It's the longest night of the year, the night of the winter solstice. Today was a pretty nice day, with the high temps in the upper 60s and lots of sunshine. In honor of the solstice I hiked up Squaw Peak this afternoon in my shorts and a tee-shirt, and I was keenly aware that I live in a a singularly fortunate part of the country. Most of the rest of the country was grappling with a strong winter storm wreaking havoc at airports in the midwest, and moving eastward just in time to screw up the most heavily-traveled weekend of the year. Me, I was hanging laundry in my backyard and enjoying the view from on top of a mountain.
This evening I'm sitting on my couch at home, all snuggly and warm, a houseful of happy, healthy bunnies, watching my fabulous new television. I have it very good, and my life is very comfortable and full of riches and blessings. The winter solstice lends it self to such self-reflection and contemplation. I think about how many people, in various cultures around the world, over the millenia since mankind first started noticing things like solstices and equinoxes, have taken note of this particular day of the year.
The winter solstice occurs in the dead of winter, when the world seemed the most lifeless, although you would never know it where I live. In European cultures everything was usually covered with a thick blanket of snow and locked in the icy vise-grip of winter. The fields were barren and desolate, and the trees devoid of any leaves, looking as if they were dead. But people also understood that this is the day when light and life would begin to return to the world, for buried deep in the dead of winter are the seeds of spring, and soon enough the world will be blooming and fertile again.
Yes, the days will start to get a little bit longer from now until next June, and six months from now I will be griping and moaning about the horrible, ghastly heat which threatens to kill us all. But right now, I am very happy to contemplate the cycle of the seasons, and enjoy the chilly weather outside. As I get older I become more sensitive to the passage of time, and the cold realization that I will not alive on this planet forever. We only get a limited time to live here, and I realize more and more each day that all of us have a responsibility to live a good a life as possible. I want to live my life kindly and intelligently, to leave the world in a better shape than when I entered it - a life marked by kindness, empathy, defending the rights of animals in a world where they are so often abused and devalued, and wisely using the resouces this planet provides to us.
That is what I'm thinking about on this night, the longest night of the year. When my time is over, I want to feel like I have accomplished something, and I have made a little bit of difference in the lives of the people and animals who have graced my life with their presence.
Showing posts with label time. Show all posts
Showing posts with label time. Show all posts
Friday, December 21, 2012
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Summer Into Autumn
We've started to get the first inklings that the long, hot summer in the desert is finally winding down. This past July was a record-breaker - the average daily high temperature was the hottest ever - and with it record electricity bills to keep the A/C running. The monsoon turned out to be another "non-soon," the eighth-driest on record, with us receiving barely a fourth of the normal rainfall we should have gotten. Violent monsoon thunderstorms were harder to find than Sarah Palin's brain. But we're relatively certain that 110-plus temperatures are behind us until next June and the daytime highs hover at or slightly above normal, which is around 100 degrees for this time of year.
But I've also noticed that it is getting darker a little earlier in the evenings. The sun used to still be up after 7pm, but now doesn't make it past 6:30pm. I leave the gym about the same time every visit and when I pull out of the parking lot, which faces due west, the sun is right there in front of me in my eyes, as it continues its inexorable drift southward.
Things are changing up in the nighttime sky, too. The great square of Pegasus, the constellation representing the Winged Stallion of mythology, is large and prominent in the eastern sky around 10pm. Hanging off one side is the constellation Andromeda, the maiden, and a quick look around with binoculars will reveal a smudge of grayish light, which is our neighboring galaxy aptly named the Andromeda Galaxy. The light that enters your eyes and registers in your brain left the vicinity of Andromeda over 2 million years ago, long before mankind made its appearance on Planet Earth, and it traveled 12 quintillion miles to get here. I don't really know how to explain what a quintillion is, other than to say it is the number 1 followed by 18 zeroes. Imagine you have twelve of those lined up end-to-end and that's how far Andromeda is in miles. Scientists believe Andromeda is barreling toward our galaxy and the two will collide in a couple billion years. When galaxies collide they basically pass through each other, the distances between individual stars are so vast, but the immense gravitational forces end up blowing huge streamers and tails of gas, dust and stars out into interstellar space. Eventually our Milky Way and Andromeda will merge into one huge supergalaxy, but that's many billions of years away, about the time everyone will be sick of reality TV and Paris Hilton will finally get some sense.
In the next couple of weeks the stars of winter will gradually make an appearance in the sky, and the stars of summer will disappear into the twilight glow in the west. The first thing to notice will be the tight star cluster of the Pleiades, climbing up the eastern sky barely ahead of the horns of Taurus, the Bull. The large, perfectly beautiful constellation Scorpio the Scorpion is skittering off toward the southwestern horizon, being chased to warmer climates by the advent of autumn. On the other side of the sky, Orion the Hunter is rising sideways over the eastern horizon, locked in a perpetual pursuit of the Scorpion, always trying but never catching up to it. Poet Robert Frost mentioned the rising of Orion in his work, "The Star-Splitter":
You know Orion always comes up sideways.
