The Long and Short of It

Sunlight, for all that is bad, there is more that is good. At least that’s my perspective. That is one of several reasons we brought ourselves to Southern Arizona. Tucson, you see, is second only to parts of Australia in terms of your likelihood of getting skin cancer. This is bad. However, Tucson purports to be the sunniest city in the U.S. (hence the skin cancer thing) with an average of over 350 sunny days a year. This is good.

The sunny character of the region makes itself known in June, as the summer solstice comes and goes. This year on June 21, we will enjoy 14 hour, 15 minutes and 52 seconds of daylight, on what will be the longest period of daylight in a 24 hour period. This is the happiest and saddest day of the year for me. I am happy because there are so many minutes of sunlight on this particular day. Our planet is in that celestial sweet-spot; the point in its solar orbit that brings the North Pole closest to the sun. We’ve been hurdling towards this moment since approximately December 21, and now we’re here. That’s the sad part, now we’re here. Now the days get shorter.

I guess I don’t do dark well. Yes, the days are still longer than the nights. And yes, it is summer. But, the thought of this part of the yearly cycle and its lengthening nights just bothers me. The summer solstice is a milestone in my yearly trek. At this point I steel myself for what’s to come; winter. I should fell lucky; in fact, I should count my lucky stars, as was once said. The winters here are short and quite tolerable by northern standards. The day is however, a full 4 hours and 13 minutes shorter at the solstice. An eternity!

The winter solstice is a day of wistful celebration for me. On this day in the darkest part of our planetary cycle I quietly feel cheerful and excited. We’ve turned the corner and we’re on our way to ever increasing amounts of sunlight. To quote a sappy commercial for a rehab facility, “I feel alive and hopeful again!” Yes, they were able to pay someone enough to say that on television.

In March, when the days become longer than the nights, I am so happy. There are three more months of the days getting longer yet to come! My trips up the driveway weekday mornings to get the paper get brighter and brighter until it becomes a race to get up and out there before the sun breaks over the Rincon Mountains to the east and casts it heated rays across the valley. By mid-April it’s warm enough that almost all the desert life is either back from the south or has crawled, or slithered, out of hibernation. I see a lot of activity in the twilight of morning.

By June though, the desert is holding onto the heat of the previous day. The sun is not setting until almost 7:30, and it is back by a quarter past five the next morning. The long days heat the ground so hot that the cold water runs very warm and there’s no need to use water from the hot water heater. Long hot cloudless days that are not for the faint of heart; these are the days the Lovely Gail and I most like.

So as the summer solstice of 2011 comes and goes I pause to think and reflect. I’ve come to realize that this is my halfway point. And, every December, on or very near the 21st, is my New Year, not January like everyone else. In the way that the ancients of the pre-Bronze Neolithic looked on the solstice as their turning point towards a more abundant time of year, I will look to the shortest day as a signpost to the longest.