Posts Tagged → magic
The Fireflies Made Me Say it: Happy Solstice
For whatever reason, summer really got ahold of me this year, like on my mind all the time, and dare I admit that I have actually been looking forward to this day, today, the Summer Solstice, all year long.
No funny Druid costumes. No somber walks among the big trees, waving incense or talking to the trees themselves. At most I might BBQ some hotdogs and crack a cold one (Yuengling, naturally).
But why is this long day so subliminally important, so that I look forward to it without really thinking about it?
I think the long summer days are when I really deeply recharge my batteries, recover the energy lost to drudgery and hard work the rest of the year. No question, long summer days really last. You can get in one more walk, one more bike ride, or do that much more lawn work. You just feel…more.
The sad thing is that after sundown tonight, the days get shorter until it starts getting dark at 4:00 PM in November.
Last night I pulled off the side of Montebello Road in Perry County, into one of Farmer Hines’ corn fields. Something caught my eye in the darkness, and when I turned off the truck and its lights, my vision was filled with a most glorious sight: Thousands of fireflies blinking all across the corn field. So many that they were beyond counting. Never before in a lifetime of watching fireflies have I seen so many.
Perhaps, they, too, are sensing the peak moment we all sense, the longest day, the greatest opportunity, and they are doing their firefly thing the most at that moment, in that narrow window of opportunity.
It was one more reason to drink deeply of these long days, to savor every moment and ray of sunshine. These times come with so much hidden magic.
Maybe a Druid outfit and an oak leaf wreath in my hair is warranted. Last night might have made a believer out of me.
Magic is in the air, and so is Spring
Today may be the first day of Spring, but you’d never know it, with all the snow that fell last night and today. Despite freezing temperatures all over the east, however, there is magic in the air. And it carries Spring on its wings. We can take heart. Nicer weather is indeed here.
Last night I stood way up north on a mountain side, surrounded by a silent, black, and deeply starry sky. Suddenly faint and quiet song and voices reached my ears. What started out as human sounds that put me on guard then became the distinctly identifiable gabble of migrating geese, high above, flying northward.
Magically migrating geese, ducks, raptors, and songbirds passing through our neighborhoods and yards tell us that Spring is here, even if our eyes and heating bills indicate otherwise. Migration is a mysterious thing. Some of it is now understood by scientists, and appreciated by novice naturalists, but much of it remains shrouded in utter mystery. How did these birds develop this pattern? Was it after the last Ice Age, ten thousand years ago, or was it after the previous Ice Age, 20,000 years ago? And if it was after the first one, how did they hold onto their knowledge of where and when to fly, when they spent so much time not flying at Spring time?
Migrating birds have a very thin margin for error. Go too far, too fast, and they run the risk of freezing to death, or starving, having burned too many precious calories to reach their Canadian and Arctic breeding grounds so far northward. If they are too slow, they will reach their destinations with too little time to raise their chicks to a size sufficient to survive the trek south again, when the winds get heavy on the border lands just a few months from now.
Yesterday, hundreds of geese and ducks shared the quieter eddies of the Susquehanna River in Liverpool.
Today, all around the borough of Dauphin, migrating black-headed vultures took up roosting positions like hunch-shouldered sentinels of death, harbingers of gloom and dead carrion, on trees, car tops, house roofs, power poles, and street lamps. This particular species of vulture is increasingly migrating into Pennsylvania in bigger numbers, and out-competing our more common (and “more” native) red-headed turkey vulture.
All of this magic is, to me, a sign of a the finger of God, with non-believers remaining perplexed, themselves, unable to draw upon human science alone to explain what is happening all around us. Surely my distant skin-clad ancestors stood upon a receding ice sheet somewhere, spear in hand, eyes skyward, hearts leaping for joy, as they, too, knew that this magic presaged abundant food, rebirth, new life, a new beginning for all.
Don’t take this magic for granted. Close your eyes at night and listen to the cries of the goose-honk music. Be part of this ancient cycle, if only by letting your heart be lifted with those of the excited geese, at the knowledge of the coming of Spring.