Tag Archives: solstice

Winter

It used to be a time I dreaded, long nights stretching, engulfing days but as I get older there seems to be greater romance in those cold winter days. Jumpers, snuggling, battling through rain. The dark emphasising the light, neon glowing. Xmas. Glowing lights. Mulled wine. Waiting for change. Looking forward rather than at the present. I am determined to luxuriate in the wrapping up of winter, to stroke the deep woollen knit, put my feet up towards the roaring fire, gentle puff on a pipe, reading The Hound of the Baskervilles. I love the low searing light of winter. In summer it is expansive and flat, but those cold wet dark months are crossed with laser like strips of sun, striking from far to near, providing depth and excitement. Waking up in the dark and gradually arising with the light unlike summer months where it is instant, turning a light on, no sun to full sun. You can leave your garden to just exist rather than spending hours fighting off excessive growth, hacking at weeds, willing the grass to stay short. Winter is romantic. You two or three of more against the world. Summer is full on, everyone out there, festival, party, active, blinded by the flat light, wide angle, no place to hide as the sun engulfs. Splashing on suncream to protect against a deteriorating ozone layer, a thin film with holes puncturing through. No aircon. Instead, dark dramatic atmospheric winter world, wrapped in blankets, fire on, lights twinkling, a season of thought and anticipation. Wrapping up the year. The worst thing about winter is the thought of its arrival. Increasingly my summer months are ruined as summer solstice disappears in the rear-view mirror veering towards it’s winter equivalent, the days getting inexorably shorter. The long lead up to dark wet cold depressing months when I should just be enjoying summer days and nights drifting along. Never ending days to be replaced by never starting moments. Some of our friends have the right idea, lucky sods. Enough money to luxuriate in English summers and then plan their winter escapes to South America, Asia, Australia, Africa, maintaining the light of life, following the sun, keeping winter at bay. Up in space there is no issue with the seasons. If you’re looking down on earth they fly past, daily, providing a dazzling display of summer, autumn, spring. But surely embrace the winter. There is a stark beauty, a low light which plays enormous shadows, providing greater depth and interest onto vistas. Wrap up warm and get outside, look at the views, seep in the world. Neon Lights twinkling in the gloom, providing a vibrancy and electricity. Colour and interest. Beautiful cold thin morning sunrises where metallic light purples and thin warm oranges litter a pastel sky. Look to the now but also ahead. Winter can be cold and lonely but there is also the promise of something better ahead, the winter solstice a marker, the most hopeful day of the year when gradually more light and interest arrives daily, the football season coming through its phoney war into games which actually means something, there is jeopardy.  The long slog of league games developing into a tussle for the top, to move up or down a level, settle on a new normal. Cup games in muddy fields, ball stuck in treacherous puddles as wind rattles around the stands blowing you sideways. Fearful of the journey from changing room to pitch, vaseline caked over freezing limbs. The winter is also a time to luxuriate, to cuddle up with some of the great authors of our time, let ideas and knowledge seep into your brain. Relearn. Recharge. Rethink. Settle into new and old concepts, philosophy, AI, culture, stories of war and peace, light and shade, action and adventure, beautiful prose or edge of the seat excitement. Winter seems to be the longest season, to go on inexorably, dark following dark, where illness can lead to death. But it is also the most romantic, when friends and families come together, to talk and argue, to annoy and rejoice. The last time in that house. Setting markers, remembering departed family and friends through stories, games and laughter. The rest of the year you can be apart but the winter forces families together, to eat too much, watch too much, slobber on the sofa until the hope and joy of new year arrives. A fresh start. A new beginning. The chance to reset and go again.

Winter morning sunrise with the sun creating a star shape as it emerges over the horizon and across the sea in East Devon, UK.

SUMMER

The Longest Day

The long hot days of summer are something that many of us look forward to. A yearning for sunlight hours stretching beyond infinity. In the UK this can lead from 4am to 10.30 pm but the timing and amount of light varies depending on your longitude. As author Lavinia Greenlaw ponders in the Vast Extent there is an almost overbearing happiness to sunlight, commenting on the experience of Nordic countries leading into the artic circle, when sunlight can be almost constant by mid-summer. Without the madness of throwing yourself off cliffs. The light never disappearing. Just slightly dulling before rising again. Following the rhythm of light is a healthy way to exist, waking and sleeping with nature. In the winter you need to fight through this, to rise before the sun. Days stretch out in the summer, festivals arrive, people come outside, there is a buzz of happiness and life that emanates. In the summer you can go to the beach after work, meet up with friends for a drink, go for a walk, swim. Life is so much fuller. It’s way it is so tempting to follow the sun, move to Australia every winter. There is almost a forced element to being happy in the summer though, which can be overwhelming to some people. The need to stock up on vitamin D and happiness, ready for the long gradual march through autumn and winter. As a photographer the light is less interesting in summer months. It’s too flat, overbearing, constant, whereas the glimpses through winter cast long arrowing shards that pinpoint elements, highlighting and throwing vast shadows. The colours out to sea have a metallic vibrancy in winter that is rare in summer, where the haziness adds pastel shades. Paddle boarders silhouetted in waters which seem to lose their definition, floating in mid-air, Fata Morgana. I am always waiting for the summer. The gorgeous scents emanating from hedge rows. Freshly cut grass. No mow May, wildflowers dusting the air streams and delighting visual colours. June always seems to arrive too soon. A month of change and extremes. The longest day, leading onto the nights gradually starting to get darker. The hump month. Mid way through. Festival season, the end of school and university years, the start of summer for some, the gradual waning for others. In the UK it’s a beautiful month, beach swims, country walks in shorts and sandals, gardening, after work trips to the beer garden, a run along the coast. Always with the looming figure of Glastonbury at the far end, bookending the month and providing the turning point of summer. There is a sadness to summer I can never quite put my finger on. Maybe it’s the fact that it will end. Be existing, summer shows that it will finish. A bittersweet symphony. Or maybe it’s just the hay fever which is making my eyes itch and head swell. Hot, sweaty. Waking up in a tent slightly hung over, dry, parched. The expectation of summer. Looking forward to it through the long winter months only to be disappointed when it arrives. Although some days are magical, stretching out for ever, picnics under trees, by winding rivers. A lightness to the sounds. The longest day, eternal daylight stretching beyond your imagination, a dream state. Pastel coloured shades lighting the sky, drawing pictures of longevity and life.