The Sun, the Seasons, and the Day

I enjoy a good sunrise.

After a long winter night in the woods, seeing the sky begin to lighten and then seeing the sun rise above a hill to warm my bones is a fantastic time - linked in my mind to birth and resurrection. The beginning of the day is the beginning of life all over again. Daybreak is the resumption of goals and the fulfillment of the dreams dreamed the night before.

A few years ago, I realized just how different sunrises are as the year progresses. Sitting in my east facing office, the sunrise of late December is two spans (the hand held at arms length - the distance from little finger to thumb, with the fingers spread) south of East. The sun follows an arc that appears makes the same angle with the horizon no matter what time of year, but it begins further south in the mid winter. That makes the day shorter and the height of the noon sun lower at this time of year than any other time of year.

On the day of an Equinox, the first days of Spring and Fall, the sun rises directly to the East. The day is longer, the sun at noon is higher, and the average daytime temperature is rising. At the Summer Soltace, the sun rises two spans north of East and the day is at its longest. I have watched this progression from my sun room in Ohio and from my office in Texas. For me, it is a rite of yearly passage to observe the rising of the sun.

I also enjoy the daily passage of the sun from its rising to its noon to the south and back to its setting. A couple years ago, I enjoyed almost daily trips to a tipi in my Ohio backyard. I had it set up with the door facing East. In the winter, I would often traipse down to the tipi before sunrise and start a fire in the central fire ring. Then as the sun rose I opened the door flap and enjoyed the fresh sunlight streaming through the doorway onto the figures I had painted on the tipi liner. It was a quiet time that encouraged me to pray and to think about the day to come.

In that peaceful time, I came to appreciate the daily circle of life. The brilliant red rays of the sunrise became linked to the East and with the beginning of life as well as a day's occupation. Almost automatically East became linked in my mind to spring and the beginning of the year's cycle of growth and harvest. As the sun traveled southward toward noon, I thought of the South as being the place of warm summer, adolesence, growth, greenness, and summer. Sunset in the west reminded me of the accomplishment of adult life and the Fall of the year. I thought of the moon as being born to the West, where each new moon begins. North became the place of night, rest, the respect of elders, a time for reflection, dreaming, and planning for the day to come. North was a time for the brilliant stars that slowly wheel their way across the sky.

Southern hemisphere readers will realize that all these illusions are all exactly backwards for observers south of the equator. If you have tipis, you are welcome to come to your own conclusions and reminders of the lessons of life in your own way.

Coming back to astronomy in the years of my elderhood seems natural. It is a time to appreciate the night more and to think more about the eternal. It is a time to discover what has remained hidden during much of my life. It is a time to revel at the enormous beauty of the creation and to think about the wonderful hugeness of the creation and my small and fleeting part of it.