Jan 25, 2019 4 min read

As I sit writing this, a sunny light shines on the left side of my face. It is the light box I bought myself for Christmas, a purchase made necessary because of where my job is taking me these days.

For almost a year now, I’ve been on a team producing an hour-long documentary about the bike trail from Washington, D.C., to Pittsburgh. We were out in the woods most of the summer, filming our cyclists as they pedaled along the 335 miles between the two cities. Weeks in the sun caused my hair to lighten and my freckles to erupt. The sunshine also, apparently, brought out the endorphins because, despite the heat and humidity and bugs and lugging equipment, I remember those months as happy ones.

If the summer is blue skies for me, the winter is the dungeon. With the filming complete, the hard and dark part is happening. I’m on my 30th long day in the edit cave. This is where my editor, Paul, and I are building a mosaic from the thousands of images we captured out on the trail. Earlier this week, we spent 10 hours just finding the right music to get our cyclists through the long Big Savage Tunnel.

That tunnel might be an apt metaphor for editing. Sometime in December, we entered a dark room; I with 50 pages of interview transcripts and video notes, and editor Paul with his skills and mental pictures of how it all should look.

The only light in the room is the glow from the bank of monitors and the single desk lamp that shines on my notes. Hours pass as we make hundreds of little decisions as we build the story. Every few hours Paul will take a break to go fetch hot tea. I will get up every hour or so to stretch my legs by walking around the circular hallway outside the door. If for some reason I have to go to my office, I nix the elevator and run up the two flights. Some days it’s the most exercise I’ll get.

Doctors now say that sitting all day is worse for your health than smoking. Getting this project done has been like a two-pack-a-day bad habit for me. I’ve gone all pasty and grumpy while sitting down there in the cave, and I think I’m growing moss on my head.

The film takes us to coal country in Fayette County. Looking at old photos of coal miners makes me think about what that life must have been like. I’m in an edit room for a few months of the year. Those workers worked in the dark for decades. It makes me wonder what the lack of light did to their dispositions.

There’s a thing called seasonal affective disorder, which might be just a clever way to get people to buy light boxes and sunlamps. I would say that when the temperatures here in Western Pennsylvania drop into the single digits, most of us have seasonal affective disorder, but what the heck. I bought the light box, spending the hundred bucks to get some sunshine on my face.

Am I happier? I can’t tell. There have been no complaints of grumpiness. I’m still pasty, though, except for my nose, which appears to have sprung a few freckles. Maybe it’s time to take the light box into the edit room, so we both can feel some summer.

We’re starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel. Another month in the edit cave and the film will be done. And then the film, and I, will finally see the light of day.

Beth Dolinar can be reached at cootiej@aol.com.