Summer Solstice

May 18, 2024

June 23, 2024

The Summer Solstice was on June 20, and the Strawberry Moon was on June 21. I didn't get a chance to see it because of the clouds. I had been reading Dorte Nors' A Line in the World, set on the west coast of Denmark, and thinking about Midsummer rituals like bonfires in Scandinavia. So the days slipped by me, without any witches burned. Here, our fireworks are for Independence Day on July 4. But the sun rises at its most northern point in the east in the morning, and now begins its march south, hitting its southernmost rising point at the Winter Solstice. The days are beautifully long, and the sun sets at its most northwestern point, shedding golden light on our grasses and the sea.

The mean temperature in June has been 64.6 F, well up from May's 52.8. No heat wave here.

I am experiencing the comfort of place in Nantucket, with its well-worn procession of light and flora and fauna. The sea is changing colors every hour: from shimmer silver gray with an almost white horizon  to deep blue turquoise green against a blue dome of sky.  Now white caps. The rate of growth is so fast in the spring that it has to slow down. The Norwood Oak is now fully leafed out, while a month ago it had just buds. The first pasture thistles are plump, frostweed is on the moors and a Red-spotted purple flits down the moor road. Odonata are flitting about. The voice of the common yellowthroat is heard o'er the land. The colicroot will be blooming soon. 

The view from the Bluff

Snowy Egret

Horned poppy

Frostweed

Red-spotted Purple

June

 

Sesachacha Pond 

How can a place widely known as a summer place for billionaires be a sacred place? It is for me and many others when we walk its trails and beaches.  The rhythm of nature is a liturgy of sorts, with well understood processions of flowering wild plants.  Now the white multiflora roses are climbing everywhere, and the ox-eye daisies fill the verges and the meadows. Next up will be the arrowhead viburnum and then St. Johnswort.

The sacred chorus is the music of the red-eyed vireo, great crested flycatcher, common yellowthroats and eastern towhees.. with a bit of robin and blue jay thrown in. it enables the forgetting of self and merging into something bigger.  I can experience it alone, on a hike with Josh, or communally with the Sunday morning birding group.

Rosa Rugosa

Rosa Multiflora

The change we experience  in the world around us may seem more unpredictable.  Here the acceleration of growth in the spring is expected  and savored.  in May, the  yellow greens were mixed with the red of grapevines expanding  and new  red leaves.  Now we have full Green.  The ponds which were dry in December are refilled. The baby birds are fledging.

But nature is not precious bulwark against the world of human beings.  Predators are preying.  The power of the sea is devouring our humble coir bags at the bottom of the bluff.  But that herring gull eating a crab does seem less threatening than a demagogue.

In the gardens, irises and ladies mantle (alchemilla). Daisies and anemones are crowding out others. Grasses swaying and blooming which were only inches a month ago.  Spring makes it seem like time is speeding up.

The longest day approaches, today Sunrise at 5:07 and sunset at 8:15.  Time can widen as well as speed up.

Sunrise, June 17

Piping Plover

Herring Gull eats a crab

American Oystercatchers from afar

Eel Point