Today is a Lowellesque June day. It’s nice of the clouds and other natural forces to let the sun come through boldly on this longest day (in the Northern Hemisphere). Here the day is 15 ½ hours long, sunrise to sunset.
Trees in Sunlight
The solstice has gradually become more the “other New Year” for me than September. This is partly because I now live in a place where school starts in August and other things rev up at different times. It is also partly because I have no one returning to school―except myself, to help some elementary school students with their reading.
June Wildflowers
When I return from vacation in mid-July I am at once involved in planning, in sorting submissions for Sin Fronteras Journal, and in a thickening schedule of other activities. So I spend June days walking on the rocky beach and wondering whether there are things I should do differently this time around. The place where ocean touches land is said to be an edge where things can arise from the depths, perhaps displacing the set of thoughts, plans, ideas, that lead one into the same old patterns.
This June day is also a great day for a party. Deer Isle and Sedgwick celebrated the 75th anniversary of our “great green bridge” this morning by closing it for an hour, so people could walk across it. Led by a bagpipe and drums and including a mandolin orchestra, a great crowd walked across, while a sailboat circled below and a small plane flew overhead. A perfect June day.
“Great green bridge” was our family’s name for this bridge, copied from a children’s book called “The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Grey Bridge” which is about the George Washington Bridge connecting New York City and New Jersey. Does anyone else remember that book? It had, appropriately enough, a grey cover.
freethoughtandmetaphor 