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I began to write this six hours before the season-tipping moment of the winter solstice, here in the Washington, DC, suburb of Alexandria, Virginia. The sun slipped below the barely warm southwestern horizon at 4:49 p.m. Saturday evening, December 21st, and it won’t rouse itself to climb above the night-chilled southeastern horizon until 7:23 a.m. Sunday morning, the 22nd, after leaving us in the dark for 14 long hours. Oh, the ruthlessness of winter’s blackest trickery!
This morning’s Washington Post featured an informative account of the solstice, written by Justin Grieser, with all the important details about how and why the Earth-Sun mechanics work the way they do to bathe us in long stretches of sunlight in the summer, and plunge us into what seems like eternal darkness in winter. As a creature of earth and space sciences…well, as an aficionado at least…I appreciated every detail of Grieser’s article. How can you not appreciate the accuracy of this almost palpable paragraph that expresses so perfectly the solstice’s curious impact:
“Perhaps it’s the stark contrast between daylight and darkness that we experience when the winter sun is shining and not hiding behind a thick blanket of clouds. Or maybe it’s the fact that the sun hangs so low in the sky all day at this time of year that it almost feels as if our nearest star is within tangible reach, despite being 91 million miles away.”
For me, the solstice is the tipping point between madness and sanity, a moment in time when the bleak forecasts of three more…
