Solstice means “sun standing still.” Twice every year between the 20th-22nd day of June and December, our planet experiences a solstice. Today here down south of the equator in New Zealand it is winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. Simultaneously it is summer solstice, the longest day of the year, in the northern hemisphere.
The modern calendar is based off ancient solar calendars which accounts for many festivities being linked to astronomic events. For example, winter solstice traditionally marks the return of the sun following the darkest and coldest time of the year. No doubt in eager anticipation of warm and barmy days to come, winter solstice has been a particular point of celebration since ancient times.
Last year the Bazflyer’s tactically avoided a winter solstice. Instead, flying round the world bestowed us with two summer solstices. The first of these in the northern hemisphere was observed in June while attending Sentimental Journey at Lock Haven, Pensilvania. The second summer solstice was in December, back home in the southern hemisphere after completing our ‘Earthrounder’ circumnavigation. Solstice also marks an annually important Bazflyer celebration…a wedding anniversary!
Today’s solstice is uniquely significant. In the measure of time it is merely a blip since the December solstice. However, in that small solar interval the world as we have known it has been captured in the pincer grip of a pandemic. A pandemic that sadly has also spilled the flotsam of social unrest.
Among ancient civilisations, winter solstice was the night that the Great Mother Goddess gave birth to the new sun. Perhaps as never before in modern history, today’s solstice is an appropriate time to metaphorically embrace the same spirit…to give birth to a new sun. A sunrise that symbolically announces the pandemic winter is not forever, that life continues, and our world can reawaken a better place….a solstice to celebrate.
Flying round the world reinforced Bazflyer’s stanch belief in the goodness and innovation of mankind, and as said in the Magic Carpet blog; “Our world would not be a place at all if it wasn’t for the people who in habit the folds of its land”.
Winter solstice on Lake Taupo
Biking the solstice way
