I live in an area that is at 45 degrees north latitude, which is half way between the equator and the North Pole. From my perspective, the arctic circle isn’t so much a place, but a time. Let me explain.
Some people suffer from a malady known as Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD. It is generally blamed on winter-time when sunlight is in short supply. I’m not sure I have it to the extent of qualifying as full-blown SAD, but I am acutely aware of the shortening days, and in fact I keep track of certain dates on the calendar when the time between sunrise and sunset total a certain number of whole hours. As the seasons progress toward the equinox, we can gain or lose as many as four minutes a day, and leading up to the solstice, that time slows to a crawl, with less than a minute gained or lost. Around Thanksgiving here we dip below nine hours of daylight and we don’t regain that until mid January. So I have begun to refer to this time of the year as the Arctic Circle, where the sun is low in the sky most of the time and most people drive to and from work in twilight or worse.
Playing golf in these conditions can be challenging, especially during the week. Fortunately I have a job that enables me to get to the golf course by 3 o’clock or so as long as there isn’t snow covering the ground. That is enough time to get nine holes on most courses or a full 18 at the Par 3 course I belong to. In addition to the cool temperatures and ground hard enough to require a hammer to sink a tee, the low sun angle on certain tee boxes and lies can make it difficult to track the ball. I often find myself looking up into the sun as soon as the ball leaves the club and sometimes the only way I find it without another person watching it take off is by feeling the direction it likely started heading and walk that way. There are times the only way I can locate it is the fact of using the Volvik Vivid colored balls. I highly recommend them.
Even in these conditions I can still agree with the expression that a bad day golfing is better than a good day working. Unfortunately, for the time being we are digging out from under a true arctic blast that dumped a foot and a half of snow on the ground accompanied by sub zero temperatures for a few days and it appears that the only golf for the foreseeable future will come in the form of the indoor simulator bays. Hopefully by the time we emerge from the Arctic Circle, outdoor golf won’t be far off.