Summer Solstice

An Invitation Into the Living World

The Summer Solstice marks the longest day of the year, when the sun reaches its highest point in the sky and daylight stretches well into the evening.

For generations, people have gathered to celebrate this turning of the season. We associate the Solstice with abundance, vitality, and the fullness of summer. It is a moment suspended in light, a brief pause before the days begin their gradual journey back toward autumn.

Here, in North Texas, the Solstice arrives speaking a language all its own.

It tells of warm mornings and sultry evenings.

It calls out in the voices of Mourning Doves cooing in the eaves. The songs of the Mockingbirds and Blue Jays chasing each other through the skies in their endless game of war.

You can hear it in the gentle sound of the bees drifting among the branches of the Crepe Myrtle, reigning in full flowering glory outside my apothecary window.

It whispers in the wings of Robins and Cardinals, darting through the trees, wings whooshing. In sunlight dancing across leaves and pavement with a sound like bells, if light could make a sound.

The days stretch ahead with a sense of possibility that feels as old as time.

Every year, as the Solstice approaches, I find myself remembering the summers of my youth. Mornings that started easy and slow. Days that stretched out into infinity.

Tanned legs and bare feet, toes curling into thick summer grass.

Running the fields of my grandparents' farm with nowhere in particular to be and all day long to get there.

Climbing trees and gathering pecans beneath their branches. Drinking sun-warmed water straight from the garden hose when we were too lazy to pull it up from the well, icy cold and mineral-rich.

Eating peaches and apricots off the trees in the little orchard, the taste like light captured and stilled. Pulling grapes from the trellised vines and stuffing pockets and mouths full to overflowing.

My grandmother's flower beds celebrating life in a riot of color with roses and irises in every hue. Wandering among them with no purpose at all, and no need for one. Stopping to admire the improbable beauty of a bud or watch a bee disappear into a lush blossom.

The hum of honey bees easily distinguishable from the buzz of an angry wasp. Always alert for the rustle of Rattlers in the fields and Copperheads in the wood pile.

The world felt infinitely alive.

In the hottest part of the afternoons, we would retreat indoors and sprawl out on the floor in front of the icy window units scattered throughout the centuries old farmhouse. Cooling sun-warmed skin and dozing a bit before venturing back outside again.

There were cows to feed before sundown.

Fields of maize stretching toward the horizon.

Barn lofts waiting to be climbed and hay piles waiting to be jumped into, despite the itch that would inevitably follow.

I remember when I never minded hay in my hair or the itchy feeling the grass left on my skin.

And in the evening, the heat would soften and a breeze might kick up, and the sky would begin its slow transformation from dreamy blue to rosy gold to dark as velvet night.

Twilight falling, cicadas calling, fireflies stitching a twinkling pattern through the evening sky.

And when their work was done, a million stars would come out to take their place.

Coyotes singing just close enough to the tree-line to raise the hair on your arms and the fur on the back of your dog's neck.

It was the feeling of belonging completely to a season.

Of being immersed in it.

Of paying solemn attention to it.

Of participating with it, in the joyous dance of life.

And, every year, the Solstice reminds me of something vital.

The world still offers herself.

The mourning doves still greet the day, gentle souls that they are.

The bees still drift among the blossoms outside my window.

Summer storms still gather on distant horizons, darkening the sky before unleashing a torrent of life-giving rain on thirsty soil.

The smell of sun-warmed earth still rises in the aftermath, mingling with the clean, honest scent of rain.

The symphony of cicadas and crickets and frogs playing in sweet harmony still announces the arrival of a summer evening.

The Crepe Myrtles still burst into extravagant bloom just as the heat settles in for the season.

The world has changed in countless ways since those childhood summers.

And yet, the living world remains astonishingly generous.

She continues to offer beauty.

Wonder.

Food.

Medicine.

Shelter.

Birdsong.

Shade.

A place to rest.

A reason to look up.

A moment to linger.

A choice to remember that we belong here. That we are part of this.

That is the deeper invitation of the Solstice.

Not only to celebrate the longest day of the year, and the fruits of summer, but to notice the fullness of life surrounding us always.

Life, in all its many, devastatingly beautiful forms.

An invitation to step outside long enough for wonder to catch up with us.

To remember that we are not separate from the season.

We are participants within it.

This Solstice, take your tea out onto the porch.

Walk barefoot through the grass.

Watch the bees moving from blossom to blossom.

Listen for the mourning doves.

Stay long enough for the day to reveal itself.

For the sunlight to dance.

To feel warm breezes and summer storms.

To glimpse verdant green land under impossibly blue skies.

To embrace the riot of birdsong and blossoms.

Wait for the evening chorus of frogs and cicadas to rise from the shadows and carry your soul away on their nightsong.

Fireflies are still bursting into flaming jewels in the twilight. Did you know?

Wonder and possibility are still threading through it all, shimmering strands of hope made visible.

Even still.

The world offers herself.