Hello and happy solstice, friends, and thank you, Pádraig, for this luminous prompt on this luminous day.
I cannot recall one specific summer solstice, but what the word conjures is the summertime freedom of youth, a day long enough to contain everything: swimming in the sea, laughter, worries left at the shore, a perfect book, rosé, and the all-encompassing lust of summer. And then, when the day had given all it had, a campfire crackling under an endless canopy of stars, a guitar, friends lying back scanning the sky for shooting stars, young love burning as brightly as the flames. As brightly as those stars. The night so wide and generous it felt like it would never close. Wishing you all a day long enough to contain everything.
Indeed it was. The weather was clear and beautiful in the Southeast. I purified some of my crystals outside in the solstiice sun, enjoyed a Juneteenth celebration, and a bike ride before the heat became too much.
I managed to stay off of my laptop and phone for most of the day which is hard because I have fallen so in love with reading and writing on Substack 🔥
I’m glad, Penelope! I lounged in my garden for most of the day after performing all weekend. I needed to recharge! I’ve had to begin setting a timer for Substack reading; there are so many great writers and fascinating stories.
One summer near the end of high school, around this time of year, I spent a series of nights accompanying my mother on her job counting corncrakes on our island. Corncrakes are shy birds. They migrate from North Africa in spring and spend the summer in Scotland, or used to. They lurk in the long grass of fields and meadows, and in the long summer evenings the males call for mates in a loud and grating double-barreled cry that stretches out through the villages: /crex crex/, giving them their Latin name. My mother’s task was to drive slowly through the villages in the dead of night, all the windows open, listening. When we heard a corncrake we would drive round to a different point and triangulate its location.
At the end of the night’s work, around 2am, we drove home with the first flush of pre-dawn light sharpening the north-east horizon: the royal blue of the firmament bleeding into lemon-yellow orange-highlighter edge and the headland sharp and black beneath, then the bay silvery and pale.
I haven’t heard a corncrake in our part of the island now for decades. There are still a few that visit the southern isles. And they used to be common across the British Isles.
Caitriana, your corncrakes. That image of you and your mother, windows open in the dead of night, listening for something shy and vanishing, is so poignant. The pre-dawn light you describe, royal blue bleeding into lemon yellow, the headland black, the bay silvery and pale, that is a painting. And the silence where the crex crex used to be is its own kind of grief, isn't it, the absence...
This sounds like so much fun. I've never heard of a corncrake, but now I want to look one up and listen! It made me sad to think that you don't hear them much anymore. I hope they are not an endangered species.
Sadly they are now endangered 😭 the programme my mum was working for was trying to monitor numbers and help them recover, but since then they’ve (at least the ones coming here) just got fewer in number. Changes in agricultural practices are one factor but I don’t know whether the main issue is on this side or the other side of their migration.
My little family of three has a winter solstice tradition of lighting candles all along and inside the little creek that runs between our home and the woods. We disperse them at dusk so we can feel the change—which is less gradual than you’d imagine—it’s like someone’s hand is on the sunset dial and is turning it in notches down, down, darker, darker, and all we really notice are the little fires who start glowing more and more. We stay mostly quiet and still, outside, maybe singing softly, watching the evening fully fall.
For summer solstice, there is usually a fire. And an exciting late night for the kiddo… that feeling of fullness that comes without a list of its contents. This year feels odd. We are walking through days like dreams as someone so dear to us faces health issues and uncertainties. We have the sense in our hearts, that all will be well. But there is inner tension—more than usual, there is a child inside of me and a teenager inside of me and a grown up inside of and a mother inside of me and my sense of time is so surreal that I read your post for today, Pádraig, and was like, ohhhh, yeahhh, solstice…
We haven’t yet told my daughter, who is 5, who just woke up during this early predawn and looked quite intrigued that mama was already up, writing. Likely, she is not falling back asleep and soon we will go outside, to not wake her papa, and we will visit all our familiar places in the unfamiliar cast of the earliest light.
Jo, the candles in the creek, someone's hand on the sunset dial turning it down in notches, the child and the teenager and the mother all living inside you at once. You write the interior of human experience like no one else.
I hope this solstice is infinitely beautiful, for you and your little family and the dear one you are walking alongside. May the earliest light be kind this morning.
