Today is the winter solstice. More accurately, for the nerds amongst us 🙂 at 12.58 this morning, middle of the night, the tilt of the earth combined with its orbit around the sun means our southern hemisphere is facing directly away from the sun. It will get the least solar energy falling on it of any day in the year. The sun will rise and set at the farthest north point. Last night was the longest night of the year. Today will be the shortest day.
(There’s a brilliant explanation of the astrophysics of this at https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/changes-to-day-length-at-solstices-vs-equinoxes.668947/, for the real nerds among us)
It’s an astronomical phenomenon that was noticed by people around the world many, many thousands of years ago and is celebrated in almost every culture. Including First Nations Australian people. In my part of the world, Gumbaynggirr country in Northern NSW, there is oral history of sightings along natural landmarks being used to determine the solstice long before colonisation. The most stunning archeological example is the Wurdi Youang stone arrangement, in Wathaurong country near Ballarat, 11,000 years old.
Imagine that. Long, long before Stonehenge, long, long before any record of western European recognition, First Nations people were doing astronomy in Australia, right here where I live. No doubt there are much older markings too, lost in colonisation.
The northern hemisphere winter solstice traditions will be very familiar – an evergreen tree decked with lights, Yule log burning in a fire, carols and gifts and a big feast shared with all the community – ham and plum pudding – foods designed for storage over the long snowbound winter. In December.
Colonisation of even the calendar is emblemmatic to me of Europeans’ blind insistance that they knew better, even when they were so inarguably wrong. Where the sun rises and sets, the shortest day, the longest night, the winter cold – these are astrophysics. They don’t give a fig about human beliefs, religions, desires or who thinks they can bend physics to their will.
I celebrate the solstices and equinoxes because it reminds me of this. “Think globally, act locally”, “People of Place”, Rewilding” – these are all concepts to do with connecting with our physical being, a living creature occupying a niche in a particular place on a living planet. It’s a key to our survival, but it’s also glorious to kindle awareness of that. As so many people before us, in so many places, have been trying so hard to tell us.
“… occupying a niche in a particular place on a living planet”. A precise way to put it. The notion came home to me in the 1990s when the concept of bioregionalism came into permaculture thinking and education from North America. Peter Berg, who edited a bioregional newspaper called Planet Drum Review, visited Sydney where a group of people around Permaculture Sydney met with him in Lurlines Permaculture Cafe on Booth Street, Annandale.
The notion of living in place, which I see your item to be getting at with its focus on place and solstice, was also stimulated by American writer/philosopher Wendell Berry. Bioregionalism is essentially an ecological-geographic concept over which the politically and econmic minded overlaid notions of regional self-governance and regional economy. We see the latter day hints of this in the promotion of local food and local economy.
Bioregionalism and its political-economic overlay were very much about the concept of living in place. However, to live with an awareness of, and interaction with events like the solstice and equinox, with the passage of the seasons and with the boundaries of climate, does not necessitate living in place. It is clear from my experience that people living the contemporary version of nomadism in their vans and vehicles also relate directly to the cycles of nature, of ecologies and of astronomical events. In other world, a fixed address is not a necessity but an awareness of natural systems is. The life of the modern nomad, whether for a limited time or full time, puts you in direct contact with natural systems because it is essentially a life lived outside.
Where I am living, here on the southeast coast at 42.5ºS, I am becoming attuned to living in place, living with the seasons, the weather, the climate, the geography and the ecology both natural and human made. Sure, there might be the pull of other places, other highways, however this place of beach and headlands, still water and surf and the distant view to the hills and forests far, far across the bay is now our niche in a particular place on a living planet.
I love this comment.