Over the years I’ve spent the summer solstice many places.; but I’ve never spent it this far north. The longest day of the year, in a place where the sun seems to never go down anyway…
There’s something eerie and beautiful about that experience. About knowing that even in the middle of the night – or what we would think of as the middle of the night – it is still going to be light here.
“Born on the cusp of magic” they say of those lucky enough to have this as their name day. And yes, there is something magical about Summer Solstice. Perhaps it’s just the reminder that the world is always shifting around us, under us, and beneath us, that makes the very air seem to shimmer. The veils are thin on this day, but not the same way that they are on All Hallows. A different feeling altogether.
There’s not much to Seward, it’s just a little town huddled in the shadow of the vast Alaskan mountains – you can see the whole place in maybe twenty minutes – but in this odd perpetual pre-darkness, there is a kind of magic here. Perhaps it’s just because of those mountains…
Water-girl, hemmed in by earth.
Perhaps this is the one day of the year that it doesn’t bother me.
So, for those of you that choose to acknowledge it, wishing you a blessed solstice from the land of the midnight sun.