Jo, how sweetly you hold the tension between the magical light show and the fear of losing someone impossibly dear. May all be well with you and yours. Peace always.
I’m newly paralyzed at 32. Longer light, for me, brings with it an earlier wake-up time (I wake up with the light and it comes right through the window shades). Since I can’t get out of bed on my own and don’t want to wake my parents, I lay here, often staring at the ceiling. Since my brain hemorrhage (which is what has left me paralyzed) I’ve had a lot of time to sit here and think since there’s not much else to do and there is only so much tv you can watch or reading to get done before your eyes fall out. Contemplating in the early hours, like now, is when I get a good amount of writing in. Something about the early light helps find contemplative moments and I can finally come up with a new topics for articles or write a new poem. The day’s illumination brings my own!
"The day's illumination brings my own!" Love this line! I am sorry to hear you are newly paralyzed. Happy to hear that contemplation and writing is an important part of your life. May this day of light bring lightness of being.
What a challenge you face, and what a gift you give in this kind of writing to us. I’m not good at long reading times - audio books, especially Padraig’s, are my treat to myself. Our library has zillions of audio books to borrow - free. Blessings on your writing.
For the past few summers, I’ve come to relish the lengthening light of the nights around summer solstice time. Before going to sleep, I push open the bedroom window and sit inhaling the calm of the balmy stillness and it has such a relaxing effect. All the “stuff” in my daily life has space to breathe and the expanse of the sky puts things in perspective in a way that really helps me keep going. I also love seeing the stars appear one by one, faint at first and then dialling up their wattage as the sky darkens. Here’s a poem (in Irish and English) that I wrote recently to try and capture the experience.
Anne, hello! Yes, "the expanse of the sky" putting things into perspective. That is the most delicious surrender. I also am very taken with these lines:
Oh Anne - DO IT! Yessss. Padraig often explains a single phrase in Irish. The sound is so different from my second language Italian. It’s utterly fascinating. Do read us poems in Irish!
I have 87 solstice stories, for I was born on June 21st in 1939! Each story is wrapped in love- first from my parents and grandparents and "big brother" who was two and a half years old, then from friends and colleagues as I got involved in a career. Daughters-in-law joined in the chorus, and grandchildren too. Tonight near the end of "the longest day of the year" I and my friends will walk the labyrinth I created at my Life Plan Community. It will be gently lit by tea lights and by the light of love.
It's my birthday, too, Marian. I was born 10 years after you. And it was my parents' wedding anniversary. What a lovely ritual. As I'm a New Yorker, my ritual is brunch. Have a wonderful day!!
Happy Birthday! I think that is so col that you helped create a Labyrinth. I would love to do something like that, light some tea lights and walk a Labyrinth and meditate on the second half of the year <3
Yes! It’s a bittersweet day for me for that reason. Now the days begin their slow slope to shorter & shorter days.
Still, I celebrate by rising before first light & sit outside with a cuppa, listening to mockingbirds sing in the day. & I will sleep outside tonight, cleaving to every last drop of light.
The hay lies dry and fragrant on the ground. Rain tomorrow. No choice but to bring it in. We eat a leisurely dinner Lee has prepared: a lovely quiche with our eggs, milk, and spinach. Lee is a masterful pie maker, each one a delight in every sense. We head out at seven in the evening coolness, clouds of one sort above clouds of another, birds chasing through the air leaving their grace notes in our ears. We rake the hay into windrows and pitch forkfuls into into the back of the truck, trading off the job of tramping it down to get the most of out the load before heading into the barn to unload it. Back at the barn, I hear Lee shouting, "Look at the rainbow!" The sun drops below the clouds and the landscape lights up as though electified. The colors shift and deepen across the sky. Night falls. Dinah chases the cat in glorious good fun. The work goes on under the light of the moon and stars, every minute, every breath, rich, full, miraculous.
