White nights

At midsummer the sun goes down a little before eleven and is back by four, and in between it does not get dark so much as blue. You can read outside at midnight. Whether you can sleep is another matter; the curtains in the cabin were plainly chosen by someone who had given up.

Everything is in a hurry. The birch leaves that were buds five weeks ago are full size. The lupins along the road, which are an invasive nuisance and extremely handsome, are waist high. The mosquitoes have noticed that there are people.

This is the weekend the whole country leaves town. The roads north are full on Friday and the cities are oddly quiet, and on every lake you can see there is a thread of smoke going straight up from somebody's sauna.

We rowed out at one in the morning to look at the light. There was nothing to see, exactly — a flat pale lake, a flat pale sky, a line of dark trees between them — and we stayed out for an hour.