Jordan Konkol got a summer job helping geologists explore for platinum in Alaska. He recalls a moment from that remote place, standing on a high ridge in summer daylight at 11:00 p.m., "...feeling silence extend in every direction. I recalled a line of Joseph Conrad: "this also has been one of the dark places of the earth.""
Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" describes the "darkness" in the Thames River, downstream from London:
"The sun set...and farther west on the upper reaches the place of the monstrous town was still marked ominously on the sky, a brooding gloom in sunshine, a lurid glare under the stars."
(Broadcast: "Reflections West," 2/4/15 & 8/12/15. Listen weekly on the radio, Wednesdays at 4:54 p.m.)