Ellen, what a beautiful moment you designed for us. I felt like I was right there alongside you all, taking in the smell of pie, fresh hay and then the distant smell of rain... I don't know if you consider yourselves farmers, but if you are, thank you for all your hard work! I sense that farmers never rest, they're always working ;)
Yesterday I drove up into Washington County in upstate New York to do some live painting at the wedding of a friend’s son. The wedding was held at their farm, which nestles in a small valley just over a ridge from the Hudson River plain. The ceremony was held on a knoll in a wide field looking west over their farm. The weather was mixed all day, and I got rained on a bit when I first started sketching. But I had a raincoat and a waterproof blanket to lay over my supplies, and I got better at telling which of the scudding clouds was going to pass over me. Around 4, as the light started to glow and it was clear the storms were past, the bride and groom arrived for a photo shoot and I was able to enjoy watching them, so young and beautifully dressed, and so comfortable and happy with each other. After the ceremony I lingered in the long evening, finishing some work and reveling in the sound of laughter and joy wafting from the small white tent tucked among the blue house and red barns of the farm. As the light deepened, it glowed like a jewel in the valley below.
As a youngster, the magic of longer days signified not only the end of the school year, but gave us the ability to play pickup baseball games in the open field behind my house for hours after dinner. What could be better? Then there was the arrival of fireflies, lighting up our hearts. The twilight of summer was not as dark or abrupt as winter’s dusk. The night breezes of this new season were welcomed. I recall the carefree, and often riveting, chatter with friends and family under the bright night stars; our imaginations soared.
I want to offer a toast to Terry Pratchett who has an eye for the humour of our humble attempts to dance with the seasons' turns. Here's to not only the midsummer Morris dancers but their dark counterparts he created who dance in the depth of the woods and the night and their Wintersmith.
Winter solstice is my favorite day because the days are getting longer. Does that make summer solstice my least favorite day? No, but…. I sure lean harder into the light. Be well friends!
Yes! A woman that I used to know told me that summer solstice was the saddest day for her since we would lose a day light little by little from now on. Oh, I really hated that long, drizzly, gloomy winter in that rural town! Eventually I moved out of the place and returned to Southern California. I still remember, and miss, that woman, though.
“The summertime freedom of youth” - aaahhh. Suburban Long Island in the 1960s - bare feet in the cool green grass, days at the beach with the hot sun and salt on our skin, and evenings spent running after fireflies in the gathering dusk. Our feet were always black with grime at the end of a summer day. My grandmother would tsk tsk about it but it was the hallmark of carefree freedom to us.
Childhood summers of being outside longer and the dread of the streetlights turning on. We hopped for rain and splashing in every puddle on the sidewalks and quiet streets. Teen years and drivers' licenses and more freedom than we realized. Late-night drive-in movies, dangerous skinny dipping as the sun twinkled and winked at our youthful strength and fun. The mom years of little kids who saw the long light days as permission to be awake way past their small body's limitations. The long nights of mom years of teens with their own means of mischief the same as mine. The weary working years as grass and gardens still needed care after the job for money was done. The years I appreciated a good, cold beer better than in my youth. Now, well, I will have an NA Guiness on my small front porch. The pots of pollinator flowers are easy to water. Someone else will cut the grass. Maybe I'll get to hear the owl. The guitar and I will play a lullaby to the birds and the bees.
And............I am gonna find a way to take this old body skinny dipping one more time!
Hello and happy solstice, friends, and thank you, Pádraig, for this luminous prompt on this luminous day.
I cannot recall one specific summer solstice, but what the word conjures is the summertime freedom of youth, a day long enough to contain everything: swimming in the sea, laughter, worries left at the shore, a perfect book, rosé, and the all-encompassing lust of summer. And then, when the day had given all it had, a campfire crackling under an endless canopy of stars, a guitar, friends lying back scanning the sky for shooting stars, young love burning as brightly as the flames. As brightly as those stars. The night so wide and generous it felt like it would never close. Wishing you all a day long enough to contain everything.
"... the all-encompassing lust of summer" - yes....
Awesome!!
I love this line, “all encompassing lust of summer.” This was such a beautiful piece to read over and over. Happy Solstice, Lisa Marie ☀️
Thank you Penelope! I hope yours was gorgeous.
Indeed it was. The weather was clear and beautiful in the Southeast. I purified some of my crystals outside in the solstiice sun, enjoyed a Juneteenth celebration, and a bike ride before the heat became too much.
I managed to stay off of my laptop and phone for most of the day which is hard because I have fallen so in love with reading and writing on Substack 🔥
I’m glad, Penelope! I lounged in my garden for most of the day after performing all weekend. I needed to recharge! I’ve had to begin setting a timer for Substack reading; there are so many great writers and fascinating stories.
