My alarm clock radio was playing “If You Could Read my Mind” by Gordon Lightfoot on the first Monday of daylight savings in 1970. It was April 27, spring in Wyoming. It was eerily dark and quiet, except for the wind, at 5:30, (really 4:30). My English class on Utopias began at 7:00 so I was the first and only one up in my family.
My morning beauty routine consisted of taking out the ten, large orange juice cans that were pinned on my head, brushing my teeth, washing my face, moisturizing, and swiping the mascara wand across my lashes. I parted my hair down the middle and pulled it into a tight pony tail. My outfit had been carefully chosen the night before. The dress code in Casper schools had been amended while I was in junior high, permitting girls to wear pants, jeans even, but I chose my “baby doll” style mini dress with “hot pants” and brightly colored tights. My shiny, chunky heeled boots completed the ensemble.
Leaving the house at 6:30, I felt the full, literal force of the proverb; “it’s always darkest before the dawn.” Without the moon, it was pitch black and freezing as I headed out on my six block walk to school. Thankful for the street lights and porch lights, I tiptoed around patches of newly drifted snow. My boots were made for show, not the work of walking on icy sidewalks. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the lights of my school, this first walk of Daylight Savings was the scariest and most treacherous ever.
“Rainy Days and Mondays,” by Gordon Lightfoot was playing on Pandora when I awoke at 5:15 (really 4:15) on Monday, March 10, 2025. I hadn’t slept a wink, I was anxious about missing my alarm. My husband and dogs were peacefully sleeping, our normal wake up time was an hour away. My chickens were out of sorts, their schedule had been working for six months. It had been light enough in the morning for several weeks to actually see my chickens without a flashlight. On the first Monday (and every day that week) of daylight savings, it was really tricky walking to the back of my garden to feed the girls, I didn’t see them because they were sound asleep.
In a letter to the editor of the Journal de Paris, Benjamin Franklin jokingly proposed that Parisians could save money on candles and oil by waking up earlier in the morning and making use of natural daylight. Daylight savings was fully adopted during World War l to conserve fuel. By setting the clocks forward in spring and back in fall, people can take advantage of longer evening daylight, reducing the need for artificial lighting and saving energy.
The effectiveness of daylight saving has been debated for decades. Modern studies show that energy savings are minimal. Research shows that the change in daily routines may lead to higher energy consumption overall. Additionally, daylight savings time has been linked to negative health effects, such as sleep disruption and increased risk of heart attacks and accidents immediately after the time change. Though it may provide more daylight for evening activities, the overall benefits remain mixed and controversial.
Daylight Savings interrupts our natural circadian rhythm. Sleep deprivation due to losing that hour in spring, leads to difficulty concentrating. Studies also show that morning light exposure decreases the risk of seasonal affective disorder. Lack of sunlight in the morning can lower serotonin and dopamine, affecting mood and mental health.
Daylight savings wreaked havoc with my health this past week by disrupting my sleep and leaving me tired and off-balance for days.
For those concerned about fourteen year old me walking to school alone in the dark, my memory of being scared was only about falling – not being attacked or kidnapped. The only real threat in being out at night or that early in the morning was freezing to death. I don’t remember many of the walks afterward, probably because my parents started driving me to school until the sun rose before six thirty.
Jan Bohn says
I HATE daylight savings time. It absolutely disrupts my sleep and energy schedule each spring and fall. When we lived in England and it was dark when the kids went to school and dark when they came home in the winter. It didn’t make much of a difference to ‘spring ahead’. Mother Nature had already started to lengthen the days. As one Yorkshire farmer opined ‘them cows don’t look at clock’. Why not just leave clocks on Standard Time? My friends in Arizona don’t seem to have a problem coping.