In early January, I start checking the time of sunrise and sunset every day, taking pleasure in each additional minute of daylight (and usually declaring to multiple people, multiple times a week, "Tomorrow will be two minutes and eight seconds longer!" or "We've gained six more minutes of daylight since Monday!"). I'm also fond of telling my friends in Boston and New York that the sun sets in Cha-Cha City 20-30 minutes later, year round. It's a way of getting through.
But as soon as we pass the summer solstice, I stop checking. And when it's fully dark by 9 p.m. I start noting morosely that it's all downhill from there. Throughout the early fall I grumble, taking the shortening days--every single one of them--very personally. Winter's coming.
Now that we've set the clocks back, though, I'm okay with it. It's dark early and it's dark long, and it's going to get worse before it gets better. I'm grateful for the warm, sunny days we'll still get through the end of this month, and I'm grateful for weekend days spent outside, when the dark comes on more slowly. We drink cider and whiskey and red wine, eat stews and nuts and root vegetables, and we light fires in the fireplace and have people over. I'll see my college friends at the football game this weekend, family for Thanksgiving the week after that, and the end of the semester is in sight.
It'll be okay, for a while. But talk to me again in February.
11 comments:
Ha! I think you're the first person I've heard be as conscious of when the sun sets in various places within the same time zone. I am so on the losing end in my time zone; it's when I moved here that I became obsessed with this variation.
I regularly check on sunrise/sunset times in York and Edinburgh, through the winter, to remind myself that bad as it is here, it Could Be Worse. I also hate being cold (I don't think I ever suffered from SAD when I lived on the west coast), but I hate dark even more than I hate cold, so in January it's more helpful than not to observe that even if we've had days on end of sub-zero temps, we've also had days of sunshine when York is above freezing but apparently permanently overcast.
LoaF: I think I first started noticing it when I was commuting from NYC to Philly around sunup and returning around sunset, and the five minute variation seemed like a big deal. But I notice it all the time now, partly because Cosimo's job is located even further west in our time zone.
I'm most depressingly aware of it when I'm driving several hundred miles east in November--as I will each of the next two weekends--and I'm still on the road as the sun sets. Not only does the sun set earlier than I'm used to, but since the sun is behind me, there's nothing gradual about it: the dark comes on REALLY fast, and it feels like the shortest, most miserable day of my life.
Dame Eleanor: cold vs. dark is a tossup for me, but having one and not the other is much better than having both! (Unfortunately, where I live, we're in the middle: the average winter temp is in the 30s, but it's pretty grey. So it's not terrible, but there's no great consolation, either.)
I have an awesome iPhone app ("Darkness") that tells me all kinds of awesome sun/moon rise/set information for various places. One interesting thing is that, in my current location, the sunset time only moves up by about 10-15 minutes between now and Dec 21. But the sunrise time gets later by 45+ minutes over the same time period. I have a bit of a hard time processing why this is.
I used to travel regularly between the east and west ends of a time zone, so was very aware of the differences. Even here, when I go west 100 miles or so, I notice.
I am obsessive about watching sunrise/sunset times. I hate the late light in the morning, because I like to walk, but don't like walking in the dark. But now I say to myself: it's one more month of getting darker, and then it will start to get lighter!
LOL, the science aspect of this interested me. Apparently the discrepancy in sunrise and sunset times moving at asymmetrical rates is due to variations between Mean Solar Time and True Solar Time. For the interested reader:
http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=426655
Bro: I want that app! But I don't have an iPhone, and my brand-new iPad, though it's on indefinite loan from RU, is locked to new applications. Guess I'll have to buy one myself. (And thanks, DDB, for the explanation of the phenomenon.)
Susan: that's what Cosimo said. To which I replied, "Great. That means it'll be TWO MONTHS before it's even this light again." Always looking on the bright side, I am.
If I recall correctly, you have an iPod touch; should work fine on that.
I think the same thing about how dark it is today -- Number of days until the solstice, times 2, and it'll be just as lousy then as it is today. Between now and then, it's WORSE!
Bro: oh yeah! I haven't used its internet capabilities since January (since it's not a phone, I don't carry it around with me much, and when I'm at home or work I have my computer for internetty things). Must try.
And heh. Guess it's obvious that we're related.
fwiw, when I lived there I used a light box during December, January and February. Impressively expensive, but impressively effective. The dark got to be too much and this helped a lot.
I hate the shortening of the days. It's always so sad. I know a long winter's coming. I like your blog a lot though. Very interesting stuff on here.
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