Sun days
Being on a farm all day, almost every day, year round, you get real acquainted with the seasons, real fast. Surrounded on all sides by acres of alfalfa helps, as I have uninterrupted and sweeping views of the sky.
My first year on the farm, the one thing that really captivated me was the rising and setting of the sun. Seems silly to say, but I lived in suburbs my whole life, where homes and structures made it hard to ever see a scrap of the horizon. And now that I have an unencumbered swath of it, I can really see the seasonal shifts that happen in the sky.
I am able to witness its every rise, observing as it tracks across the sky before tucking itself in on the other side.
It’s dreamy, I’m not going to lie.
I have thousands of pictures of sunrises and sunsets. No one is like another. And I still can’t seem to collect enough.
While I focused in on the beautiful paintings each sunrise and sunset created, it wasn’t long before I began to notice the point in which it would rise & set.
In the early summer, from my upstairs east facing bedroom, I can see it poking up far north over a cluster of homes in the distance. It tracks directly overhead very slowly, mostly above my northern pasture before it dips down on the north side of my barn.
As the summer wanes, where it rises gently begins to tick southward from behind the windmill, and it no longer tracks directly overhead, instead arching a bit south over the farmhouse and silver leaf maple.
Inch by inch, day by day, until it we can watch both the rise & set from the south facing porch without even moving our chairs.
Ahh yes, the earth rotating on its axis. Bending closer to the sun in summer and away in winter. I know, this is like, Intro to Astronomy 101.
But for someone like me, who is tactile and sensory, there are just some basic concepts I cannot truly grasp until I have physically experienced them. Otherwise, it just feels too abstract.
And now that November has arrived, we’ve fallen back to standard time. We are just days away from the seemingly unending dark months where we can sit in our unmoved chairs on the porch. The sun’s show becomes hasty. She takes forever to rise, and then sets in a flash.
My own energy reciprocates. I also rise later & with a similar heaviness, and the minute the crimson orange glow fades into a deep indigo & blanket of obsidian, I feel a similar strong gravitational pull … to the couch … even if it’s only 4 o’clock!
The first few days of noticeably early sunsets and the precipitous drop in energy are always a bit rough. I think it’s the guilt because my internal dialog is saying … “it’s not even dinner time … in summer you’d still be out in the garden or working in the barn.”
Surely you know this drill, too?
But the lesson I’ve learned one too many times in my first 7 years of farming is —
This guilt stricken mindset is not productive, and
Yes, this is not summer. This is most definitely fall. And we do fall differently than we do summer.
“On Wednesdays we wear pink.”
So instead of mentally beating myself up, I’ve learned to embrace the season of rest. It’s kind of like…a counter balance…to the insanity that was summer.
It takes some doing, I must admit, to remember to extend myself some grace during the first days of a new season. Especially after the already mentally taxing year that 2020 has been - it is almost too easy to slip into the winter blues.
But when I make a concentrated effort to squash the inner critic, I quite enjoy the conversation that results. And undoubtedly it frees up valuable space to become receptive to whatever the day may bring - however little or large.
And with the pandemic extending into these dark months, it is doubly important to find new traditions and ways to embrace & celebrate our limited daylight. Have you created new routines to help keep the blues at bay?
Here are a few of my recent faves—
Being a tourist in my own town. We’ve lived in our town for 12 years and there are still numerous public places and parks we’ve yet to really check out. Visiting during early morning hours means we can get a whole new view of a sunrise without the crowds.
Take a device-free drive in the country. We are always finding new old roads to get ‘lost’ on. When we find a really cool one with even better views than we can get on our farm we…
Return another day for a coffee & donut date to watch the sunrise or with ice cream treat to watch a full moon put on a show.
Pasture patrols where I pick up trash that’s blown in from the main road. I always tell myself “just fill one grocery sack” and am amazed at the sense of accomplishment it brings. Some days all it takes is 30 minutes, while others I can burn almost a couple hours and not even notice. Just imagine if you did this in your neighborhood or down Main Street. You might even encourage others to do the same. And if nothing else, you’d single handedly make your community a more beautiful place.
Do you have blue-busting strategies? Share them in the comments!
And let’s pump a little more light into our days together . . . even if we’re still 6 feet apart!