I have no respect for time here, I think as I drive with three friends past the warmly lit glaciers of Iceland's Westfjords. We'll be setting up our tents around one in the morning and eating our usual dinner—beans and rice drenched in pylsusinnep, a local brown mustard—at two. After that, we'll stretch out on the wet, matted grass to watch the sun melt the sky and ocean into a peach-colored lava lamp before we cram ourselves into our sleeping bags around three.

This is an Arctic summer.

We had begun night roaming to avoid the busloads of summer solstice tourists, over 400,000 of them. (Their numbers have doubled on this tiny island country in recent years.) We had many of the best spots to ourselves, and besides observing that everything looks better under the soft light of the midnight sun, I discovered something more.

I stopped worrying about the night sky closing in on our long hikes. I no longer rushed to set up camp so I could enjoy the wilderness around me before "dark." And I quit watching sunsets from behind a lens for fear of forgetting them minutes later. Instead, I took a cue from the celebratory locals, who were intoxicated by the light after their long, dark hibernation. They toasted to everything with lagers or Brennivín—the local schnapps, a.k.a. the "black death"—and laughed when we asked them about their short winter days, which, for now, were behind them.

So I watched calved icebergs glow as they drifted to sea on the shoulders of a dark lagoon. Then I saw these same chunks cling to the freezing shore, like a drowning person to a dangling rope, as the low-lying sun finished them off. 

I inspected the Atlantic waves from the tops of precipitous cliffs while waiting for puffins to return from fishing. I climbed alongside waterfalls that shimmered like fish scales under the midnight sun, and I sipped victoriously from a shared thermos of kaffi at the top.

Now we've reached our last night in a place that lacks night.

I remove my sunglasses as our car hurls over the final bony ridge after midnight, and I'm rewarded with a view of Dynjandi—a waterfall shrouded in mist and sunlight, feeding its melted glaciers to a ghostly fjord. There is no one else here, just an ancient emptiness better suited to Vikings.

Soon I'm lying down, and the crashing sound of the falls reverberates against my tent. But that's not why I can't sleep. I dig my head out of my sleeping bag and unzip the tent door, soaking in the ethereal Arctic one last time. Its soft-edged light pushed me to explore more, and to explore better.