For Eva.

A Lingering Solstice

We measure the solstice and equinox by scientific means. Not all things happen exactly as planned on the date preordained. One thing that I noticed this year, and other years before, is a lingering solstice.

Practice and observance

A lingering season may affect an ongoing practice. My own practices are slightly fluid, and do occasionally change depending upon the High Day, but an important part of one’s practice is more than just the “doing”. It is also important to look and to listen.

Not all seasons pass in the same way, and each passing season expresses itself in a different way. Perhaps it is the observer that changes, and the seasons pass by as always, but I think that isn’t the case.

As I watch more seasons come and go, I think I look a little bit deeper at the seasons themselves. Just before the Summer Solstice, there was a spell of cooler weather, uncharacteristically cool for this time of year. If I hadn’t known the date and had walked out my back door completely oblivious to calendar and obligations, I might have guessed that fall was upon us.

With Solstice came the heat, and intense heat at that, and then it was back to cool again. It appears the spring revisits itself, even after the Sun starts making its journey back again. It is as though it isn’t entirely ready to depart. I know I am not ready for spring to go.

An early spring

My spring season is a little bit different. I am always anxious for the lengthening days, so Imbolc marks the beginning of my springtime, albeit a little early. Since I am an early riser, I greet the earlier and earlier mornings with reverence and with thanks.

I make it a habit of promising myself to relish those early mornings and to treat them like gold to be cherished and admired, not forgotten and squandered. Yet, with every passing year, there is always some tasks at hand that deflects my view from those early mornings of wonder.

In speaking with a friend the other day, she mentioned that she felt that these are witchy times, those liminal in-between times that are not quite spring and not yet summer, and that magic and potential and wonder hold sway over these times and that anything is possible.

A liminal time

I cannot deny that this feeling is so very attractive to me. While post-COVID, I am often unsure of the day of the week, for some reason the megalithic nature of the changing of the seasons is an occurrence that has presence and gravity.

Next year, as I will resolve with this sitting, I will not look forward to which day will the Solstice arrive, replete with the Sun holding stationary in its journey. I will pretend that the spring is still going full force and I try with all determination to not notice that the mornings are ever-so-slowly receding.

As I run through the forest, I won’t say Spring’s name out loud, but instead pretend that the boundaries extend pass the usual number of days. When the hot days of July become entrenched and unforgiving, I will look to the sky and say “Summer, I knew you were here all along”.

Ancestors of the bone

When I think of the Ancestors of the Bones, those spirits human and otherwise that are buried beneath my feet, that walked on two legs or four legs or more, and experienced the seasons without calendar or observatory, I will relish in their memory and experience of the seasons as a stream of consciousness, where the passage was subtle and often unseen.

I like the idea of a lingering solstice, where the sun moves forward with a certain reluctance, towards other seasons a-waiting. And I will watch it all happen, under the skies, and thank the Earth Mother and the Gods for this beauty unfolding.