We are four days out from the longest day of the year.
It seems a wonderful thing, and it is, but there is a part of me that is slightly melancholy, too; after all, on the sixth day, the dark will begin steadily to encroach just that fractional second sooner. And one of the aspects of June that I have always loved is the ability to see that vanishingly faint glow in the western sky until near midnight.
It’s one of the gifts of living at the far western edge of one’s time zone, a gift I was likewise granted in the lands of my home, albeit two hours earlier than here. Here, it helps, too, to live at such an elevation; although the peaks tower over us to the east, we remain measurably higher than town and county and points west.
For us, it is summer long before the solstice, and we live at the heart of the light.
It is a distinctly feminine sensibility, this season: one of fertility and fecundity — even in the harsh high desert, soft and round, fruitful and green. And despite their modern usages, “fertility” and “fecundity” are not precisely the same thing. The former is a verb, rooted in the Latin infinitive form, ferre: to bear or to carry. The latter comes from Latin, too, but from an adjective, fecundus: fruitful. One describes potential or process; the other, fact or product.
Here, process and product alike seem like miracles.
So much of our earth here is dry, arid, chalky, sandy — hard, unabsorbent, full of sharp-edged silicates and unreceptive to the rain. It does, however, take well to the light, producing starkly beautiful shadows beneath the wide angle of the summer sun. But there are other forms of earth here, too, rich brown soils and red clays, the latter seemingly designed for shelter and the former well-suited to cultivation and sustenance. And at this season, it is helped along by the rains that in most years are our norm.
Today dawned in shimmering tones of pale gold, sunlight already muted by a thin veil of clouds. Now, those clouds have built upon themselves, rising to tower above the ridgeline to the east, coalescing into a blue-black wall to the west. The rain will be here soon.
And for today, the light will last just a little longer than yesterday: shadows a little sharper overhead, earth a little more receptive to their presence.
Because for this week, at least, we live at the heart of the light.
~ Aji
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