Throwing a leg up over our fence of mountains
And rising on his hands...
Orion is quite the magnificent constellation and a true harbinger of the winter months. It houses the Great Nebula of Orion, an enormous, relatively close-by star factory where inconceivably large clouds of gas and dust are collapsing under their own gravity and igniting nuclear fires in their cores, giving birth to more stars which will ornament the skies millions of years from now. Underneath Orion is Lepus, the celestial Hare, a humble, unobtrusive collection of stars. As time goes on Orion will rise high in the southern sky, right-side up, and when it does you can finally spot the star Canopus, the second-brightest star in the night sky after Sirius the Dog Star, glittering low in the south. Canopus is so far south as seen from here that it is only above the horizon for a couple of hours each night. It barely clears the southern horizon and is up for a short time before it curves right back down and sets again. That star is a herald of the approaching spring season for me.
I feel that I am only doing what many generations of people before me have done - measure the passing of the seasons by changes in the sky. And it comes so very naturally and easily - almost as if we are genetically pre-programmed to observe what happens up above and correlate what we see to events on Earth. The stars and the planets are my oldest friends in the world, and it's comforting in an odd way to know they will be around long after I have moved on to the next world, becoming lifelong friends and companions to generations of natural-born astronomers yet to be.
But I've also noticed that it is getting darker a little earlier in the evenings. The sun used to still be up after 7pm, but now doesn't make it past 6:30pm. I leave the gym about the same time every visit and when I pull out of the parking lot, which faces due west, the sun is right there in front of me in my eyes, as it continues its inexorable drift southward.
Things are changing up in the nighttime sky, too. The great square of Pegasus, the constellation representing the Winged Stallion of mythology, is large and prominent in the eastern sky around 10pm. Hanging off one side is the constellation Andromeda, the maiden, and a quick look around with binoculars will reveal a smudge of grayish light, which is our neighboring galaxy aptly named the Andromeda Galaxy. The light that enters your eyes and registers in your brain left the vicinity of Andromeda over 2 million years ago, long before mankind made its appearance on Planet Earth, and it traveled 12 quintillion miles to get here. I don't really know how to explain what a quintillion is, other than to say it is the number 1 followed by 18 zeroes. Imagine you have twelve of those lined up end-to-end and that's how far Andromeda is in miles. Scientists believe Andromeda is barreling toward our galaxy and the two will collide in a couple billion years. When galaxies collide they basically pass through each other, the distances between individual stars are so vast, but the immense gravitational forces end up blowing huge streamers and tails of gas, dust and stars out into interstellar space. Eventually our Milky Way and Andromeda will merge into one huge supergalaxy, but that's many billions of years away, about the time everyone will be sick of reality TV and Paris Hilton will finally get some sense.
In the next couple of weeks the stars of winter will gradually make an appearance in the sky, and the stars of summer will disappear into the twilight glow in the west. The first thing to notice will be the tight star cluster of the Pleiades, climbing up the eastern sky barely ahead of the horns of Taurus, the Bull. The large, perfectly beautiful constellation Scorpio the Scorpion is skittering off toward the southwestern horizon, being chased to warmer climates by the advent of autumn. On the other side of the sky, Orion the Hunter is rising sideways over the eastern horizon, locked in a perpetual pursuit of the Scorpion, always trying but never catching up to it. Poet Robert Frost mentioned the rising of Orion in his work, "The Star-Splitter":
You know Orion always comes up sideways.
Throwing a leg up over our fence of mountains
And rising on his hands...
Orion is quite the magnificent constellation and a true harbinger of the winter months. It houses the Great Nebula of Orion, an enormous, relatively close-by star factory where inconceivably large clouds of gas and dust are collapsing under their own gravity and igniting nuclear fires in their cores, giving birth to more stars which will ornament the skies millions of years from now. Underneath Orion is Lepus, the celestial Hare, a humble, unobtrusive collection of stars. As time goes on Orion will rise high in the southern sky, right-side up, and when it does you can finally spot the star Canopus, the second-brightest star in the night sky after Sirius the Dog Star, glittering low in the south. Canopus is so far south as seen from here that it is only above the horizon for a couple of hours each night. It barely clears the southern horizon and is up for a short time before it curves right back down and sets again. That star is a herald of the approaching spring season for me.
I feel that I am only doing what many generations of people before me have done - measure the passing of the seasons by changes in the sky. And it comes so very naturally and easily - almost as if we are genetically pre-programmed to observe what happens up above and correlate what we see to events on Earth. The stars and the planets are my oldest friends in the world, and it's comforting in an odd way to know they will be around long after I have moved on to the next world, becoming lifelong friends and companions to generations of natural-born astronomers yet to be.
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