Anxiety Breeds Celebration

The solstice is always strikes a weird combination of emotion in the heart of Canadians when they day's significance. The long awaited summer has officially arrived, yet at the same time, the day preludes the shortening of days and descent back into the interminable winter. There are the first hints of a wasted summer, even before summer has begun, because the days are already shortening. Yet June 22nd comes, the sun sets at 10pm again and the worry is forgotten because we know there are still many days left. Then before you know it, September is into October, school's back in and the soft pang of regret strikes the heart with the beauty of the changing color of the tree canopy and a crisp night.

Holidays are meant to help us deal with things, though they get bound up in many different trappings. Thanksgiving and the harvest bounty are surely related. Christmas coincides with the darkest time of year and has an ability, if you let it, to warm the spirit. New Years is a convenient break for resolutions. Chinese New Year is time for family. So I'm proposing we get back to celebrating the solstice, though I'm probably thousands of years late to inventing this one.

At first I thought, "Next year!! I'll have the best celebration." But I'd like to see my personal tradition reach it's 25th, 50th, or 75th year and those numbers imply starting right away. So today, the first day of summer, coincidentally the first harvest day for Jemseg River farm, I got to the highest point I could, 20 feet up in an ash tree on the south west ridge of the farm and watched the sunset. I didn't take a picture because there will be many more long lazy sunsets before autumn comes, but I did enjoy it because it was unbelievably stunning, clouds and water dancing with fire over this hilly New Brunswick hobbit-land, and also because who knows how many more chances I will get to watch the setting of the summer sun.