Consider this: what if the sun began to slow down its decent toward the horizon, and you were able to experience perpetual daylight? Could it happen on Summer Solstice at Merry Mount? No. For that experience, one could travel to a location that offers the “Midnight Sun”. One could spend the summer in Barrow (Utqiagvik) Alaska where the sun doesn’t set from the beginning of May until the first of August, over 90 days straight of daylight; or one could plan to spend some time in Norrbotten, Sweden (see photo above).
How can perpetual sunlight happen?
At the June solstice, the North Pole is pointed toward the Sun. No matter how much the Earth rotates, the Sun never appears to set, producing the phenomenon of the Midnight Sun. At the same time, the South Pole is in 24-hour darkness: polar night.
The Solstice Stone points toward sunset at Merry Mount
At Merry Mount, Summer 2024 arrives on June 20 at 4:51 p.m. EDT, the time when the longest amount of daylight and the shortest night occur. The solstice occurs because Earth does not spin upright, but leans 23.5 degrees on a tilted axis.
What effect does the arrival of the longest day of the year have on our psyches? Let’s ask Stephen Sondheim.
Perpetual anticipation is good for the soul
But it's bad for the heart.
Perpetual anticipation's a delicate art,
Playing a role,
Aching to start,
Keeping control
While falling apart.
Perpetual anticipation is good for the soul
But it's bad for the heart.
The sun sits low,
Diffusing its usual glow.
Five o'clock,
Twilight...
Vespers sound,
And it's six o'clock,
Twilight
All around.
But the sun sits low,
As low as it's going to go.
Eight o'clock...
Twilight...
How enthralling!
It's nine o'clock...
Twilight...
Slowly crawling
Towards--Ten o'clock...
Twilight...
Crickets calling...
The vespers ring,
The nightingale's waiting to sing,
The rest of us wait on a string.
Perpetual sunset
Is rather an unsettling thing.
The sun won't set,
It's fruitless to hope or to fret,
It's dark as it's going to get.
The hands on the clock turn,
But don't sing a nocturne
Just yet.
In Sondheim’s musical, A Little Night Music, Madame Armfeldt tells her granddaughter that the summer night smiles three times: “The first smiles at the young, who know nothing. The second, at the fools who know too little…And third, at the old who know too much.”
May this Summer Solstice bring only smiles of delight to everyone regardless of our age.
CPW
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