Return of Light

On my next cold morning ride to work I will pedal through the dark with this warm thought: today will be longer than yesterday.

I’ll greet the skittish morning deer with this good news and cross the misty Potomac knowing each successive day will bring greater clarity, if not right away. It’s the evening sun whose time with us expands this time of year, not the morning.

Sunrise and sunset in my part of Virginia do funny things around the Solstice. For two weeks from the beginning to the middle of December the sun sets consistently at 4:47. Then it inches later to 4:48 on the ides; to 4:49 on 12/19. Tonight it sets at 4:50.

And at 10:27 tonight, our northern hemisphere will tilt itself once more to face the sun.

During this time of expanding evening sun, the mornings grow darker and darker. On December first sunrise came at 7:08 and ticked later almost daily until this morning when it rose at 7:23. Tomorrow it won’t rise until 7:24 and on Christmas Eve not until 7:25. The morning darkness will hold steady from December 29^th through January 12 with a 7:27 sunrise.

On January 13 we’ll finally see an earlier sun, at 7:26.

What lifts my spirits during these cold, dark times is this: tomorrow we will have one second more of daylight than we have today. The day after that we’ll be at +:04. By Christmas Day we will have added eleven seconds of sunlight to our lives and by the New Year more than half a minute.

Our friends across the Southern Hemisphere, including in Bolivia with it’s “clock of the south,” will see their days begin to ebb.

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