Solstice
Solstice is either the shortest or longest day of the year. It depends on where you are.
In Providence, we have about 9 hours of sunshine, clouds permitting at solstice. If I had been in Inverness, Scotland, where I was last year, the sunrises just a few minutes shy of 9 a.m. and sets at 3:36.
On the other hand, I was in Queenstown, New Zealand just this last July, and their sunrise is at 5:54 a.m. and sets at 9:32 p.m. or 15 hours and 37 minutes of sunlight.
I’ve been to all 10 Canadian provinces but have not been to the territories. I want to go to Iqaluit, Nunavut, where the sunrise is at 9:22 a.m. but sets at 1:42 p.m. or 4 hours and 20 minutes of light.
Murmansk, the port in Northern Russia near Finland won’t have a sunrise until January 4th, but they still have about 5 hours of eerie light a day.
But even further north in Longyearbyen, Svalbard, north of the continental Norway they haven’t had sunshine since October 26th, and their next sunrise is February 15th.
On the other hand, the penguins Antarctica are in perpetual light now and ostensibly are working on their tans.
I love thinking about things like this, because it’s a reminder to me we all have a different perspective based on where we are in the world. And it’s effected by forces beyond ourselves.
I think about the folks for whom right now no sun is normal or the penguins and a few Antarctic scientists find perpetual light normal. Granted it’s warmer in Murmansk at the moment than it is in Antarctica by about 3 degrees Fahrenheit, yet I suspect the light is a larger factor in the day to day of life in both places.
I always remember when I lived on the Canadian border in Washington people asking me how I could stand all the rain. It was really the lack of light that bothered me more than the rain. Sunrise now is after 8 and sets a little after 4. But because of the evergreen trees it was always green. And that mattered more than the rain.
I was intrigued in New Zealand that people had Christmas trees and lights up in July. As someone said to me there, “Ninety percent of people on the planet live in the Northern Hemisphere. All the images of Christmas we get are in the winter, which is our summer.”
This reminded me of a friend who’d moved from Malaysia to Vancouver, B.C., who hadn’t really thought much about sunrise and sunset til he moved to Canada. In Kuala Lumpur, the variation of sunrise and sunset was little in his mind. In Blaine, I was always aware of it.
Seasons give us different perspectives usually. If we’re lucky enough, we let that expand our understanding of the world. If we’re even luckier, we remember that people are enjoying a summer day in Queenstown and an evening dusk stroll after 10 p.m., when we’re walking in complete darkness in the afternoon.
I was thinking of all this on my afternoon walk in darkness. It made me appreciate the lack of light more. And all the lights of the city and Christmas reminded me that we do adapt as we can.
May each of us adapt to what is and make the best of it, knowing that more than likely the world will change.
I hope everyone was able to celebrate Solstice this weekend and enjoy what it is and what will change.
This is so interesting. So much to think about, especially beyond the literal matter of when the sun rises and sets depending on where you are and what time of year it is. Reading this, I begin to think about all those factors not literally but as the literal images in metaphors that point to all sorts of things that aren't literal at all. What starts out narrow becomes very, very wide.
You reminded me of Rev. Dr. A.lison Cheek, who was one of the Philadelphia 11 -- the Episcopalian women first ordained as priests even as bomb threats were called into the church. Alison was originally from Australia, and I remember her remarking somewhat ironically that as Anglicans they sang "In The Bleak Midwinter" during their Summer Christmas observations.