The long shadows, one-third in

The thing I love most about being outdoors at this time of year is the low sun and long shadows, pointing north, which seems to make the sky and ocean both a deeper shade of blue and which illuminates the tops of the dormant grasses on the hills, giving them an otherwordly sheen.

It's honestly my favorite time of year, in no small part because of the cooler temperatures. It's always possible to warm up if you're in a cold climate -- hot drinks, heat, fires, or warm bath. But it's not always possible to cool off in the worst of summer's heat, for some reason. The decks are loaded against us cool-weather lovers. But that doesn't matter. We have our elysium in the here and now of this solstice month.

The solstices are, respectively, usually on or close to December 21st and June 21st. This week I've seen a lot of posts celebrating that from now on, the days will be getting longer. I tend be happy on the summer solstice because I know that at that point the days will be getting shorter.

But of course we all know that the summer and winter solstices appear nowhere near at the end of the respective seasons they reside in. In fact, they actually occur about one-third into each season they appear in. 

On June 21st, for instance, we in the south still have the bulk of summer ahead of us. We'll be hot until October, so even the Autumnal Equinox in September is no harbinger of any seasonal change. And I'm sure my friends east of here will attest to the fact that some of winter's harshest days come after Christmas, in the months of January, February and March when there are no presents, lights and decorated trees to cheer you.

Nonetheless, perhaps like the Christmas holiday itself, the sun's travels through it's appointed dates -- solstices and equinoxes, are symbolic of things to come, and very simple reasons to have hope. In June, some part of me understands that now we will begin the slide that will ultimately end in winter. And that all I have to do is wait.  For those of you in snowy areas, surely the days growing longer is a cause for hope, even if an acutal change in temperatures is months away.

And so, for those of you celebrating Christmas, it's a holiday all about hope, right? And so we all have that in common this time of year. I wish all of you a happy solstice, happy Christmas, and happy New Year. Enjoy both the reality of the season and the hope of what's still to come. The present holds our joy, but it's hope for the future that holds our dreams. And so with life, so with the solstices of our sun.

Comin' around

Last night was the winter solstice, the shortest day and longest night of the year. Starting today, the days will get a little bit longer with each one that passes; first by just a few seconds and then as we head towards summer, by a minute or two each day.  This happens because the earth comes to a point where it hits a far spot in its elliptical path around the sun, and then begins coming back around again.  Kind of like a race car which reaches the far end of the track, then whips around the curve and begins circling back to the place it started.


I'm conscious that this particular "trip around the track" will see us leaving this area.  I think about moving every day.  When I did my ancestral family tree last year, I discovered my family has been in this country since 1635, when they left England to join the Massachusetts colony.  Soon after they left there to found a settlement in Long Island, New York.  And sometime after that, they left again and headed out to West Virginia, where they stayed put for about 200 years. But after 200 years, something made my grandfather leave West Virginia to come west to California, back in the 1940's. Maybe it was the promise of better weather.  Or plentiful jobs.  Or just the chance to reinvent himself in a new form, a new lifestyle, which would include trips to the beach instead of outside to shovel snow off the driveway.  


I come from a family of folks who have always been willing to head west and establish a beachhead in undiscovered country.  I'm no different.  I will take all that I've learned up to this point to The New Place, just as my ancestors did.  And I will start again, discovering in the process exactly where I fit in and what I'm supposed to be doing there.  


I will visit the beach, often, and I will find a good patch of land on which to keep some animals and grow some vegetables.  And by doing all these things, I will hopefully honor those who came before me, the ones who were not afraid to leave and begin afresh elsewhere, who loved rather than feared the thought of the sun setting over an unfamiliar horizon each night, until it was no longer unfamiliar to them.  


But for now, from my perspective on this far side of the sun, I will sit and I will dream about what's to come, while the nights are still long and while we bide our time through winter.  After all, what are the long nights for if not to dream?