The Light Slips, and So Does Our Nerve

Up north, September comes with a gut punch. One week you’re eating dinner with the sun still high over the lake, the next you’re fumbling for a porch light before you’ve finished your plate. We lose the daylight fast—hours gone in what feels like days.

The thing about living here is you can’t pretend it isn’t happening. The dark comes whether you want it to or not. You prepare, or you suffer for it. You stack the wood, you seal the windows, you face reality head-on.

I wish our politics worked the same way. But instead, at the very moment when we need courage, we see timidity. Political violence is rising. Division is deepening. Extremists are willing to torch our institutions—and too many of those who could stand up to them are more worried about their careers, their reputations, or their portfolios. They cling to the last scraps of light, as if by doing nothing they can somehow hold off the night.

But up here, we know better. The light always slips. The question isn’t whether you can stop it—you can’t. The question is how you’ll live when it does. Do you prepare? Do you stand with your neighbors? Do you carry each other through the dark? Or do you shrink back, hoping someone else will keep the fire going?

The end of summer is a reminder: denial is not an option. Not in the North, and not in our politics. The light is fading fast. Pretending otherwise is just another way of letting the dark win.