The Evening Hike
Even when I was a kid I dreaded June 21.
The first day of summer? What kid dreads the start of summer?
Not summer per se. Rather, what that “start” represented.
The demise.
The demise, curiously, of sunlight. For June 21 (or thereabouts) marks the longest period of daylight of the year: 14 hours and 39 minutes. But from then on we start getting shortchanged, imperceptibly at first, on sunshine. A few seconds a day at first. At the end of June, the sun set at 8:37 p.m.; tonight (Sept. 3), it will be down at 7:42 p.m. By the end of September the sun will set at 7:02 p.m. and come Halloween it will be down at 6:22 p.m. Let’s not even talk about November and the end of Daylight Saving Time.
Savor Summer’s end on a ridge
I’d been hiking the ridge for five minutes, aware of the fading light filtering through the hardwoods. I was in the waning minutes of daylight and wasn’t about to pass without a memorable goodbye. So why was I still moving? I should take a minute to stop and take this in, I thought. So I did.