The Value of SADness

The Thule Eskimos of northern Greenland have a word for winter depression–perlerorneq. The poetic equivalent of the western world’s seasonal affective disorder it translates: to feel the weight of life. The Polar observer Barry Lopez describes this “winter madness” in his book “Arctic Dreams” as “the feeling of looking ahead to all that must be accomplished and to retreat to the present feeling defeated, weary before starting, a core of anger, a…