Dear Lisa Marie, the same lusty blessing back to you! Ah, summer - my absolute favorite time of year.
Thank you, Patty! Summer is a marvel, isn't it?!
I love your word capture of this day of transition. Perhaps Symbolically the fire is an extension of the light that we cherish perhaps.
Thank you and that’s a lovely way to look ta it Margaret!
It was late afternoon, early evening.
My wife was mending our trampoline.
My sons were playing backyard soccer.
I was collecting tree clippings into our green bin.
And we were like, "Shouldn't it be darker by now?"
This beautiful snapshot made me chuckle.
One summer near the end of high school, around this time of year, I spent a series of nights accompanying my mother on her job counting corncrakes on our island. Corncrakes are shy birds. They migrate from North Africa in spring and spend the summer in Scotland, or used to. They lurk in the long grass of fields and meadows, and in the long summer evenings the males call for mates in a loud and grating double-barreled cry that stretches out through the villages: /crex crex/, giving them their Latin name. My mother’s task was to drive slowly through the villages in the dead of night, all the windows open, listening. When we heard a corncrake we would drive round to a different point and triangulate its location.
At the end of the night’s work, around 2am, we drove home with the first flush of pre-dawn light sharpening the north-east horizon: the royal blue of the firmament bleeding into lemon-yellow orange-highlighter edge and the headland sharp and black beneath, then the bay silvery and pale.
I haven’t heard a corncrake in our part of the island now for decades. There are still a few that visit the southern isles. And they used to be common across the British Isles.
Caitriana, your corncrakes. That image of you and your mother, windows open in the dead of night, listening for something shy and vanishing, is so poignant. The pre-dawn light you describe, royal blue bleeding into lemon yellow, the headland black, the bay silvery and pale, that is a painting. And the silence where the crex crex used to be is its own kind of grief, isn't it, the absence...
What an amazing story. Thank you for sharing it.
So beautiful and sad at the same time…. Thank you ❤️
This sounds like so much fun. I've never heard of a corncrake, but now I want to look one up and listen! It made me sad to think that you don't hear them much anymore. I hope they are not an endangered species.
Sadly they are now endangered 😭 the programme my mum was working for was trying to monitor numbers and help them recover, but since then they’ve (at least the ones coming here) just got fewer in number. Changes in agricultural practices are one factor but I don’t know whether the main issue is on this side or the other side of their migration.
What a beautiful story and what a lovely thing to do with your mum.
My little family of three has a winter solstice tradition of lighting candles all along and inside the little creek that runs between our home and the woods. We disperse them at dusk so we can feel the change—which is less gradual than you’d imagine—it’s like someone’s hand is on the sunset dial and is turning it in notches down, down, darker, darker, and all we really notice are the little fires who start glowing more and more. We stay mostly quiet and still, outside, maybe singing softly, watching the evening fully fall.
For summer solstice, there is usually a fire. And an exciting late night for the kiddo… that feeling of fullness that comes without a list of its contents. This year feels odd. We are walking through days like dreams as someone so dear to us faces health issues and uncertainties. We have the sense in our hearts, that all will be well. But there is inner tension—more than usual, there is a child inside of me and a teenager inside of me and a grown up inside of and a mother inside of me and my sense of time is so surreal that I read your post for today, Pádraig, and was like, ohhhh, yeahhh, solstice…
We haven’t yet told my daughter, who is 5, who just woke up during this early predawn and looked quite intrigued that mama was already up, writing. Likely, she is not falling back asleep and soon we will go outside, to not wake her papa, and we will visit all our familiar places in the unfamiliar cast of the earliest light.
Jo, the candles in the creek, someone's hand on the sunset dial turning it down in notches, the child and the teenager and the mother all living inside you at once. You write the interior of human experience like no one else.
I hope this solstice is infinitely beautiful, for you and your little family and the dear one you are walking alongside. May the earliest light be kind this morning.
Yes, infinitely! Thank you Lisa Marie—i wish a beautiful solstice for you, too.
Jo, how sweetly you hold the tension between the magical light show and the fear of losing someone impossibly dear. May all be well with you and yours. Peace always.
