At the summer solstice in June, I noted something that probably seems depressing to think about: half our solar year is done, already. The calendar year, which turns on a slightly different fulcrum than the solar year, marks the midway point of summer on or around July 4th. It doesn't matter really, but then, the calendar year is full and sometimes fraught with its own list of challenges, appointments, celebrations, holidays, deadlines, cumbersome hills and v-shaped ravines, whereas the solar year just plugs along without many bells or whistles.
The calendar year dominates all our lives. We spend our time thinking about what this Monday meeting will add to our to-do list, or where we will spend this long weekend, or when to schedule an appointment. All the rest of our time is spent staring at our phones or tablets or TVs. We seldom look up. Even when the sky performs its most breathtaking artistic flourishes, we rarely have a chance, or take time to notice. This is a shame, because the solar calendar surpasses the former in beauty, splendor and the simple reality that we are part of this cosmic machinery of whirling planets and dust and gas.
I've said before how I tend to notice changes in the light as the year moves through its orbit. This comes from early tutelage from Uncle Dan, who taught me that observing the sky could provide a rich reward and keep one safe. The only time I don't glance at the sky is when I'm sleeping, but even then, I have been known to step out and look up during my nightly wanderings, just to see which constellations are over us, or where the moon is in its fullness and arc.
The calendar year is only loosely based on anything naturally occurring. It barely pays heed to the seasons, except as a chance to celebrate its commercialized holidays. Those holidays, the vacations, the seasonal borders, are all founded on somewhat arbitrarily established long weekends put in place by humans, not nature. If humanity were to vanish completely in some cataclysmic event that didn't destroy the earth or disrupt its orbit, the solstices, equinoxes and seasonal changes would still occur even with no one here to see them. Meanwhile, Labor Day, Memorial Day, Christmas, Independence Day, Halloween and Easter would all go away forever.
Fascinating as it might be for a budding horror novelist to consider, it isn't necessary to eradicate humanity to focus more on the celestial year and its beats and measures. Actually, doing so not only enhances the annual experience, but with some time and practice, it can become a habit.
This isn't some buzzword-rich influencer slop as found in wellness culture on social media. There's no astrology, no fad caveman “natural” diet, no new age self-help list of rules. It isn't about gaining some internal peace or balance in a chaotic world. There's nothing performative about it. It is just about looking up and observing.
Back when I was regularly walking to work, especially on long winter evenings, I liked to look up and see where the Orion constellation appeared to be positioned overhead. I also enjoyed tracking the moon's phases, or watching the signs of the shift of light as the sun appeared to move from the true west, sliding along the horizon daily until it appeared almost due south in the winter.
These shifts are what influence the changes apparent in the natural world, too. You may have noticed how the deep golden light of June becomes watery, pale and murky, and the hazy days of July and August rise and fall through mists. Then, there is a flash of gold again as the sky sheds its humidity, and sweeps to deep, hard azure before fading again to silver-white as winter steps on the stage. All of this is enhanced by the trees growing from pale green to deep, rich verdency and then burning gold, orange, red and purple before falling to earth.
One has to keep one eye on the sky to watch this show in four acts. The beauty of it is enough of an incentive, but there are other benefits to paying attention that may not be immediately obvious. More than what I’ve mentioned above, it pays to stay alert because paying attention is a skill that we are losing in the modern era. The regular culprits apply. We spend a lot of time (one might say an inordinate amount) looking at our screens. We spend more time indoors than previous generations. We’ve become inured to the world around us, the web of nature and our place in it.
Uncle Dan’s habit was to always look up, gauge the weather, see what, as he put it, the sky has to say. Not only the weather (which we might think is obvious) but also our surroundings. It is only recently that humanity has turned its back on the natural world’s messages. How can we see the vast, complex interplay of life that surrounds us if we won’t look up to see it? It is largely because most of our holidays no longer gel with the solar year, and though we are peripherally aware of the seasons and light, we almost never stop to experience it.
Most calendar year holidays didn’t come about until the 19th Century. President U.S. Grant established four major holidays for federal workers (in the District of Columbia only, at first) around 1870. Memorial Day (formerly Decoration Day) and Labor Day came later. One forgets how recent most of the things we take for granted really are.
Of course, I’m not against the regular holidays. I enjoy a good calendar year celebration as well as the next guy. Well, mostly. Recently, I’ve been celebrating the 12 Days of Yule, at least in spirit for several years. We still do Christmas, of course, but it starts earlier and lasts longer when you apply Yule to it. Yule is based on the solstice, not some arbitrary church feast or federal holiday.
In the north of Europe, the summer solstice is called Midsummer. Of course the climate probably fits this title better, but to me, it makes perfect sense. June 21st is the midway point between the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, marking the literal halfway point of the year. We say that this is when summer actually begins in the Northern Hemisphere, dividing the seasons into four equal quarters of the entire year.
Actually, the ancestors didn’t really use written calendars. Their entire awareness of the passage of time and seasons was by observation. The years were divided mainly by where the sun rose and set, each day. At each solstice, the sun stays in the same place for a few days, before moving a little to the right of where it rose (moving toward summer) and left of where it set the day before (moving to winter). Winter’s onset had more to do with the experience of nature, the first frost or serious snow, than anything else.
Those days are past us, but for much of human history, awareness of the weather and the sky meant a great deal. Not knowing or paying attention to the sky could mean the difference between life or death. This is partly why, even now, our association with the gods living in “heaven” or the skies comes primarily from ancient propitiations intended to maintain clement weather. Prayers for those who traveled, especially by sea, exist in almost every polytheistic system and each has its own gods of storm and harvest to call upon. El, upon whom Moses placed the burden of being “Almighty God” was just a Sumerian storm god, one of many such ancient creations whose will covered our doom under the rolling clouds.
We have new gods these days. In place of a storm god, we have a phone app that tells us the will of the weather. Who needs to look up, if you can look down at doppler radar on a screen? Who needs to gaze at the place where the sun rises or sets, if you can look at your built-in calendar? According to the modern way, that May Monday off is the real beginning of summer, and that first September Monday off is the official end. Fall is more marked by Halloween than the Autumnal Equinox. Likewise, spring by Easter. Actually, Easter is still defined by old seasonal rules, since it happens on the first Sunday after the Paschal Full Moon, which is the first Full Moon after the Vernal Equinox, which is why it shifts from year to year.
Overall, to me, it seems foolish to cast our heads down and to ignore the world around us. Beauty, warnings, mysteries of nature all happen around us every day and we miss it, while we gaze stupidly into a bright window on emptiness and misery. In the meantime, in the periphery, we are hailed by the most amazing reality imaginable. Each of us is sitting on a planet, slinging around a star, whose light and gravity mark the very real experience of the nature that supports us. Uncle Dan was right. It is a pity to miss the sound of the sky talking to us.
