The morning of the day of the longest night

Beaubien, Conrad. Picton Harbour First Snow. Watercolour. 2021.

When I was young I hadn’t yet grasped the concept of solstice. Sure the galaxies moved and the earth’s shadow on the moon made it appear with its many faces as explained by Mme. Thibeault in her junior science class. Madame held an orange in front of her desk light which she had arranged to beam on the wall next to her chair. That is how the moon works in relation to us on the orange she said. Then in the tips of her false red fingernails she’d slowly turn the orange and we were to imagine us living on the fruit stand-in for the earth with its axis off-tilt like she demonstrated. As an aside, I have thought of that off-tilt thing all my life and wondering if it has anything to do with human behavior. I carried on pondering the universe and that maybe a rain of apples and bananas might arrive one night, thrashing through space while covering us in compote. I survived those imaginings and gradually as I moved into adult life and more precisely in recent decades, I have begun to think about Mme. Thibealt’s desk lamp and her parable about oranges. 

I pictured in my mind that earth turning and its alignment with the moon and the sun and all the other celestial bodies were phenomena that existed throughout infinity and that when I look up at the moon at night, it’s the same vision that has been witnessed throughout the ages. That very view up there, depending of course on where on the orange you stood, was unchangeable and that the very moon cycle and the earth turning, shapes everything from tides in the ocean to cactus in the desert.

And now at sunrise and sunset I feel Mme. Thibealt’s orange turning in the lamp light of the heavens as we head toward the sun in morning and away from it at eventide. I have that similar thought as I write this. I sense the dawn searching through the web of pines on the other side of the yard. There is little movement in the pastel hue of shade on new fallen snow. Like a sand dial, moment by moment the light begins to wash my room with an amber radiance and shadows; shadows of my hand as it moves across the page. 

While music is the highest of art forms and birdsong calms a day, I tend to live in silence most often. I find it is then that I can hear the un-hearable, the symphony of the ancient galaxies. It’s in silence when thoughts, the penses of early morn seem to engage with the daylight and there, in the stillness I can hear it all. Summer solstice in June is diverse, the play of light and shadow is angled differently and the two tall windows in my tiny room are opened, beckoning the sounds of daybreak.

Beaubien, Conrad. Along the Belleville Road. Watercolour. 2021.

The sun now lifting above the tree line, its mercury light gently shifts the shadows across my neighbour’s yard. It is a faded light, a version of the memory of early science class days that held that oranges turned in the universe. On the sun dial there is an early darkness that recalls the voices of the Ancients that feared that the sun may never return; until it did, proving winter solstice to be only a so-called night of the dread. 

Many of us have personally experienced longest nights; a dark descending and the fear that the sun would not return. I have generally held that it is a spirit of creativity that has steered through the void of darkness to get me to the light of tomorrow’s shorelines. It’s kinda like I somehow trusted Mme. Thibealt’s outlook that the earth would continue to turn, off axis and all; and that oranges will eventually find a path toward day. 

Today: for me this day is about the life force of a donkey named Thunder and his companionship along the winter trails. In Thunder’s genes are ancient memories of moons and stars and I feel that as he moves with the grace and humility of animal spirit. 

I reach out to all of our readers to thank you for following with us along our trails.  We will be having public walks throughout parts of the County through winter and we invite you to come along. If you are not able to trek with us come and say hello at the beginning of our walks. Thunder and I send greetings for a fresh year packed with serenity and orange lucky things.

-Published in the Wellington Times, December 23, 2021