darkness falls

It's officially summer.

The summer solstice is the "longest" day of the year, the day that the northern hemisphere experiences its maximum duration of sunlight during the year. Most people celebrate the beginning of summer on this day.

I mourn it as the precursor of winter.

I love summer. I hate cold weather. I scarcely feel alive during the winter months. The paucity of sunlight, the cold, the overcast, it all depresses me.

The summer solstice is the day after which the sunlit hours begin to decrease. We don't notice it because we are immersed in the seasonal heat and vacations and such, but every day from here until the winter solstice, the daylight decreases by a couple of minutes as our hemisphere starts to tilt away from the Sun. By September, the daylight and darkness times are almost equal again and daylight continues dwindling for three more long months.

Yes, today is the first day of summer, but it also is a reminder that the Earth continues to zoom forward in its orbit at sixty-five thousand miles per hour, and that the dark times are returning all too soon.


Enjoy the real season of light.