Solstice

Awake since 3am I drag myself from frustrated slumber at 4.15 am and step immediately into the yard, released dogs scattering before me in the early grey-tones of dawn. The day is stone still and the woods are noisy with the nights Krebs-Cycle, leaves that have guttered during the night drop the recycled recent rains onto the forest floor splattering and cacophonous. I forget sometimes how privileged I am to live in this place, nestled into broadleaf ancient woodland surrounded above and below by canopies. Of course living in the mouth of an acute valley like this means I never see a sunrise or a sunset benefitting instead from the full force of the peak of the daytime movement of our star. The sunrise is denoted by the illumination of the easterly facing valley side that I can see, where the steep terrain begins to open and soften out into the surrounding countryside. The trees there take on a golden/pink glow and you can imagine the business of life over there ramping up a gear.

This morning though our angular ravine sucks up warm mists from the nearby Blackwater river rendering everything gently obscured. It's low lying and slow and sits and seeps bringing with it an idea of ancient pipe sounds, or curlew cries. I burn my solstice prayer in the yard as I imagine the head of the sun breaching from the womb of the horizon. “This is it then” I think, “already the year is half-way” and I begin mentally packing things away readying for the dark. A barely perceptible gear change occurs in the woods around me, the morning chorus tones down, another flush of transpiration drops heavy from swollen leaves. The ashes of my prayer layer the yard at my bare feet, a fat spider walks directly through them and past my toes with a casual urgency. I burned my thumb during the process, its sharpness reminds me I’m alive. We’re alive. I breathe. Honey In The Heart.