Summer Solstice, or 90 Seconds Less

It's All Downhill From Here!

Godfrey Bingley, 1892, Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

You know what’s funny about Summer Solstice? Because it heralds the beginning of summer, it’s easy to forget that the actual meaning of the day is an ending, not a beginning.

We have now had the most daylight, and therefore the least darkness. It’s the spring that offers light and growth. Summer? Well, today, we get about 90 seconds less daylight, and so it will go now.

And coming as it is right at the front end of what appears to be a massive, scorching heat wave for New England, I’m feeling sort of, you know, hot and tired by the whole thing!

We’re on a downward slide into the fire now, hold on tight.

I spend a lot of time writing about Winter Equinox because it’s so close to Little Bean’s birthday that the shifting of fall into winter feels like it goes hand it hand with her growing up. Here’s a collection of my Winter Equinox essays.

But I haven’t spent much time considering the Solstice because everything about it feels like an ending. In fact, did you know that Solstice is actually Latin for Sun / Stoppage. It’s true! The Sun stops moving North on the Solstice, and thus it’s most direct rays reach the maximum northernmost position.

Sun. Stoppage.

One positive is that, despite that few seconds a day, the Sun is wonderfully high in the sky! From a flat latitude, say in the middle of the country, we’re talking more that 70 degrees up around noon or 1pm. Try to find a mid-day shadow in that!

One of my favorite long summer days poems is called “June” by John Updike. It’s short, and in it Updike spends a bit of time talking about the pleasures of the longer days, school is out, the sun is golden, Little League. But here’s the last stanza:

The live-long light

Is like a dream

and freckles come

Like flies to cream.

That has to be on purpose, right? What a dark image. Sun freckles on your face are like flies to cream!

Anyway, things are hopping over at Stonehenge as it’s one of the few times per year that visitors are allowed to actually enter and walk around the site and the stones. This year, according to AP, about 25,000 “druids, pagans and revelers” gathered to celebrate the longest day of the year.

No problem there, we should probably all celebrate the Sun more often and more vigorously than we do. Even if it’s going to begin running away from us. Again.

So Happy Summer Solstice everybody! Stay cool. Don’t take daylight for granted. And keep the flies at bay.