The Solstice, 2020 and wishes for the year to come
As we experience these short closing days of 2020, I reflect on the year that has past, my ancestors and my wishes for the year to come. I am a child of 1950s modernism. My mother, an Irish Catholic girl named after four saints (Carolina Louisa Honora Fredrica), shirked tradition and made up my name. My first name, Lorace, was her name Carol backwards, adding an “e” to soften the “c”. My middle name “April” was the month I was born. Present tense. My father, who had immigrated from industrial Northern England as a teenager, also spurned English traditions for American modernism. He was a bee-bop jazz musician, and bought only products made in the USA.
But my father could not escape one aspect of his English roots: he was an avid gardener and for a short time, a dairy farmer. He even wrote a light opera about the struggle between “Little Jacky Earthworm” and “Horny Snail.” He grew tomatoes and roses in our city yard. Though he spent his days in an accounting office and evenings in smoky bars playing music, he was most relaxed when he stole weekend moments in his garden.
As a young adult, I left 1960’s Berkeley to go back to the land, settling in the Sacramento Valley. Embracing the counterculture in college had awakened my desire to create new forms of community. Like my mother, I believed we could live in a new way, like my father, I felt most grounded when connected with the earth.
Through the 70’s and 80’s, my then husband and I gathered our friends for solstice and equinox parties on our ranch in the Winters hills. These parties were a mix of celebration, cultural sharing, and activism. People brought poetry or personal writings to share and various local environmental campaigns were born. We asked that people walk over a mile on the gravel road into the ranch to attend the party so they could shake off the effects of their speedy cars and slow down in preparation for a day or evening in nature.
Then, like today, we were concerned about human impacts on the fragile earth: the effects of burning fossil fuels, suburban sprawl, nuclear power, and river dams. We had not yet realized that we are also fragile, living on an earth that may morph but will survive, perhaps without us. We were not aware that 18,000 years ago San Francisco Bay, my childhood backyard, was a valley supporting giant mammals, now extinct. The environmental movement of today recognizes that we are part of nature, not separate from it. We, too, are a vulnerable species that depends on all others. At this darkest time of year, we have the opportunity to reflect on this interconnection.
As we celebrate at a distance around Covid-safe bonfires, my family has experienced the dark winter outdoors more directly than in other years. We tell stories around the campfire, as human beings always have, heating tea or mulled wine over the coals. Being outside, we notice the convergence of the planets and the rising of the moon each night. We enjoy our solar lights and notice that they don’t work on foggy days. This year more than most, we I have experienced the contrast of darkness and the miracle of light.
In this way, the limitations of pandemic life have become a gift. They have helped us engage more directly with nature: we take long walks instead of going to movies and gather around bonfires instead of televisions. Let us celebrate this gift, and watch how our gatherings help our children and ourselves to become more aware of the wonderful natural orb on which we live, as it moves through its annual cycles of darkness and light. It is, after all, the only home we have.
P.S. I highly recommend a wonderful blog and podcast by dear family friend Nicole Asquith, called “in the weeds”, which considers how culture shapes our relationship to the natural world. Last week, Nicole featured an interview with an historian about the origins of the Christmas tree. Here is the link.