Thank you, Patty 🩵
I’m newly paralyzed at 32. Longer light, for me, brings with it an earlier wake-up time (I wake up with the light and it comes right through the window shades). Since I can’t get out of bed on my own and don’t want to wake my parents, I lay here, often staring at the ceiling. Since my brain hemorrhage (which is what has left me paralyzed) I’ve had a lot of time to sit here and think since there’s not much else to do and there is only so much tv you can watch or reading to get done before your eyes fall out. Contemplating in the early hours, like now, is when I get a good amount of writing in. Something about the early light helps find contemplative moments and I can finally come up with a new topics for articles or write a new poem. The day’s illumination brings my own!
"The day's illumination brings my own!" Love this line! I am sorry to hear you are newly paralyzed. Happy to hear that contemplation and writing is an important part of your life. May this day of light bring lightness of being.
Thank you! It brings me a much needed outlet and I’m happy to find support through folks like yourself.
Yes, writing is a great creative and therapeutic outlet for me as well. I am glad this forum is a place of support for you.
What a challenge you face, and what a gift you give in this kind of writing to us. I’m not good at long reading times - audio books, especially Padraig’s, are my treat to myself. Our library has zillions of audio books to borrow - free. Blessings on your writing.
For the past few summers, I’ve come to relish the lengthening light of the nights around summer solstice time. Before going to sleep, I push open the bedroom window and sit inhaling the calm of the balmy stillness and it has such a relaxing effect. All the “stuff” in my daily life has space to breathe and the expanse of the sky puts things in perspective in a way that really helps me keep going. I also love seeing the stars appear one by one, faint at first and then dialling up their wattage as the sky darkens. Here’s a poem (in Irish and English) that I wrote recently to try and capture the experience.
…
Réalta Amháin
Uaireanta, is leor réalta amháin;
spréach aonar sa dorchadas
ag coinneáil amach an fáil
don solais a d’fhéadfadh
an éadóchas fíochmhar a pholladh
agus sméideadh a dhéanamh don
deireadh an oíche gan deireadh.
...
One Star
Sometimes, one star is enough;
one spark in the dark
holding out the possibility
of a light that might
pierce the fierce hopelessness
and herald the end
of an endless night.
Anne, hello! Yes, "the expanse of the sky" putting things into perspective. That is the most delicious surrender. I also am very taken with these lines:
holding out the possibility
of a light that might
pierce the fierce hopelessness
Thanks, Lisa Marie...
Thank you! I wish I could hear you recite your poem in the Scottish!
I've been toying with the idea of making some short videos of my poems and putting them on youtube - will see if I can get past the mortification!!
Yes! go for it!
Oh Anne - DO IT! Yessss. Padraig often explains a single phrase in Irish. The sound is so different from my second language Italian. It’s utterly fascinating. Do read us poems in Irish!
I have 87 solstice stories, for I was born on June 21st in 1939! Each story is wrapped in love- first from my parents and grandparents and "big brother" who was two and a half years old, then from friends and colleagues as I got involved in a career. Daughters-in-law joined in the chorus, and grandchildren too. Tonight near the end of "the longest day of the year" I and my friends will walk the labyrinth I created at my Life Plan Community. It will be gently lit by tea lights and by the light of love.
It's my birthday, too, Marian. I was born 10 years after you. And it was my parents' wedding anniversary. What a lovely ritual. As I'm a New Yorker, my ritual is brunch. Have a wonderful day!!
Happy Birthday! I think that is so col that you helped create a Labyrinth. I would love to do something like that, light some tea lights and walk a Labyrinth and meditate on the second half of the year <3
Happiest birthday Marian and Avra. May this year be full of light!
Happy Cherished Birthday, Marian!
It’s a complicated love affair. The longing, lust and love of light knowing that it has one foot out the door - devastating.
Yes! It’s a bittersweet day for me for that reason. Now the days begin their slow slope to shorter & shorter days.
Still, I celebrate by rising before first light & sit outside with a cuppa, listening to mockingbirds sing in the day. & I will sleep outside tonight, cleaving to every last drop of light.
Wonderfully expressed Jae, and makes me consider so many other things ‘longed for’ that cause a bit of a conundrum once we arrive!
Exactly.
That resonates for me.
