Solstice Night

Last night was the longest night of the solar year. Brad and I went down to the river about midnight. It was cold and the moon was at half phase, but strange. It was horizontally in half and only the bottom was showing. There was no wind and a clear sky so the reflection and the moon itself were both very clear and sharply defined. I devoted some time to thinking about what I would like to encourage for the next year, and what to discourage. I do this on the Winter Solstice, as many others do on New Years. I like the Solstice better for this, it’s much older.

This is usually the time of year when it’s good to stay indoors and out of the cold and wet, to build a fire and look into it. It is a good time to think about what we have harvested from our year of living. What we have put into that area of safekeeping we call experience. How we might bring these things out into consciousness; to see the ideas and projects that have been growing or have become mature and now may be used for investment in the future. A good time, is this time, to take stock of where we are, and where we might want to be at next year’s Winter Solstice. In the spring, by the time of the Vernal Equinox we will be planting the new directions we are forming now, so it is good to have them ready.

The BLR gauge is at 2.5 feet today. Pretty low, but it will rise slowly. The Ohio is rising some, and that water will be here in a few days, but it’s not much. There is no current, at all, at noon – very unusual.

Today the river is hosting small flocks of Forster’s terns and ring-billed gulls. The osprey cruises up and down, watching the cormorants dive and surface over and over. The feeder at the window is crowded with goldfinches, cardinals, chickadees and titmice. The cardinals really don’t get along with each other very well. It is a bright, blue day, and cool.

Rise and shine, Jim