Beltane Solstice Moon
Summer is its own creature, a season apart from the others, especially here in the north. Things grow. Outside has only insect barriers, no cold or ice or snow or chill. Yes, rain and thunder and tornadoes and derechos. Yes. But only occasionally. Usually the sun shines, heat climbs, jackets and boots stay in the closet.
It is now, finally, summer. In three days the summer solstice will arrive, midsommer as celebrated in Scandinavia. Here, this year, it will almost mark the beginning of our actual summer.
With the bees and the flowers, the vegetables and the woods, now the fire pit and visiting kin you would think I might love the summer. And I do, in my way. I appreciate it, look forward to it, enjoy it. In particular I like working outside, planting, tending, harvesting. Having the self expand out into the world beyond the house feels good, extends my understanding of who I am and of those whom I love.
Still, I will celebrate not the light on the day of the summer solstice, but its opposite, the beginning of night’s gradual increase. I don’t know whether it’s my northern European DNA, or the mysterious lure that drew me north ever since reading Jack London, or a tendency toward melancholy, or a more general sense that my most vital activity occurs when the nights grow long and the temperature falls.
What I do know is that as the shadows lengthen and twilight comes sooner, my inner life begins to deepen, ideas bubble out of my interior. My creative self flourishes. It just occurred to me as I wrote this that attention outside draws me away from myself and from the inner work, undoubtedly a good thing, but as I sense the need for outside attention wane, my inner world grows more demanding.
If this is in fact the way it is, then I’m glad, for it means my inner life and the progression of the seasons have begun to synchronize in a powerful, subconscious way.
