But two summers ago, they broke that gravitational pull. Chen took his family more than 3,000 miles away from Boston to Rdy, a small granite island jutting from the Norwegian Sea north of the Arctic Circle. Chen's wife, Kristin Botnen, was born in Norway. But she says the move wasn't about returning home — or leaving home, either.
"For us, this was not an escape. We really liked our lives. But we still wanted a year where we could just do something completely different," she says.
Completely different. Winston and Kristin and their two kids, ages 4 and 6, used the daylight that burns into the wee hours to explore the island of fewer than 200 residents. In their home videos, they discover beaches so pristine, they look tropical — except the water is really cold.
They went out to fish for the big cod that roam the Barents Sea. They made chips by frying fish skin. They picked berries that bulged under the long Arctic sun and plucked eggs from seagull nests to cook for breakfast. It was wild, it was pristine. And then it got dark.
During the deep Arctic winter, the horizon held the sun down for months.
"I say the northern lights are the only consolation for the Arctic winter, which is otherwise dark and stormy and cold," Chen says.
"I don't think the cold got any of us," adds Botnen. "But the darkness — I think that could make any stable soul a little bit shaky."
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