Staying Light Later

I just had visitors the past few days—my FIRST since moving to Michigan. Granted they had points at a motel not far away so they didn’t stay with me, nevertheless, it was great to take them on hikes and to see the sights. What sights you may ask?

They are Ohio State University geeks and so make it a point to visit Big Ten campuses—especially the stadiums. Whereupon we came upon Sparty, the statue.

After dinner on the back patio we took an evening walk. The summer sun was brilliant as it ebbed closer to the treeline. They commented about it staying light later. Of course, we’re on the far western edge of the time zone. Just across the lake in Wisconsin where they are from the sun sets an hour earlier.

I guess I’d missed the memo, but, yes, I have been have Scandinavian déjà vu=the intense longing to camp and watch the sun set from the fly of my tent. We’ve just passed the solstice so things stay light until 10 pm. My circadian or biological rhythm has me still doing projects at 9 pm—compare that to Chicago where sometimes I was already in bed by then.

It isn’t always physical, but a mental point of view—this feeling that one has all the time in the world, a long lingering, about slowing down and enjoying the day, the light, the moment. The golden hue of which Robert Frost wrote:

Nothing Gold Can Stay

BY ROBERT FROST

Nature’s first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf’s a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

 

And, to add to this—evening turns to night in a slow gyring of golden delight. Wild fire flames burn across the sky as the longship sun smolders on the horizon, before sinking.