I, today, hereby declare myself in union with the ancients: The ancients who desperately waited for, and then celebrated, the arrival of Winter Solstice.
Normally, in my current location, the sun disappears behind a great giant semi-soggy glove of inversion, and then becomes unknown to the inhabitants. This happens some time in October, and usually lasts until about March. Sometimes we'll get a glimmer of some bright thing in the sky in mid-February, along with extra warmth, reminding us that there is another way to live. Then the foggy soggy hand descends again.
To be fair, clouds become unknown to us around mid-June or early July, and don't show up again until October. There is sometimes one storm in late August or early September -- but that one cannot be taken seriously as it involves a temperature drop and a lot of wind, and that's usually about it. Sun, sun, sun, beating down on us without mercy for days on end. It's bright in the deepest of forests... but i digress.
Back to Winter Solstice: This year we have had sun, almost non-stop, since Thanksgiving. You would think that would be an improvement. After all, the morning light comes earlier than it would under a soggy foggy glove. The evening light lasts longer than it normally would as well. And yet... the sun hovers so low in the sky! (And i'm not even halfway to the north pole!!! I have lived further north and it didn't bother me so! listen to me whine!) It seems to be, from sunup to sundown, 5 o'clock on an August afternoon. There is a slight fog which could be either moisture or dust, the longish shadows, seeing everything south of you as a silhouette instead of three-dimensional corporal being, all reminiscent of the dog days of summer at 5 o'clock PM... but without the heat.
Those blasted inversions and fogs have acclimated me to a constant level of depressing dim light. Yes, constant -- the moisture is lit from the bottom up by city lights, all night long, especially when people have their Christmas color out. The variation on those days would be how far you could see!
Inversions, like fogs, make you feel cozy with anyone you can see. It's always a treat to be isolated, visually and aurally, from everyone else as you travel along -- and then to see or hear another person emerge out of the mist is like magic! Fellow travelers! Fellow travelers into the bowels of winter and then back out again. Have i begun to relish in my current, very weird, local climate?
It's all about expectations, i suppose. Having the sun, every day, leads me to believe that we are already headed out of a (not very serious, so far) winter. And yet we are still diving in, and we are nearly to the bottom of what is supposed to be dark.
This, then, is why I celebrate the coming Solstice: I expect more light when the sun is shining and we are not getting it! Oh, and Mom is coming to visit too. :-)