The hay lies dry and fragrant on the ground. Rain tomorrow. No choice but to bring it in. We eat a leisurely dinner Lee has prepared: a lovely quiche with our eggs, milk, and spinach. Lee is a masterful pie maker, each one a delight in every sense. We head out at seven in the evening coolness, clouds of one sort above clouds of another, birds chasing through the air leaving their grace notes in our ears. We rake the hay into windrows and pitch forkfuls into into the back of the truck, trading off the job of tramping it down to get the most of out the load before heading into the barn to unload it. Back at the barn, I hear Lee shouting, "Look at the rainbow!" The sun drops below the clouds and the landscape lights up as though electified. The colors shift and deepen across the sky. Night falls. Dinah chases the cat in glorious good fun. The work goes on under the light of the moon and stars, every minute, every breath, rich, full, miraculous.
Ellen, what a beautiful moment you designed for us. I felt like I was right there alongside you all, taking in the smell of pie, fresh hay and then the distant smell of rain... I don't know if you consider yourselves farmers, but if you are, thank you for all your hard work! I sense that farmers never rest, they're always working ;)
Yesterday I drove up into Washington County in upstate New York to do some live painting at the wedding of a friend’s son. The wedding was held at their farm, which nestles in a small valley just over a ridge from the Hudson River plain. The ceremony was held on a knoll in a wide field looking west over their farm. The weather was mixed all day, and I got rained on a bit when I first started sketching. But I had a raincoat and a waterproof blanket to lay over my supplies, and I got better at telling which of the scudding clouds was going to pass over me. Around 4, as the light started to glow and it was clear the storms were past, the bride and groom arrived for a photo shoot and I was able to enjoy watching them, so young and beautifully dressed, and so comfortable and happy with each other. After the ceremony I lingered in the long evening, finishing some work and reveling in the sound of laughter and joy wafting from the small white tent tucked among the blue house and red barns of the farm. As the light deepened, it glowed like a jewel in the valley below.
Thank you for taking us along on this beautiful outing!
As a youngster, the magic of longer days signified not only the end of the school year, but gave us the ability to play pickup baseball games in the open field behind my house for hours after dinner. What could be better? Then there was the arrival of fireflies, lighting up our hearts. The twilight of summer was not as dark or abrupt as winter’s dusk. The night breezes of this new season were welcomed. I recall the carefree, and often riveting, chatter with friends and family under the bright night stars; our imaginations soared.
I want to offer a toast to Terry Pratchett who has an eye for the humour of our humble attempts to dance with the seasons' turns. Here's to not only the midsummer Morris dancers but their dark counterparts he created who dance in the depth of the woods and the night and their Wintersmith.
Winter solstice is my favorite day because the days are getting longer. Does that make summer solstice my least favorite day? No, but…. I sure lean harder into the light. Be well friends!
Yes! A woman that I used to know told me that summer solstice was the saddest day for her since we would lose a day light little by little from now on. Oh, I really hated that long, drizzly, gloomy winter in that rural town! Eventually I moved out of the place and returned to Southern California. I still remember, and miss, that woman, though.
“The summertime freedom of youth” - aaahhh. Suburban Long Island in the 1960s - bare feet in the cool green grass, days at the beach with the hot sun and salt on our skin, and evenings spent running after fireflies in the gathering dusk. Our feet were always black with grime at the end of a summer day. My grandmother would tsk tsk about it but it was the hallmark of carefree freedom to us.
Childhood summers of being outside longer and the dread of the streetlights turning on. We hopped for rain and splashing in every puddle on the sidewalks and quiet streets. Teen years and drivers' licenses and more freedom than we realized. Late-night drive-in movies, dangerous skinny dipping as the sun twinkled and winked at our youthful strength and fun. The mom years of little kids who saw the long light days as permission to be awake way past their small body's limitations. The long nights of mom years of teens with their own means of mischief the same as mine. The weary working years as grass and gardens still needed care after the job for money was done. The years I appreciated a good, cold beer better than in my youth. Now, well, I will have an NA Guiness on my small front porch. The pots of pollinator flowers are easy to water. Someone else will cut the grass. Maybe I'll get to hear the owl. The guitar and I will play a lullaby to the birds and the bees.
And............I am gonna find a way to take this old body skinny dipping one more time!
Listen to Hymns to the Silence by Van Morrison for a sublime evocation of long slow summer days and nights.