Scenes from a summer solstice

I’ve always said that summer isn’t my favorite season. I prefer winter, with its short days and cold weather, and autumn, as leaves fall and the skeletons of forests are laid bare. But marking the Wheel of the Year, as we have done for the last several years, means paying attention to each seasonal change, celebrating its unique characteristics and trying to be present for it. So this year I vowed to welcome summer and be open to its wonders, to savor the heat and light as fully as I could.

Solstice traditions

Cultures around the world have marked the seasonal turn to summer by building monuments through which the sun shines on the solstice, lighting up interiors or creating perfect tunnels for its rays. Think of Stonehenge (England), Machu Picchu (Peru), Newgrange (Ireland), Chichen-Itza (Mexico), or Chaco Canyon (New Mexico). We marvel at this sophisticated architecture today, but knowing when it was the summer solstice was important. For one thing, it signaled the earth’s readiness for planting crops to ensure enough food for winter. Paying attention to seasonal changes was a matter of life or death.

Solstice celebrations are part of many contemporary cultures as well. I particularly like Swedish traditions around solstice, called Midsommar, which are typically celebrated the weekend before or after the solstice proper. Last year Mr. Adventure and I went to the Oregon Midsummer Festival at Nordic Northwest in Portland. We ate Scandinavian food, watched musical performances, made flower crowns, and reveled as people of all ages, wearing traditional dress, raised the flower pole and sang and danced. It was a relaxing, perfect day, one that we’re looking forward to repeating next weekend at this year’s festival.

But I didn’t want to miss the actual solstice. The word comes from the Latin: sol for sun, and sistere for stopped or stationary. The sun appears to stand still for a few days at the solstices, in summer rising in the Northern hemisphere at its northeasternmost point and setting at its northwesternmost. In Olympia, beginning on June 19, the sun rose at 5:16am and set at 9:10pm. Sunset will continue to occur at the same time for at least a week, but sunrise will be a few seconds later. As I write this on June 25, the sun rose at 5:17am. Over the next weeks, the days will oh-so-slowly get darker, and then around the next Wheel of the Year celebration on August 1 (Lughnasadh, the first harvest festival and also my birthday), I will begin to feel as though the earth is moving ever faster toward equal day and night. Which it is. But that’s weeks away, and the solstice was now. Like the sun, I also pause at the solstice. I spend time outdoors and reflect on the year thus far and the season ahead.

June 19 – Midsummer Eve

Late in the afternoon, we hiked the old-growth forest at Rainbow Falls State Park, where summer is in full bloom, every plant at its brilliantly green peak. I brushed my palms over the tops of tall grasses waving gently alongside the trail. Even the flying insects seemed to be taking it easy, buzzing quietly here and there as sunlight filtered through the forest canopy.

On the ride home we stopped briefly at historic Claquato Church, built in 1858 and one of Washington’s oldest. Along the side, roses in full glory burst from two bushes. The heavily scented magenta flowers glowed in the slanting light. I thought of my beloved late mother-in-law, who loved roses and would have reveled in these.

June 20 – Summer Solstice

The solstice occurred at 1:50pm, at which time I was inside our apartment preparing a smorgasbord for our celebration. MizFitz came over and the three of us drank elderflower lemonade and piled smoked salmon, pickled herring, dilled new potatoes, hard-boiled eggs, and pickled cucumbers on dense rye bread. We talked about summer traditions and how this one was turning out really well. I’d made a Swedish summer strawberry cake, a wonderfully messy aggregation of (in my case, non-dairy) pastry cream, whipped cream, sponge cake, and strawberries, and we took bowls of it outside and sat on the terrace while the sun sank in the northwest. When it was darkish, we lit the gas firepit and talked into the night. As the Swedes say, Glad Midsommar!

June 21

It was a work day, so we took our usual walk around the Port of Olympia’s waterfront trail. New seal pups are learning to swim around this time of year, and just before flood tide the water can look like a kindergarten swimming class for baby pinnipeds. For every tiny seal head in the water, a larger parent seal head bobs watchfully nearby. Only half the pups will survive to adulthood (last year I found a dead pup floating at the shoreline during one of my walks), another reminder of the inexorable power of nature and seasonal change.

June 22

After a relaxing day at home, we took an early evening walk through Millersylvania State Park’s cool green forests. We don’t often go to the park during the summer when it’s crowded with campers and swimmers and picnickers, but it was delightful to walk through the lakeside area and smell the barbecues, watch little kids run in and out of the water, and talk with folks enjoying a summer day outside. As at Rainbow Falls, the forest is in full summer mode, everything rich and green and leafy. Soon, July and August’s heat will start to dry out understory plants, but right now it’s an emerald wonderland.

June 23

On the way to visit my friend Linda in Pullman, Washington, we stopped to walk across the Columbia River on foot. This is a rare opportunity along the river’s 1,200-plus miles. The impressive Beverly Bridge, a key component on the 287-mile-long Palouse to Cascades State Park Trail, reopened in 2022 for bikers and hikers only. Just downstream from the Wanapum Dam near Vantage, the trail follows the old Milwaukee Road railroad route from the crest of the Cascades to the Idaho border. It is seriously windy on the bridge. The wind blows hard and loud along the river, whining and whistling through the structure’s struts and braces and fencing. Although it was really cool to walk across the great river of the West, I was also slightly grumpy because of the incessant noise. It was a relief to get back to the car.

Later, as Mr. Adventure and I drove into Pullman, we passed field after field of tall grains moving in the breeze in patterns that looked like wind on water: truly “waves of grain” as memorialized in “America, the Beautiful.” This is the Palouse. It’s stupendously, hypnotically beautiful.

June 24

While Mr. Adventure attended a morning meeting, on Linda’s recommendation I headed to Kamiak Butte County Park. Like nearby Steptoe Butte (a state park), this is a steptoe, a geologic term for bedrock that stands above the lava flows that lie under the rich, deep soil of the Palouse. Both Kamiak and Steptoe buttes are National Natural Landmarks. Hiking up through the cool forest, I heard some of the 140 bird species that have been recorded here (thank you, Merlin app). In addition to the usual suspects (wrens, robins, sparrows, juncos), Merlin identified red crossbill, Hammond’s flycatcher, yellow-rumped and orange-crowned warblers, Western wood-pewee, pine siskin, black-headed grosbeak, Swainson’s thrush, Western tanager, and, thrillingly, a lazuli bunting. (A lazuli bunting is one of the birds pictured on Birds of North America: A Guide to Field Identification, the bird guide I grew up with and which my parents still have. I’ve always wanted to see one, and just knowing one was in the forest was exhilarating.) From the summit ridge, the jewel-green Palouse undulated in every direction, fields of wheat and legumes knit together in a verdant, velvety patchwork. I felt expansively lucky and glad to be there.

Solstice into summer

I didn’t plan to spend hours outside during the solstice pause, but I’m so grateful I did. The worst heat of summer is yet to come, and the plants will begin their inevitable decline. Leaves will yellow and shrivel, fruit will ripen and fall, seeds will form and disperse. I will enjoy witnessing the changes. But first I will enjoy summer, openheartedly and happily. I’m writing this in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, where Mr. Adventure is attending a conference. This morning I walked the loop trail around Tubbs Hill, a forested bump surrounded on three sides by Lake Coeur d’Alene. The light, sweet scent of honeysuckle drifted across the trail, and birds sang enthusiastically from the treetops. Summer is in full swing.