Six Months of Sunrise: Joyous Feasts of Light

Six months ago come Christmas Day my husband and I moved from our house in the woods in the fold of a stream valley to High Valley. Because of the pond (affectionately known as Lake Almosta) there is much more sky, much more places from which to observes the comings and goings of great celestial bodies. It has become my practice to go outside and greet the sun every morning, veiled in clouds or not. It has been thrilling to track the sun’s journey to the southeastern sky and my own corresponding trek around the pond to catch the first light. 

Winter cold has not been a deterrent, and I have discovered that no matter how unpromising the dawn looks from inside, outside it is always an event. The birds agree, and I always look to see which ones are gathered in the bare top of the tallest spruce, which accommodates hawks, crows, and sparrows by turns.

 Many people see dawn because they have to commute. All three of my jobs are right here, so I get to see the sunrise only because I want to. Sometimes I think it matters, that greeting the sun is one of our tasks as humans. The practice has changed my life and gotten me through a major depression, which now seems to be lifting. When I can, I watch the sunset, too.

 If I ran for president (or perhaps ruler of the world) my platform would be simple. Everyone stop everything at sunrise and sunset. Just be still and remember where you are: riding through bright dark unfathomable immensity on a whirling, circling, beautiful bit of dust.

I close with some December poems in the form of tanka (5-7-5-7-7 syllables)
Wishing you all joyous feasts of light as the year dawns!

night
 outside my window
the intricacy of trees
by winter revealed
black sinuous branches bared
leaf-bereft, ablaze with stars

grey  

whatever weather
all mornings are beautiful
when you are outside
this one: grey, soft as my cat
warm wind swirling clouds and trees 

moon and sun

across the dance floor
bright dim dawn and evening skies
the two dancers gaze
moon and sun in earth’s dark wings
bathed in their love light I spin 

ice 

winter made a rough draft
a sketchy sheet of thin ice
erased by warm rain
now back to the blank wet pond
with a cold determined wind

triple sunrise

first clearing earth’s rim
then one cloud and another
thrice I greet the sun
each time the brightest of stars
a match struck to light the world

Following the Sun: Earth Science 101

For twenty-six years I lived in a house with a hill to the south and east. Most times of the year by the time I saw the sun, it had been up for hours and had perhaps once again determined there was nothing new under it. Only in winter could I see it rise from my bedroom. It appeared on the hill like a bright match about to ignite the bare winter wood.

On June 25th we moved to High Valley and as I have mentioned here before, I have been getting up early every day to do chi gung on the dock at the pond, for most of the summer the sunniest place at sunrise. I have written more than one haiku about the sun climbing the spruce trees across the pond. Recently, after a week of cloudy weather, I noted that the sun had moved over to a maple tree, but still the dock had plenty of sun.

This week there is no denying the sun has quit this spot. I have to walk past the dock to stand for a moment in a patch of sun. Before I finish preliminary exercises, the sun has brushed the end of the dock and hurried on. Yes, hurried. That’s how it seems to me. No gradual: now it rises in the maple tree and now over the barn. It is rising in a southward curve, casting one shadow and then another and another. And of course, each day it is rising later.

None of these observations are news. Every year the earth makes an elliptical orbit around the sun, its axis tilting away and towards, giving those of us in northern and southern hemispheres a palpable summer and winter. This is grade school stuff. Except suddenly it isn’t or maybe I am reverting to that age (I believe it’s called latency) when discovering things like the path of the sun or the phases of the moon can hold your attention, because you are not thinking about sex, or not all the time. I still do think about sex, but figuring out why the sun appears to be moving faster than it was a few weeks ago is occupying more and more mental space.

I would like to do a science project, and find a place where I can track the sun’s movement in miniature for a year. I have not yet found a place where there is no shade all day. So I expect I will continue to follow the sun every morning, seeking a patch of early light and seeing how long I can stay in it before it moves. I doubt I will get very scientific in my measurements, but I will continue to write haiku. And I will continue to do my chi gung practice early when the sun gives at least the illusion that everything under it is new.

A few thoughts on personification

We do it. I just did it with the sun. We name hurricanes. If your region or home was devastated by Irene, my heart is with you. Though we were in its predicted path, the east side of the Hudson River got off lightly. We also didn’t feel the recent earthquake, though only fifteen minutes away, others did. What I want to say is that people are quick to ascribe motivation to disasters—God’s or Gaia’s. People on both sides of the political spectrum do it. We like to believe that some force larger than ourselves shares our views and our judgments.

I wish we would all just become curious. There is some evidence of a causal relation between the recent earthquake and fracking. There is also considerable evidence that global warming will result in more frequent and volatile storms and rising seas. But who is affected, where and why, is beyond our ken. I just heard from a neighbor who lives ten minutes from me whose road was washed out. Here we had no damage at all—this time. Was it because I walked out early into the storm and asked Irene not to harm my trees?

I don’t need to know the answer to that question. And I will continue to talk to storms and trees and birds and flowers and insects, because that is my nature. Sometimes with familiar trees and animals, I am pretty sure the conversation is two-sided. But the trees speak like trees. And my translation is just that, a translation. Storms and earthquakes also speak. Let’s do our best to learn their languages before we tell other people what they mean.

Note from Maeve

I am a weather witch, and I pretty much concur with Eliz. BTW Tim is going to be giving me blog assignments soon as the publication date for Red-Robed Priestess gets closer. If you have a venue for reviewing Red-Robed Priestess or interviewing Eliz—or me!—let Tim know: tim@monkfishpublishing.com