNEZ: That's what it's like to work on MORNING EDITION.

(SOUNDBITE OF BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE SONG, "7/4 (SHORELINE)") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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