Month: June 2020

How long true darkness?

Darkness comes slowly now, hanging behind the new leaves, waiting patiently in the wake of the summer solstice. It’s as if night is reluctant to disturb the bustle of early summer, respecting the need for extra daylight so birds and animals can nuture their young, so flowers and bushes can burst with bloom, and so the stewards of the earth can tend their young crops.

When do you see the last hint of light before the late June evening finally slips into true, total darkness? On these last days of June are the latest sunsets of the year. By the Fourth of July weekend, sunsets will come a bit sooner each evening.

It’s 10 p.m., and the last bit of murky sky still hangs in the portals of the birch tree’s branches. The sky to the northwest, where the sun slipped below the horizon an hour ago, still has an amber glow. I’ve read that total darkness doesn’t occur until 2 hours after our eyes can no longer detect light in the sky. So that would mean the dark of night, the true darkness, doesn’t surround us until midnight this time of year.

And is that true as dawn approaches, when a soft ripple of light is sent out shortly after 4 a.m., more than an hour before sunrise? If so, true darkness has already lifted. That leaves us with perhaps only 3 or 4 hours of total darkness in the days after the summer solstice, and it explains why birds are chirping before our eyes pick up the first light of dawn.

Though the summer solstice on June 20 this month was the “longest day” in terms of daylight, neither the year’s earliest sunrise nor latest sunset occur on that day. The earliest sunrise is a week earlier, and latest sunset is over the final days of June, when the sun finally slinks away just minutes shy of 9 p.m.

As nights now descend upon us slowly and gently, sending birds to their roost, morning is not far off, beginning with a single chirp of a bird detecting the ripple of a light wave. The first ripple in the waves of long summer days.

Soul of the solstice

The summer solstice eases upon us this 20th day of the sixth month with 15 hours and 38 minutes of daylight—the most of the year—as the sun takes its most northerly path in the celestial sphere, from sunrise in the northeast to sunset in the northwest.

So what to do with the longest day of the year? Look for agates in the storm-washed creek and then look for Jupiter and Saturn when the reluctant darkness finally falls after 10 p.m.

Sunrise. Share it with a cup of coffee on the quiet porch or with a fishing rod on the quiet lake as the first golden rays yawn across the tranquil waters, the silence broken only by the call of a loon.

Sunset. Should I sit quietly, watching a deer tiptoe through the corn rows or stop in the fold of ferns to query my presence. Or should I be on the trout stream, watching brookies break the surface for mayflies, and perhaps for my fascination if not my imitation?

And the long, lazy hours between dawn and dusk. What about them? I’ll watch a catbird at the bird bath, then walk a trail and make notes of brambles with green, budding blackberries.

Should I mow lawn or drive through the countryside and smell fresh-mown hay? Perhaps I’ll follow a bumblebee or butterfly, look for a walking stick—one the insect, the other a walking aid—then check the bluebird nest or pursue a myriad of matters nature is taking up as summer begins.

At 4:44 p.m. on this day, can I feel the solstice, the balance of the hemisphere, the assurance that the sun is trailing the correct path before it turns back toward autumn? Is there a solstice, a turning point, in my life? Have I reached a balance and found the right course by connecting the natural world with my inner self?

On this day, there’s plenty of time to find out.

The flow of green

Greenness flows in waves and rows now, across the yards, forests, fields and meadows of late spring. In my field of vision is green in all shades imaginable, until the hues seemingly stretch the color to infinity.

Some color experts say the hues of green are, indeed, infinite. Others put a number on green hues, that number in the thousands. Whichever, considering green light’s wavelengths, the human eye may be able to distinguish 40 hues of green, say some doctors.

I like green and how it flows in early June. Flowing like verses in a poem, connected in visual rhyme, one purpose in time, leading spring into summer.

Wrote the poet James Russell Lowell:

“And what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days. Whether we look, or whether we listen, we hear the murmur, or see it glisten.”

In his “Succession of Four Sweet Months,” Robert Herrick penned:

“Next enters June, and brings us more gems than those two that went before.”

Gems indeed, on days so full that darkness defers for a time to the beauty. There are gems of robin eggs and wild geraniums, blues and purples dotting the greenness. Of sulfurs and cardinals, yellows and reds dancing among the fullness of green.

The fullness is breathtaking. I stare in awe, as well I should. As William H Davies implored us to in “Leisure.”

“What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare? No time to turn to Beauty’s glance, and watch her feet, how they can dance. A poor life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare.”