Summer Solstice ~ its Light spilling over
...with Observations of Mary O. and Ralph Waldo E.
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Celebrating the Longest Day ~ Stonehenge and Avebury Circles
Your first glimpse of the photo heading this post and I’m certain you immediately knew it was taken at Stonehenge at a Solstice sunrise. Avebury, which is about an hour’s drive distant, may be less familiar. A smaller but equally enthusiastic crowd gathers there too. I am so fortunate to have visited these incredible stone circles in Southwest England a number of times. While these occasions have not been on the Summer Solstice, I can well imagine what it must be like to be there. Of course with the advent of “instant broadcasting” via cell phones, virtual and live attendance is now possible. Photos and videos of the enthusiastic throng such as the picture above are everywhere in social and mainstream media on the day and for days following.
It’s all about the Light, of course….
Here on my corner of the Catskills in Upstate New York, now ten days past June 21st Sun-Standing-Still--aka the Solstice--the length of the day's light is diminishing incrementally around 40 fewer seconds less of it each day. Right now and for a while it is barely noticeable, although my rational-self feels a twinge-sad trying not to entertain thoughts of dark and cold months ahead even if the calendar says that’s all a good ways off.
But oh the golden sunshine and warmth...heat!...fully arrived and reigning! My tomato plants are loving all of it and pushing up their green-selves more each day, producing clusters of small yellow flowers and setting first fruits. And if I can discourage the mama deer and her twin fawns from over-nibbling in the rest of the beds (the kale is especially tempting), it's exciting to witness the gardens’ verdant growth. No matter the shortening of the days, there will be—as there always is—ample sunshine to foster all this earth-y abundance.
There were no doubt quite a few gardeners amongst the crowds at Stonehenge and Avebury. After the heady experience of that June 21st dawn, they are all now back at their respective homes and back yards tending to veggie plots large and small. Weeding, watering, admiring developing plants, and savoring the first delicious yields of their patient garden-tending.
What might be lingering from that Solstice morning, elbow to elbow with hundreds of others who had traveled to the Wiltshire Plain? Having spent time among the Stones myself, I can attest that it's likely something quite significant. Apart from the Solstice events, most visitors/tourists to Stonehenge aren't able to enter the Circle, limited to admiring and experiencing it from a modest distance behind a knee-high chain-link fence. During the years I led pilgrimage groups to that part of England, I was fortunate as a tour leader to be able to book a private entrance for my groups. Small numbers of 20-25 people are able to experience the Stones for an hour ahead of regular-Visitor hours. Three times in all my groups and I had the rare privilege of an early morning’s wandering among the indescribable monoliths of Stonehenge. The full telling of the most amazing of these experiences would add too much length to this post. I'm planning to share it in an audio recording in the near future. Extra-ordinary scarcely comes close to describing it.
As a devoted celebrant of the seasonal celebrations of the Wheel of the Year, I've taken part in many a Solstice and Equinox ritual, winter-spring-summer-autumn and back round again. Sometimes this has been by design a satisfying solitary pursuit. But joining others in Earth-honoring ceremony is always exhilarating and wondrous. Deep ancestral roots are stirring for so many, especially those of us whose lineage is long-separated from such indigenous connection. Ralph Waldo Emerson offers insight into the allure we're sensing:
Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning, and under every deep a lower deep opens.
It’s all about the Light, of course….she said….
For too long a while it has been a dark time upon our planet, our beloved Mother Earth. In what I'm seeing and feeling around the Summer Solstice of this year, 2025, there are encouraging signs of progress and hope for better, brighter days. This most definitely had its genesis in the Hands Off! actions in April. [Sowing the Seeds…] The post just ahead of this one also explores this topic: Weaving the Web of Light. (….a series underway maybe? Time will tell.)
Since discovering her in 1990, I've turned to poet, Earth-lover, and wise woman, Mary Oliver. when I'm in need of inspiration and Hope. Regular readers of Notes of an Earth-Pilgrim will be familiar with this inclination. Whether or not she was an observer of Summer Solstice, ritual-wise, she wrote movingly of summer's gifts with "A Summer's Day" perhaps the most beloved of these poems. And so often she subtly—or more pointedly—reminds us of possibilities and opportunities not to be overlooked. Since she's walked into the next world some five years ago, I'm not sure she'd suggest "Morning in a New Land" as a Sign of present hopefulness that I see it as. You can decide for yourself. It is certainly about the gifts of Light and the promises of a New Day.
In trees still dripping night some nameless birds
Woke, shook out their arrowy wings, and sang,
Slowly, like finches sifting through a dream.
The pink sun fell, like glass, into the fields.
Two chestnuts, and a dapple gray,
Their shoulders wet with light, their dark hair streaming,
Climbed the hill. The last mist fell away,
And under the trees, beyond time's brittle drift,
I stood like Adam in his lonely garden
On that first morning, shaken out of sleep,
Rubbing his eyes, listening, parting the leaves,
Like tissue on some vast, incredible gift.
In Hopefulness, Solidarity, and in the Light,
~carol