Sunrise, Sunset, Solstice

As a junior in college, I spent a year abroad studying in Edinburgh, Scotland. I arrived in early October, and by the time winter solstice arrived, the sun was coming up at 8:45am and setting at 3:40pm. Even as a New Englander, nothing prepared me for a winter at that latitude.  I'll always remember the assault of that raw easterly wind that blew rain horizontally, and how brutally early nighttime started. It was just the inoculation I needed to spend the next 30+ years in the Pacific Northwest.

Along with memories of stumbling over 400 year cobblestone streets, dodging vomit puddles of more hardcore revelers while icicle missiles stabbed my Tennents 80-flushed cheeks, Scotland gave me a reverence for the solstices. I was also in Edinburgh in June, when it never gets absolutely dark, it merely goes from dusk to dawn at about 3am. Since 1992-93, I've been obsessive about hibernal light patterns, monitoring minute-by-minute turns of sunrise and sunset. I fetishize the slow, painful ebb of daylight until December 21st, and the counter-flow that runs till the summer solstice.  The earth’s obliquity ensures a perpetual Ragged Dick story where sunlight always triumphs in the end. Of course, the opposite is also true.  And the older I get, the more invested I become in a story without a plot twist or ending.

At winter solstice in Olga, Washington, I have about 90 more minutes of daylight than in Edinburgh, and about 25 minutes less than I would in Portland. A large portion of my 8h16m of daylight is spent in front of the window of my office, watching the color and patterns of the sea change with the movement of the sun, the clouds, and the wind.   

In early December, I had planned to fly back to the east coast for a brief visit with family, so I drove back to Portland to leave Sarge with some friends.  Within 3 minutes of getting off of I–5, I was in a car accident. I was fine, and I wasn’t at fault (a driver sped through a red light after it had turned green for me).  But I was shaken enough by the idea of flying to New York, getting in another car, and driving all over New England that my body said “Nope.”  I was sure I would have a panic attack behind the wheel of my sister’s car while on the West Side Highway.  I stayed in Portland a few days while Northwest Washington was pummeled by atmospheric rivers, causing catastrophic flooding.

When I drove back to Orcas in my rental car, the rains hadn’t ended, but the worst of the flooding had passed.  The property was, and still is, saturated. Wherever you are not dodging puddles, the ground has absorbed all that it can and squishes like a wet sponge. Seeing all the places water collects on the property will eventually help me to figure out the best and worst places to plant garden beds and where curtain drains will be the most effective.  A good deal of water got into the crawlspace but fortunately, not the house. The repairs I made to the roof weren’t quite enough to counter the batshit crazy contours of the rooflines, but the only place rainwater is getting in from above is in the small, exterior-entrance utility room.

The house was dry, but it was not without other surprises. The week before I left for Portland, I discovered that “something” had been trying to get into a mouse-bait station I’d placed in the storage room off the kitchen.  I got my flashlight and duct tape and looked for any possible entrance a larger-than-mouse animal could have used to get into this room. I found and sealed all possible intrusions, but left a big piece of bait out, just in case I hadn’t.  The next day, the bait was gone. I left out more, but that bait sat. When I came back from Portland, the bait inside and outside were untouched. All quiet on the storage room front. There was, however, a smell emanating from the “foyer”, the 3 square foot area between the front door, living room, and stairs. Far from the storage room. I figured that it was the body of whoever had stolen that bait, rotting in the crawlspace below. I was wrong. 

Somehow, this guy had found a way into the house, and promptly died. My best (and least paranoid) guess is that they got in while the door was open in the days before I left for Portland.  Perhaps while I was packing up the car, or bringing in firewood? If I still lived in Portland, I would not be ashamed to call on my neighbor Chris, or ask my friend Kyle to drive across town and take care of it, as I did once when I found a 8” long dead rat at the foot of the ladder going into my crawlspace. I don’t hate rats (and mice) so much as they unleash a deep, atavistic, reaction of mortal terror that I cannot cure with reason. And I would do just about anything to not have to deal with them. But signing up for the privilege of watching the sea turn from Pantone 11-4606 TCX “Ice Castle” to 19-4340 TCX “Lyon’s Blue” is also dealing with the rat whom you poisoned to death. The next step in my countrified evolution will be to ditch the bait and figure out a method that is less toxic to the ecosystem, but give me a little time, I only just worked up the courage to move a dead rat into a paper bag with a fireplace shovel.

With the dead animal and its dead animal smell behind me, the house dry and warm, I was ready to honor the shortest days of the year with mirth and reverence. For the mirth, I had dinner plans with a girlfriend and had even purchased tickets for a show—an evening of local bluegrass at The Grange. Not at all on brand for me, but it had been touted as the event of the holiday season by a Community Lunch patron whom I’d served a baked potato to, and I needed a night out. I selected an outfit and groomed myself to resemble someone who does not (necessarily) live in a house without indoor plumbing, and revved up the rental, a Chrysler Pacifica. The car's tires had done fine in the last 6 days of atmospheric river-level rains, but on the 7th night, God laughed. I could not get the front-wheel drive Pacifica over the slope of muddy tire treads I’d created, and now, desperate for a margarita, I was only making it worse. It was only 5:17pm, but my night was over. I had popcorn for dinner and watched 3 episodes of The Americans, like I had every other night that week. 

After 8 hours of Matthew Rhys dreams and a couple YouTube tutorials, my solstice-day plans were to liberate The Pacifica from the slope. I gathered plywood, 2x4s, and woodpile scraps and assembled a traction field over a portion of the slope. I didn’t get the purchase I needed in my first attempt, and before launching a second, I decided to try a different route.  This involved backing up the car and driving it about 30 feet across a fenced garden, and then up the hill that leads to the cabin. On paper, this was an idiotic move. The patch of lawn I had to drive over to get to the hill was some of the most saturated on the property, and last winter a moving truck had to be towed from that hill. The only thing I had working for me was the fact that this ground was relatively virginal; it hadn’t known a tire-tread in months. There was a decent chance, I posited, that the un-treadded grass would give me the traction I needed to make it up the hill, once.  And for once, I was right. 

My only complaint is I had counted on this endeavor taking me the whole day, and was even prepping content for my “Spend The Day With Me As I Try To Get My Car Out Of The Mud” Instagram reel, and now my mission was completed in under 30 minutes. Unexpectedly triumphant, I went for a walk down the driveway and threw out my back lifting a heavy branch out of the road. A few hours later, the acupuncturist I occasionally see here texted me out of the blue: she had an unexpected opening tomorrow, did I want it?  The roulette wheel keeps spinning.

Out in the real world, the weeks leading up to the winter solstice have been a series of confounding, senseless tests. It frames my own recent mishaps and tough breaks for what they are: the texture of a very lucky life. I live in a beautiful place, close to nature, with the current love of my life.

These are unpredictable times, which is precisely why I count my blessings on the shortest day of the year.  The light goes out, the light comes in. You don't earn it, it's your reward for surviving another year. A sentence, a salvation. And change you can count on.

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