Looking Up

You do NOT have to wear a hat and gloves in order to look up at the sky. Feel free to wax theatrical, however.

A few weeks ago my friend Cheryl told me that most people forget to look up and view the sky on a regular basis.

I find this hard to believe. I spend a lot of time looking up—not just because I’m short but because I was educated to do so.

One of the joys of my liberal-arts degree from Mount Holyoke was and remains my minor in astronomy. I never wanted to be an astronomer. I loved studying astronomy, however. It grounded me in our world and our universe. It still does.

On clear nights (and we’re having a lot of those lately!) I keep track of the movement of the seasons by charting the progress of the constellations through the sky. The moon’s phases remind me that the month is flying by.

As for the sun … well, the sun’s migration along the horizon is particularly striking here in western Massachusetts.

At the winter solstice, when the sun reaches its southernmost point, the morning light appears outside my bedroom window over a high mountain. That mountain makes the winter sunrise even later than it would ordinarily be at this latitude, around 9:30 in the morning. I have often told our minister that if the church would celebrate a sunrise service at Christmas instead of Easter I might actually manage to get out of bed in time to attend.

Today is the summer solstice—and the sun has moved dramatically to the north. (Yes, I know that technically the earth has moved, not the sun, but life is all about perception.) From my point of view the sun now rises above the barn across the street at Red Top, the home of my neighbors the Gillans. I don’t actually see the sunrise from my window unless I get up to take my dog out around 5:30 and peer northward.

I’m not generally a sunrise kind of girl because I’m not a morning kind of girl. At this time of year, however, I enjoy contemplating the sun as it appears over that barn. (I can, and do, always go back to sleep!)

The sun will start moving to the south again tomorrow. But today it briefly seems to stand still.

Its bright northern light represents all the ripeness that summer offers—daylilies and corn and tomatoes; hours spent chatting with neighbors on the shore or gliding through the clear, cool water; shared stories and songs and sandwiches on the porch.

To top off the thrill of today, tonight we’ll be treated to the Strawberry Moon. That full moon of June celebrates the flavor and significance of my favorite berry. I plan to observe the occasion by consuming at least a pint of strawberries.

I hope you eat them too—and above all I hope you look up! I find that when I’m looking up the world is, too.

Happy Solstice.

To read more about my astronomy minor, click here.

To read more about the Strawberry Moon, click here.

Stasis and Movement

Now that spring is bumping its way into view I long for summer. I think part of us (part of me, anyway) never loses the Platonic ideal of that season we developed when we were children. When I think of summer I think of long, sunny days in which I have nothing to do but please myself and grow—days of swimming and dreaming and playing with friends.

In reality as an adult I juggle work and social obligations daily during the summer months. Still, I try to spend at least a few minutes of each afternoon sitting at my neighbors’ magical dam. I let my mind wander and soak up the joys of sun and water.

The dam today doesn’t look much different from the dam of my youth. The sound of the water flowing toward and over it is the eternal sound of my childhood. Resting by the dam, or gliding through the water with a breaststroke, I feel as though time has stood still.

Of course, time—like the water—is always moving. It’s one of life’s paradoxes that even when we think we are at rest, as I believe I am now typing this into my laptop with my dog Truffle snoozing at my side, humans and the cosmos are moving in myriad ways. Our globe spins on its axis and rotates around the sun. The sun and its solar system move around the Milky Way. Everything in the universe expands every second.

Similarly, the dam, which I think of as always the same, is transformed from instant to instant as thousands of drops of water whiz by. The very sound that symbolizes eternity for me—the sound of water flowing—is the sound of change.

Maybe change is the point. Perhaps the reason I so love the dam and summer is not because they are always the same but because they are, like life, always on the move. They breathe with me … nourish me … play with me. They remind me that we are most centered when we are busiest.

Come to think of it, I don’t have to wait until summer to regain the feeling of childhood. All I have to do is strive to be more aware of the ways in which stasis and movement coexist—and the spirit of youth, of learning and play and dreaming, will fill me.

I won’t tell Truffle about this just now, however. She is enjoying the illusion that she is at rest while napping.

Let sleeping dogs lie.